Ah! Venice...

Over the years, I have used many different fonts in many different ways but there have been a few that have stayed with me consistently as favourites. Several font designers have found a special place in my heart and I use their creations more frequently than others. I have tried to sprinkle examples throughout these pages.

First and foremost is Michael Everson. He is a linguist who has created locale and language information for many languages, from support for Irish and the other Celtic langauges to the minority languages of Finland. He has specialised in fonts for obscure languages and alphabets. He is one of the co-authors of the Unicode Standard. His font, Everson Mono, is a favourite that I use on my computer as a base font.

Next is Matthew Carter who designed the Verdana, Tahoma, New Century Schoolbook, and Georgia fonts. He is a prolific designer who has created the best of the Microsoft fonts. He co-founded Bitstream in 1981.

Thirdly we have Hermann Zapf, a calligrapher and book designer who has created some of the most significant fonts of the 20th century. His fonts include: Aldus, Aurelia, Edison, Kompakt, Marconi, Medici Script, Melior, Noris LT, Optima, Optima Nova LT, Orion LT, Palatino, Saphir, Sistina, Vario, Venture LT, ITC Zapf Book, ITC Zapf Chancery, ITC Zapf Dingbats, Zapf Essentials LT, ITC Zapf International, Linotype Zapfino, and Zapf Renaissance.

Vincent Connare, another great Microsoft designer, created Comic Sans, Trebuchet, and Webdings.

Aldus Manutius is one of the most significant designers in history. A student of Gutenberg, he moved to Venice in the 15th century and began his own printing press. He was the first to use the type form that we now call italic. Modern fonts directly descended from his creations include Bembo and Poliphilus.

Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko founded the magazine / font foundry Emigre in 1984 and have done more in the following years to free font and print design from the stodgy past than anybody else.