Thanks to the designer Howard Kettler we now have the Courier typeface in our typographic catalogues. As designers, we must know and follow the development and evolution of the fonts with more history. Therefore, in this post we are going to talk about the Courier New font.
This typeface is one of the most used typewriter style. There are many professionals in the world of cinema who use it to write their scripts and in addition, it is an indicated font for the writing of computer code.
A typeface that is a classic, that It has been able to renew itself over time and from which we are going to know its entire history.
Who is the father of the Courier typeface?
The original design of the Courier typeface dates back to 1955, when Howard Kettler receives a commission from IBM to create a specific typeface for the new typewriters they had in their offices.
Howard Kettler was born in 1919 and was the father of the Courier typeface. I work as a newspaper printer and publisher for a while before taking the plunge, and joining IBM in 1952.
Three years after that union, he carries out the design of the typeface we are talking about, Courier. turning it into one of the most used typefaces in the XNUMXth century.
This American typographer was mentor and adviser of another of the referents in the world of typographic design, Adrian Frutiger, who redrew this typeface for models of IBM Selectric electric typewriters. This redesign gave life to the Courier New typeface.
Since it first appeared Courier, became the font of choice for programmers to write source code, as well as script writers. It was a perfect typeface for scripts thanks to its uniformity.
What are monospaced fonts?
The answer to the question in this section is very simple. monospaced fonts are those in which all their letters occupy the same space, all have the same width.
This aspect, it was necessary at the time when typewriters were used and the first computers began to appear. When writing with these machines, it was necessary to take into account that when writing they had a marked number of letters.
The fonts we know today have thinner characters, such as the letter I and wider characters such as P. These are spaced taking into account the width of each one, not as in monospaced fonts. The positive point of eliminating this monospace is that you get a more readable typography.
Creating the Courier New typeface
Over time, renewals of the Courier typeface have been appearing, with small changes in its characters, always very subtle changes.. Although many years have passed since its creation, we can still find it in magazines, books, scripts, and other printed media.
Kettler designed a monospaced Egyptian typeface, that is, all its characters occupied the same space., which caused certain glitches in letters like m and i. It was a typeface that was not registered, which led it to become popular in the typing sector.
As we have mentioned, it was the typographer Adrian Frutiger in charge of redrawing the original typeface, creating Courier New. This font, in one of its sizes, was the font used in documents from the US State Department.
This was ordered redesign, to give the typography a more modern look and also correct some errors to improve readability at the time of being written.
The Courier New version, presented for the release of Windows 3.1. Not only did it present this new version, but versions of the original Courier were incorporated.
It is made up of the three classic weights; bold, italic and bold italic. In addition, a larger line spacing was introduced for greater readability. Likewise, the characters of the typography were redrawn in order to achieve a more stylized image. It is a more stylized typeface than the original Courier.
As for punctuation marks, were modified in order to make the semicolons heavier. The new versions of Courier New contain glyphs in Hebrew and Arabic, the style of the latter is similar to that of the Times New Roman font.
Over the years, hand in hand with Alan Dague Green, John August and Quote-Unquote Apps were launched to carry out a new redesign of the typeface giving rise to Courier Prime.
This new version adapts to the new times, in which the use of technology is the order of the day.
Alternatives to typewriter font
La The golden age of this type of monospaced fonts was in the 50s, when IBM took the lead in the typewriter industry. You already know that the Courier New font is available to everyone, but we still want to give you some alternative fonts to it.
triplicate
a family of monospaced typeface, with reference to typewriter letters from the 50s. This is a family, which has been optimized for text blocks.
OCR Typography F
Designed by Albert Jan Pool in 1995. It was based on the OCR B typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger. It contains three different weights with their corresponding old style versions.
The Sans Monkey
Luc Groot designed it in 1996, based on The Sans, the font family that is within the Thesis family. This font was used by Thomas Merz to write all the PostScript code in his book, The PostScript and PDF Bible. In addition to typography for code, it works fine for correspondence.
American Typewriter
Joel Kanden and Tony Stan are the creators of this typeface in 1974. American Typewriter is based on the typefaces used on typewriters. In this case, the monospace disappears but it also complies with the appearance and style of this type of font.
Courier New has become a typeface renewing the original Courier. It continues to be used in different areas of the digital and cinematographic world. It is a typeface that will never be forgotten.