When you get to a certain age, you remember moments and then realize that you never got a chance to say thank you for the great things that happened. We were having a great dinner today and were talking about typography and how amazing it is. All that led to a great discussion about:
- Paula Scher. One of the foremost graphics designers of our time and her work given us some incredible iconic fonts. Her work on the Public Theater posters was really memorable. And of course, she brought bad “Windows’ with the Windows 8 logo đ
- IM Fell Pica. All the way back to 1671 and the work of the personal typographer of John Fell, Bishop of Oxford and Dean of Christ Church. Every time, I use the font, I get a chill realizing that someone chiseled this 400 years ago.
- Bill Hill. Which finally leads me to the point, in the 1990s, Bill Hill ran the typography group at Microsoft he came barnstorming with his Scottish brogue into my office telling me about type and the beauty of it. This was in an era where screens were pretty crappy and his group invented ClearType which made it all so much more beautiful. I’m kind of sad that he passed away in 2012 and I never got a chance to say thanks for all the beauty. He lives on his video on Microsoft Channel 9, so give it a look.
- And I can’t help but remember Jim Gray, another legendary figure who went missing in 2007, who was on me all the type for doing the first Terabyte server that ran with PC software. It’s amazing to think that now, you can get a 14TB drive for $400. Explaining to a dumb product manager what this might all mean. Well, let’s just say, he was super patient!
- Jim Gray
