John Baskerville - beginning his work in around 1750, Baskerville designed for a very different audience to Matthew Carter. Famous for his typeface named ‘Baskerville’, he introduced a typeface that had more contrast in it’s letterforms - thicker and thinner strokes than previously seen. His layouts at the time were full of negative space, lacking many of the organic flourishes that were common in page layouts of the time.
At the time, Baskerville’s work was considered to be amateurish but eventually other typographers would draw inspiration from his work, such as Bodoni. The V in Baskerville is a terrific showcase of what Baskerville had pioneered - the thickest line is 4 - 5 times thicker than the thin line, creating great contrast while maintaining a legible form that was still easy to read in print.
Matthew Carter designed for Microsoft. His portfolio included Verdana, Tahoma and Georgia. Verdana was very different to Baskerville. It’s letterform’s were a consistent thickness and aesthetically uninteresting. Designed to be a legible typeface for the screen, due to the quality of the screens at the time it was a sans serif typeface. Fonts that were once legible such as Baskerville on paper found themselves harder to read on screen due to the low quality of the screen that meant the serif’s often weren’t rendered clearly.
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