(Posted on alt.binaries.fonts) From: "Apostrophe \('\)" Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2002 22:53:16 EST As much as I like most of the stuff that Carter did, his strength never really lay in originality. A statement like "Matthew Carter is a uniquely suitable subject for such a survey, because he has created typefaces in such a variety of styles, formats..." is a bit too much for me to digest because of that. Carter will be the first to admit that his only original typeface, the somewhat-Zapfy Alisal, is the one that received the least attention. I think Carter is the proverbial sign of the times, you know. The fonts used most these days can be traced back to at least 60 years ago, and mostly go back 200 or 300 years in time. The reason for that is most likely the fact that these types' efficiencies were proven once and again, and if the new stuff does not base itself on that proven efficiency, it just might not tempt anyone to use it. After all, who in the professional world would want to risk his/her work's reputation on a possible experimentalist's taste. Carter was intelligent enough to realize these points when a new technology arrived. With every new technology come new possibilities of propriety, new rat races of expertise, new opportunities of early-bird ground gaining, new shots at "tweaking" and of course new names; so Garamond becomes Galliard, Scotch becomes Miller and Mantinia, Adsans becomes Verdana, etc. Carter's brilliance is not really in type design, but in the way he applied his experience and historical knowledge to the new technology. Carter is probably the last great type technician the professional world will ever see. The spacing and kerning table of Miller should be compulsory design study material in every self-respecting visual communication school. Berlow is definitely good enough to follow in his footsteps, but I'm afraid in about 10 years it will be way too late for anyone to notice this sort of thing. So, in my opinion Carter does indeed deserve the glory, not for originality or "creating typefaces" like Berry puts it, but for the way he managed to make the smoothest genius transition across three different technologies without blinking.