Matthew carter type designer biography

1. A self-taught type designer par excellence, Matthew Carter was born in London, England in , son of the typographic historian Harry Carter.

On leaving school in he spent a year at the Enschedé type foundry in the Netherlands learning to make metal type by hand—a skill that proved to be commercially obsolete. To earn a living he had to adapt to drawing alphabets for modernist designers in London who were frustrated by the lack of contemporary sans-serif typefaces in Britain at that time.

Therefore, Carter’s background is a technical one. 

2.

Carter’s work spans many decades and his apprentice is beyond any method. Over the course of his career he designs type by essentially all the methods ever used: metal by hand, metal by machine, photoset, digital, desktop, screen and woodtype for letterpress posters.

3.

It all started back in when he was hired by Mergenthaler Linotype in New York as staff designer with the job of explorin