Accolades again to Matthew Carter! On the heels of receiving the AIGA Boston Fellows Award, he is among 22 others selected for the 2010 MacArthur Fellows, often referred to as the “genius award.” This year includes an impressive line up of recipients working across a broad spectrum of endeavors. Read more here about “a type designer crafting letterforms of unequaled elegance and precision that span the migration of text from the printed page to computer screens.”

Led by Font Bureau and Ascender Corp., Webtype.com introduces a new range of web fonts optimized for high quality text rendering across browsers. Webtype.com launches an innovative web font service to improve web typography.

On Imprint, Michael Dooley interviews Roger Black about the future potential of type design in advance of Black's keynote on Thursday night at TypeCon2010: Babel in Los Angeles. The presentation is sure to be engaging, given Black’s penchant for envisioning radical change and peering further ahead of the curve than most of the rest of us can see. Read more here.

As Robert Newman writes, “A post earlier this week on the SPD [Society of Publication Designers] site about the new Ready-Media project...was the most controversial item we’ve ever published. It attracted passionate and articulate comments, both pro and con...” In a follow up, Newman asks Roger Black to answer some questions about Ready-Media and here’s what he had to say.

It was that familiar time of year again: the first weekend in May, when we all descend on Martha’s Vineyard for yet another offsite meeting. This year’s gathering included more than twenty of us — Font Bureau designers and staff, consultants, and type board.

There are two reasons why we have offsites — to socialize and to work. Since we’ve become a distributed work environment, it’s a chance for us to reconnect face-to-face with co-workers and to keep connected as a company. We review what we did in the past year, strategize where we’re going, and calibrate ...

We often hear “Why do we need more fonts?” One might also ask, “Why write another history of type?” Mike Parker suggests that Rookledge’s International Directory of Type Designers* has 90 percent of everything one needs in terms of factual information about type throughout history; but it lacks a narrative story of type and doesn’t connect the influences throughout type’s organic evolution.

Mike Parker was exposed firsthand to type history as an evolving story over the centuries when he worked at the Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp in the mid 1950s, where he was charged with cataloging ...

Nick Sherman, who recently joined Font Bureau spent some time in Denver and reported on the goings-on there. Apparently it’s been a hotbed of activity related to typography and letterpress printing this month. The Pressed exhibit was a highlight, the documentary Typography was screened, and he was invited to speak on a panel discussing letterpress, type, and design. Check out his blog post on Woodtyper for more.

Rhode Island School of Design's new alumni magazine, RISD XYZ, just launched. The publication showcases the inspiring stories and accomplished work of RISD's alumni community. Chriswell Lappin of WellNow Design led the design, along with other contributing alumni, to give it not only a vibrant new look but also an exciting direction.

Best of all, much of the type is set in Antenna and Receiver, both designed by Cyrus Highsmith, a RISD alum himself (97 GD) and faculty member. The sans serif Antenna is the earlier design; Receiver is closely related, but with clear-cut slab serifs. His forthcoming ...

Web Fonts Panel
Saturday March 13, 9:30am, Ballroom B
Font Bureau’s David Berlow and Roger Black will be joined by Typekit’s Jeffrey Veen, Stephen Coles of FontShop/Typographica, and Bert Bos of W3C in what will surely be an engaging conversation about what we’ve all been waiting for. The time has come for web fonts.

Web Fonts Party
Sunday March 14, 6-9pm
Join the party at Shangri-la with our co-hosts Typekit, FontShop, and Webtype for chats on fonts, the web, and the future of of it all. We’ll have demos, a DJ, and drinks are on us (while tickets last)!