Last night’s announcement of the MacArthur Foundation’s yearly $500,000 “genius” grants brought a pleasant surprise for fans of good TV: The Wire and Treme creator David Simon made the list, in a rare nod to pop culture. He certainly deserves the recognition, but we’re also excited to see that the foundation, which has always been more generous to fine artists and architects, has handed out its first design award in over two decades. Meet Matthew Carter, the type designer who made the cut, and the four other designers who have won the grant, after the jump.
You may not know Matthew Carter by name, but chances are you’ve seen his work. This principal of Carter and Cone Type, Inc. has created more than 250 fonts and 60 typeface families over the course of his five-decade career. His fonts have appeared everywhere from The New York Times to Wired, and even the most casual word processor user will recognize such ubiquitous typefaces as Verdana and Tahoma. And while the 72-year-old designer apprenticed in traditional, metal punch cutting in The Netherlands at the tender age of 19, he has, since the early ’80s, been blazing trails in digital type. Most recently, the Yale graphic design program critic is working on developing fonts that can easily be read not only on computers, but also on small-screen devices like mobile phones and ereaders.
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