“Matthew Carter is often described as the most widely read man in the world,” begins Carter’s 2005 New Yorker profile (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/05/051205fafactwilkinson). “He is universally acknowledged as the most significant designer of type in America, and as having only one or two peers in Europe. A well regarded type designer [once said], ‘There’s Matthew Carter, and then there’s the rest of us.’”
On Tuesday, another honor was added to Carter’s extensive resume when he received a MacArthur “Genius” award. “Matthew Carter … crafts letterforms of unequaled elegance and precision for a seemingly limitless range of applications and media,” states the MacArthur’s press release. “Throughout his career, which spans the migration of text from the printed page to the computer screen, he has pursued typographic solutions for the rapidly changing landscape of text-based communications.” http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.6241247/k.898C/Matthew_Carter.htm
Here at Princeton, we know Carter as the designer of Princeton Monticello, the typeface responsible for updating Princeton’s graphic identity in 2008. The original Monticello font dates back to America’s first successful type foundry, which was established by Archibald Binny and James Ronaldson in Philadelphia in 1796.
For more, see Margaret Re, Typographically Speaking: the Art of Matthew Carter (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize 2004-1089Q
Charles Creesy, Monticello: The History of a Typeface. http://press.princeton.edu/Monticello/
