Matthew Carter is one of the few type designers who have created typefaces for fonts in metal, photo and the digital medium. This is even more remarkable when considering that his career began slightly by happenstance. In the brief time between secondary school and Oxford University, the then 19-year-old Carter trained at Enschedé type foundry in the Netherlands. This internship enabled him to learn punchcutting from P.H. Rädish, a master of the craft. Carter’s Enschedé experience sealed his fate. By the time he returned to London in 1956, his self-imposed “life sentence in type” had begun.

Born in London in 1937, Matthew Carter inherited a love for type from his father, printing historian Harry Carter. His son freelanced for several years in London, taking on sign painting and lettering jobs to sharpen his skills. In 1963, Carter was hired as typographic advisor to Crosfield Electronics, British agents for Photon®/Lumitype™ phototype machines. Lumitype fonts were made at Deberny and Peignot, where Adrian Frutiger was head of the type drawing office. Carter traveled frequently to Paris to work with Frutiger and his team.

In 1965, Carter moved to New York to work in the Brooklyn office of Mergenthaler Linotype. Here he drew typefaces for photocomposition, including his popular Snell Roundhand® script. Carter returned to London in 1971, where he continued to freelance for Linotype. His body of work for Linotype included such diverse designs as the Galliard® type family and the Bell Centennial™ telephone directory types commissioned by AT&T.

By 1981, sales of traditional typesetting equipment were declining rapidly. The need for a new business model in the type world was evident. Carter and several colleagues left Linotype to found Bitstream Inc., a pioneer in digital type.