1975: Ikarus is type design and production software developed by URW foundry for converting existing typefaces and logos into digital format for use on computer-driven printing, plotting and sign cutting devices. A complete Ikarus digitizing system cost over $100,000. Ikarus was its own format, intended to be a sort of digital master; and could be converted to other vector or raster formats as needed.

 

It was licensed by major foundries such as Agfa-Compugraphic, Autologic, Berthold, ITC (International Typeface Corporation), Letraset, Linotype, Monotype, Stempel, and others.

 

Note: At this time, most designers are using press type and photographic processes at the local typesetter's shop to paste up type on keylines for the client and internal approvals. Sending out copy to the typesetter is a regular chore that can take days to get back. Re-kerning and adjusting leading is a common practice.

 

1980s: By the 1980s, a huge library of typefaces and logos existed as photographic film and needed to be input into computers for the latest generation of printing and sign-making devices.

1985: PostScript, Desktop publishing, and the PostScript Type 1 and Type 3 vector outline font formats, thanks to Adobe, Aldus, and Apple. Around this time a bitmap font editor called Fontastic appears, from Altsys.

1986: Fontographer arrives, bringing vector outline font editing to normal people, where previously Ikarus cost as much as a house. Thus begins the democratization of type design. Initially, Fontographer only handles Type 3 fonts, not Type 1.

1991: TrueType (Apple and Microsoft) and Adobe Type Manager (Adobe) bring WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) to fonts on screen. Yes, NeXT and others had done this before, but these were the first mainstream technologies. Adobe publishes the previously secret PostScript Type 1 specification. Secret font formats are never mainstream again.

1991: Multiple Master Type 1 fonts are introduced. MM will eventually die as an end user format, but the interpolation techniques used in MM remain mainstream in type design.

1995: Apple introduces GX Typography. Later rebranded Apple Advanced Typography, it is still in use by Apple for system fonts, this powerful approach is used by few fonts other than Apple’s own.

1996: OpenType is announced by Microsoft and Adobe, based on Microsoft’s earlier TrueType Open technology. With a slow build-up, it takes until 2000 for the first significant numbers of OpenType fonts to ship. OpenType handles similar problems to GX, arguably in a less elegant way, but is more widely adopted thanks to broader support from software, operating systems, and font vendors.

1998: Microsoft shows ClearType, a screen rendering technology that uses sub-pixel rendering in ways that take advantage of the peculiar structure of LCD screens. It first ships in 2000 and becomes the default Windows rendering with Windows Vista in 2007. Other vendors (such as Apple and Adobe) develop their own LCD-optimized sub-pixel rendering schemes in response.

 

2000: Around this time, FontLab becomes the dominant purveyor of professional font editing tools because Fontographer hasn’t had an update in years. It will hold this position without significant challenge for over a decade, eventually acquiring and reviving Fontographer, until new apps come out after 2010.

2004: The first version of UFO, the Unified Font Object format, is published. UFO is intended as “a cross-platform, cross-application, human readable, future proof format for storing font data.” It gradually becomes more popular over time.

2005: By about this year, OpenType, with either TrueType or PostScript outlines, has become the de facto standard for new fonts.

2007: Håkon Wium Lie publishes “CSS at 10” calling for browsers to support the @font-face CSS syntax for web fonts. Over the next four years, web browsers do so. Oddly, Opera, the browser Lie is CTO for, is the slowest to get there. By 2014 web fonts are an integral part of web design. Designers can use arbitrary fonts instead of only ones already present on end users’ computers.

2009: The WOFF format for web fonts, a wrapper around a TrueType or OpenType font, is created. It enjoys rapid adoption.

2013-14: Competing standards for multi-color fonts begin to emerge, including one from Google, one from Microsoft, and one from Adobe and Mozilla. Apple has their own but doesn't push it as a potential standard. Each is built on the container that is the basis of TrueType and OpenType, and most are extensions of OpenType. It appears that more than one of them will become official standards.

 

Credit: Thomas Phinney, Typographer and Type Designer, CEO of FontLab and Wikipedia

 

On to the more font format evolution like true 3D fonts and type created to be produced on 3D printers and perhaps holographic font technologies...