Typography Bio's

Firmin Didot was born in Paris in 1764, Didot is an established printer, engraver, and typographer. His family has a strong history in the publishing, designing, and typeface industry. In attempt to break away from the calligraphic typefaces and achieve something more legible, Didot created a typeface named after himself called Didot. Didot was much cleaner and high contrasting stroke widths. The Didot typeface was the beginning of a modern style and became a standard typeface in France. Other variations have been made, but the most famous interpretation was made for Harper's Bazaar.


Max Miedinge is a typeface designer whom created one of the most widely-used typefaces known as Helvetica. Helvetica, which is Latin for Miedinger's home of Switzerland, was created in 1957  and instantly had success. Miedinger started as a typesetter  and eventually became a typographer before becoming a freelance designer.


Herb Lubalin was an American graphic designer and typeface designer that graduated from the prestigious Cooper Union. His work with logos, layout, and type throughout the 60's and 70's became extremely influential and popular. Lubalin gained reputation for his work and signature bold headlines in magazines like Eros, Fact, and Avant Garde. The Avant Garde Magazine is obviously where the font Avant Garde was first used by Lubalin. This became his trademark and became widely used despite his disappointment with it's poor use by other designers.


Eric Gill was born in the United Kingdom in 1882, Gill is known for creating popular typefaces such as Aries, Gill Sans, Joanna, and Perpetua. He was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement and most well popular for Gill Sans. This typeface is known for it's signature letters Q, R, a, g, and t. The BBC and Penguin Books use Gill Sans, as well as many other companies and designers.


Paul Renner was born in Germany and lived from 1878-1956. Renner is well known for creating on of the most influential geometric typefaces known as Futura. Even though Renner was not directly involved in the Bauhaus movement, the modern design element in Futura made it a good representative of the movement. Futura remains an extremely popular and influential typeface that can be found in several variations.




Living Typographers
Tobias Frere-Jones is still currently a prolific type designer from New York City that works with his partner Jonathan Hoefler at their type foundry called Hoefler & Frere-Jones. After graduating from RISD and joining the Font Bureau, Inc., Frere-Jones  was a critic for the Yale School of Art before starting Hoefler & Frere Jones. Together they have created over 700 typefaces including Gotham, Knockout, Archer, and Surveyor.


Herman Zapf – Zapf is a working typeface designer from Germany. All of his typefaces are influenced by calligraphy and the hand written. He has created several successful typefaces including Palatino and Zapf.


After becoming interested in typography in high school, Jesse Ragan attended RISD and realized he would be interested in typography as a career. He has been a working typographer for both the Hoefler & Frere-Jones foundry and Joshua Darden Studio. Some of his more popular typefaces include Archer and Gotham (both made with Tabias Fere-Jones and Jonathan Hoefler.


Matthew Carter was born in London in 1937, Carter is currently a type designer in the United States. Carter worked as a freelancer as well as typographic advisor. In 1981 he created Bitstream Inc. with his colleague Mike Parer that focused on digital type. SOme of his more well known typefaces include Georgia and Verdana.


Gunter Gerhard Lange was born in Germany, Gerhard is one of the most influential script typographers. He works for the Typefoundry Berthold and has created classic script fonts such as Berthold Script, Berthold Imago, and Berhold Book