From that McDonalds billboard to the street sign, you can see design everywhere. We can’t just ignore the fact that it can’t be separate from our life now. We are equipped with designs and while there are so many design elements that took the creativity to the next level; typography plays an essential role over by any other element. The magic of typography comes from creative typographers. But before we read about the 12 famous typographers, let’s first know why typography matters.
Why Typography Matters?
a. People admire the good typography
- We often hear that people do not spend more time admiring the beautiful designs however this isn’t entirely correct. We are surrounded by designs and it is impossible to ignore each and every design around us.
b. It’s all about making the design overall good
- Brilliant typography takes the designs one stop higher and while we easily overlook the typography is good design, it is nearly impossible to not understand the wrong typography.
c. It’s important to pick up the right typography
- Whether you are a creative artist or not, or it doesn’t matter that you belong to this graphic industry or not but whenever there’s poor typography used, you’ll easily recognize it. Creative thinkers can easily understand how tough a task is to choose a perfect font for their designs which not only seamlessly blend with the mood of design but also brings a spark into.
d. It’s good to convey your ideas through the text
- Graphic Design is all about communication and there should be effortless communication so that people can easily get what you are trying to convey. Here, communication refers to text and typography since text helps in forming a clear link with its potential users.
Let’s come to the point.
Every designer out there, including me, has some font collection that we keep in our favorite list. There are some common popular fonts that are used widely across the globe.
We see them every day, everywhere, in our newspapers, in magazines or in any other reading material. We can easily recognize a few of them like Helvetica, Baskerville, Times New Roman, Montserrat, etc.
We have known them for years but do we really know who created them?
Today, in our blog section, I have brought a list of 12 famous typographers. These typographers were the brains behind some iconic typefaces.
12 Famous Typographers
1. John Baskerville
Font Designed: Baskerville
Known as the famous printer, letter designer, stonecutter, writer, and type founder, John Baskerville developed the perfectly edged and crisp Baskerville font.
Baskerville was fascinated by experimenting with letters. 1754-1757 saw the rise of Baskerville’s career. He created the Baskerville font in 1754 and in 1757 he printed a notable edition of Virgil.
He gave a classic treatment of his own style to the Baskerville font which makes this elegant font extremely popular and classic. This font offers clear reading in both print and web mode.
2. Matthew Carter
Fonts Designed: Georgia, Verdana, Tahoma, Bell Centennial
You might have not heard his name before but I’m sure that you must have seen his work. He has worked on some world’s most famous digital typefaces. Matthew is often known as “The Most Important Typography Designer” of his time.
He shaped the way people read about the world and he was the genius behind the creation of Verdana, Tahoma, Galliard, and Georgia for Microsoft. With developing and amending over 40+ amazing fonts, he became the genius of the Digital typeface domain.
He has worked with major companies like Time, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Wired, and Newsweek, etc.
Listen to Matthew Cater on TED Talks, sharing his experiences of life in Typefaces.
3. Max Miedinger
Fonts Designed: Helvetica
This Switzerland based typeface designer was widely known for creating the cutting edge, elegant, clear and beautiful font Helvetica.
The font was first created in 1957 as Neue Haas Grotesk.
Later in 1960, it was renamed Helvetica and soon it became a global symbol of success.
Before developing Helvetica, he worked in the advertising department of Globus and later around 1956 he opted for freelancing and collaborated with Edouard Hoffmann.
4. Tobias Frere-Jones
Fonts Designed: Gotham, Interstate, Archer
Tobias is a New-York based leading typeface designer. He has established himself successfully in the industry with his passion and zeal for more than 25 years.
He is the genius behind some common and widely used typefaces like Retina, Tungsten, Gotham, etc. He completed his Bachelor’s in 1992 in graphic designing from Rhode Island School of Design.
For his exceptional contribution to this creative field, he has received several awards. In 2013 he got the AIGA Medal for his achievements in the creative graphic industry.
He is also a founder and chief designer at Frere-Jones Type, a type design company in New York.
5. Claude Garamond
Fonts Designed- Garamond
A French publisher who “Created visual forms that were embraced for two hundred years”. This sixteenth century typographer completely altered the entire industry. His work was widely recognized and made him the leading artist of his time.
He created the typeface Garamond which was so versatile, compact and clean font that it looks aesthetically beautiful on the majority of designs.
There are a proper balance and harmony between upper and lower-case letters. Garamond has become one of the favorite typefaces of so many graphic designers out there.
Not only his typeface, Garamond and his ideologies became an inspiration for numerous contemporary designers.
6. Erik Spiekermann
Fonts Designed: Berliner Grotesk, FF Meta, ITC Officina Sans
Erik Spiekermann is renowned and world’s leading graphic designer who has experience of working on tons of projects for over 50 years. From advertising and typeface designing, he has also contributed to literature by writing various books.
His books Find Out How Type Works and Stop Stealing Sheep talks about how designers can improve their knowledge in the typographic domain. Known for his strong opinions and professional work ethics, he founded his own company and created fonts like ITC Officina Sans and Officina Serifwhich are now widely used all over the world.
7. Adrian Frutiger
Fonts Designed: Univers, Frutiger, Avenir
Frutiger was another swiss based type of designer. His career began from the second half of the 20th century and he has spent years in creating some clean and smooth fonts.
Avenir, Frutiger, and Univers are his most famous and known fonts. All of them fall into the category of sans serif.
He was fascinated by Sans serifs. He considered creating fonts of this category as his sole purpose.
8. Stanley Morison
Fonts Designed: Times New Roman
The widely used and once everyone’s much-loved Times New Roman was created by Stanley Morison. TimesNew made its first appearance in the ‘Times’ Daily newspaper on 3rd October 1932.
He became a royal designer for the industry with his continuous growth and success. And the amazing part was that he was a self-taught person. He never attended school.
9. Paul Renner
Fonts Designed: Futura
Paul Renner was a German graphic designer, typographer, painter, and teacher. In the initial days of his career, he created books for Munich publishing and earned his living.
He became the principal of Printing Trade School in Munich in 1926 and at the same time, he was co-founder and director of Master School for Germany’s Printers.
Futura font was produced between the years of 1924 and 1926. It was used for commercial purposes in the year of 1927. It belongs to the sans serif family.
10. Carol Twombly
Fonts Designed: Trajan, Myriad, Adobe Caslon, Chaparral
Carol was the one behind such graceful fonts like Trajan, Caslon, Chaparral, and Charlemagne, from the early childhood she has that creativity and artistic endeavors that made her explore the various artistic traditions.
She was, for a long time, associated with Adobe and developed several fonts for them.
11. Jan Tschichold
Fonts Designed: Sabon, Zeus
Jan was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. For years, he was associated with the Penguin Books that is a British publishing house and perfected the paperback.
He condemned all the categories except Sans-serif and thus end up creating some elegant sans serif fonts Sabon and Zeus.
12. Jonathan Hoefler
Fonts Designed: Hoefler Text, Requiem, Archer
Hoefler is an American based type designer who opened his type foundry, Hoefler Type Foundry in 1989 in New York and since then, there’s no looking back.
As a founder and chief designer there, his company is known for creating typefaces that leave a long-lasting impact on the viewers.
They have a library of more than 1500 typefaces for print web and even for mobile. You can find the typefaces created by them being used by giant organizations like Twitter, Tiffany & Co., Coca-Cola Cans and you can even find them on every iPhone.
So, these were some typographers in the list that you should know about.
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If you know any other than these, don’t forget to mention them in the comment section below!
That’s all from our side, Stay tuned with us for more informative blogs. Till then, Keep exploring!
