TED - Matthew Carter: My life in typefaces

TED Matthew-Carter typeface font index2

"A typeface is a beautiful collection of letters,
not a collection of beautiful letters."

TED-2014-Carter-Typeface

• Even if you don’t recognize his name, chances are you’ve seen Matthew Carter’s work. 你不知道张爱玲，但你一定知道色戒

• "the person who shapes the way we read about the world." 物理世界，信息世界：数字化

• "A typeface is a beautiful collection of letters, not a collection of beautiful letters." 整体和全局。草书。

• gets badly bent out of shape by the bad spacing of the T and the E that you see there. I've got to take that slide off. I can't stand it. Nor can Chris. There. Good. 高德纳，Tex

• The thing I design is manufactured, and it has a function: to be read, to convey meaning.

• This is from the mid-'60s, the change from metal type to photo, hot to cold.
  This brought some benefits but also one particular drawback: a spacing system. 排版，审美，视觉：论文为何分栏，一行为何是几十个字符而不是更多或者更少

• My instinct tells you that any improvement would be rather slight, because they were designed as functions of the system they were designed to fit, and as I said, type is very adaptable. It does hide its methods. All industrial designers work within constraints.

• The distinction between a constraint and a compromise is obviously very subtle, but it's very central to my attitude to work.

• very adverse production conditions. 对手策略

• a technical exercise became an aesthetic exercise, really. The simplified forms of Charter gave it a sort of plain-spoken quality and unfussy spareness. 圆不一定就是最美的：地心说，日心说，开普勒行星运动定律

• The technology did suggest something to me, but it did not force my hand.

• towards electronic communication, to reading and writing onscreen with the printed output as being sort of secondary in importance.

• , there was no best, so the designer's judgment comes in in trying to decide which is the least bad. 不敢奢望做好事，能不作恶就行了

• I'm a pragmatist, not an idealist, out of necessity. For a certain kind of temperament, there is a certain kind of satisfaction in doing something that cannot be perfect but can still be done to the best of your ability.

• 18 is a good age for anything with present-day rates of attrition. 十八岁，十八厘米，十八分米，十八分钟。