Developing the Monotype Classic Grotesque™ 56 font family; Rod McDonald’s personal journey of discovery through 100 years of grotesques.

Rod McDonald

Since beginning his career as a lettering artist in the 1960s, Rod McDonald’s work as a designer, educator, historian and writer has encompassed virtually every aspect of the typographic arts. Despite his accomplishments as a lettering artist, however, it was twenty years before McDonald tackled his first text typeface.
His first undertaking was a highly detailed and sensitive revival of Carl Dair’s Cartier, the first Latin typeface to be designed in Canada. McDonald’s digital revival, Cartier Book™, refined Dair’s, sometimes problematic, design and expanded it into a fully functional type family that is both distinctive and remarkably legible. His second typeface family, Laurentian™, was designed for the Canadian news magazine, Maclean’s. In 2003 Laurentian was entered in the Type Directors Club Annual Typographic Competition and was one of thirteen designs chosen. His 2006 Slate™ family was used in the BlackBerry® 10 OS. In 2011 his Egyptian Slate™ family was chosen for inclusion in the ATypI Letter.2 competition in Buenos Aires. His just completed Classic Grotesque™ family, consists of 56 fonts and breathes new life into the early twentieth century Monotype Grotesque series.
McDonald has worked both as a freelance typographic designer and on the staff of such renowned typesetting companies as Mono Lino Typesetting and Cooper & Beatty in
Toronto. He has taught numerous typography courses at Sheridan College and OCAD University in Toronto and NSCAD University in Halifax.
In 2012 McDonald was made a fellow of The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC) and in 2016 he will receive the Robert R. Reid Award and Medal for lifetime achievement from the Alcuin Society in Vancouver.

This event is sponsored by Monotype

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