Steve Matteson
A 1988 graduate of the School of Printing at Rochester Institute of Technology, Steve found his passion for type and typography among the historic collections of books, metal type, type-casting equipment and printing presses. Under the guidance of Professor Archie Provan, Steve completed several dozen typographic and printing projects including a booklet for the Byron G. Culver award and numerous keepsakes. College calligraphy courses with Professor Al Horton and later, workshops with Kris Holmes and Robert Paladino, refined his attention to the details of letterform design.
In 1990 Steve was hired by Monotype Typography as a contractor to aid in the production of Microsoft’s first TrueType fonts. Having already spent over two years mastering the hinting algorithms of a similar technology for another company, TrueType was an easy transition. In 1991 Steve opened the California office of Monotype to specialize in the production of TrueType fonts for OEM customers such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.
Working on the technical aspects of type helped fuel Steve’s ambition to design new typefaces. He completed a handwriting design called Andy and a revival of Frederic Goudy’s Truesdell in 1993. These were quickly followed by a screen font design for main frame terminal emulation (Andalé) as well as Blueprint, Fineprint, Binner Gothic and Goudy Ornate.
By the time Steve left Monotype to form Ascender Corporation he designed over 20 font families including the user interface fonts for the original Xbox and Windows Vista.