TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Fri Dec 13 00:43:18 EST 2024

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LUC DEVROYE

ABOUT

Microsoft

Seattle-based company involved to some extent in typography. Until 2002, the fonts developed by them were free. That is no longer the case. They are major players in multilingual typeface development, type for on-screen use, and type formats such as OpenType. A listing of their typefaces:

• Andale: a monospaced TrueType font by Microsoft developed specially for Web applications by Steve Matteson. Formerly known as Monotype.com from Monotype.
• Impact: designed by Geoffrey Lee, based on an issue by the Sheffield foundry, Stephenson Blake.
• Arial: a sans serif family. Functional, but ugly.
• Times-New Roman and Courier are the bread and water.
• Comic Sans: designed by Vincent Connare.
• Verdana (sans serif) and Georgia (serif): font families by by Matthew Carter.
• Trebuchet: a humanist sans serif by Vincent Connare.
• Webdings: designed in 1997 as a collaborative work between Microsoft's Vincent Connare and top Monotype designers Sue Lightfoot, Ian Patterson and Geraldine Wade. The images are intended for web designers who wish to include live fonts as a fast way of rendering graphics.
• Nina: the latest typeface (2000), a pixel font signed by Matthew Carter. Hinted by Tom Rickner, it is designed to show well on screen at small point sizes.
• Calibri and Consolas (2004): a sans and a monospaced/typewriter font family by Luc(as) de Groot developed as part of the ClearType project. Calibri received a TypeArt 05 award.
• Candara (2004): a playful sans font family by Gary Munch developed as part of the ClearType project. Candara received a TypeArt 05 award.
• Cambria (2004): a font family by Jelle Bosma developed as part of the ClearType project.
• Corbel (2004): a simple sans font family by Jeremy Tankard developed as part of the ClearType project.
• Constantia (2004): a beautiful serifed text font family by John Hudson developed as part of the ClearType project. [Personal note: the name Constantia is already used for over a decade by Foster and Horton.]
• Meiryo UI, Meiryo UI Bold, Meiryo UI Bold Italic, Meiryo UI Italic (2004). Meiryo is a modern sans serif Japanese typeface developed by Microsoft to offer an optimal on screen reading experience and exceptional quality in print, as part of the Cleartype project. The Japanese letterforms are generously open and well-proportioned; legible and clear at smaller sizes, and dynamic at larger display sizes. The beauty of Meiryo is that it sets text lines in Japanese with Roman seamlessly and harmoniously. Meiryo was designed by a team including C&G Inc., Eiichi Kono, Matthew Carter and Thomas Rickner. It won a 2007 type design prize from the Tokyo Type Directors.

The information below was written by Microsoft itself. The Typography Group at Microsoft is responsible for both fonts and the font rendering systems in Windows.

Since version 3.1 the primary font system built into Windows has been the TrueType system, licensed from Apple in a deal (with hindsight) remarkably beneficial to Microsoft. Working with Monotype, the Microsoft Typography Group produced fine TrueType versions of Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New, tuned to be extremely legible on the screen; these were all ready for the launch of Windows 3.1. Since then these core fonts have been developed to cover more and more of the world's languages.

In the mid-1990s under Robert Norton a program of truly new type designs was begun, using TrueType technology to render faithfully the bitmaps and outlines designed by Matthew Carter (Verdana, Georgia, Tahoma) and by in-house designer Vincent Connare (Trebuchet, Comic Sans). Until August 2002 these core fonts were offered freely over the Web, where they made an undoubtedly positive contribution in terms of legibility and font choice.

In 1996 the OpenType initiative with Adobe was announced; this is touted as "the end of the font wars", whereby advanced multilingual text layout becomes available, native rendering of PostScript fonts becomes part of Windows 2000, and unwieldy font formats are rationalized.

In 1998 the group announced ClearType. This is a very ingenious method to increase legibility on color LCD screens, individually targeting the 3 subpixels (red, green and blue) that make up each pixel. Such a leap forward in readability on these screens is a crucial element to the success of nascent eBook technology.

Simon Daniels at the Group's website keeps font fans and font developers up to date with most aspects of the digital typography scene, and communicates the technicalities of how fonts work in Windows.

Updating us about the current (October 2000) activity of the Group, Simon notes: 1999 saw several members of the group leave to join Microsoft's eBooks group. These included technical lead Greg Hitchcock, developers Beat Stamm and Paul Linerud as well as former Monotype hinters Michael Duggan and Geraldine Wade.

On August 12, 2002 Microsoft discontinued the free availability of the core fonts, noting that the downloads were being abused in terms of their end-user license agreements. Most commentators took this to mean the company objected to the fact that the fonts were being installed with Linux distributions.

View Microsoft's typefaces.

EXTERNAL LINKS
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INTERNAL LINKS
Commercial foundries ⦿ Free font sources ⦿ Pixel/bitmap fonts ⦿ Monospaced fonts ⦿ Type design in Japan ⦿ Type scene in Washington ⦿ Courier and derived typefaces ⦿ Fonts for programming ⦿