Tom Rickner.
Senior Director, Studio
Although he is likely most well-known for his hinting of Matthew Carter’s Georgia, Verdana, Tahoma and Nina typefaces for Microsoft, Tom’s expertise and passion is found at the intersection of design, tools and technology related to fonts, including variable font technology.
Tom has led or collaborated on the designs of fonts that include Arial, Bodoni, Broadway, Gallia, Goudy Forum Pro, Helvetica Now and Rebekah Pro, among others.
Tom leads the remarkable team of award-winning type designers that make up the Monotype Studio, as well as the many custom fonts designed for corporations and brands around the globe. He is a graduate of the School of Printing Management and Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and serves on the board of the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. He is also a member of the Type Directors Club.
Studio releases.
Helvetica Now
Helvetica® Now is a new chapter in the story of perhaps the best-known typeface of all time. Available in three optical sizes—Micro, Text, and Display—every character in Helvetica Now has been redrawn and refit; with a variety of useful alternates added.
Goudy Forum Pro™
The Goudy Forum font began more than 30 years ago while Tom Rickner was a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). Tom printed a type specimen using the Forum Title foundry hot metal types. Then in 1993 Tom began to digitize the font from that specimen while working as an independent type designer. Fifteen years passed before Tom dusted off the digital data and began working in earnest on font with a full Latin 1 character set. Steve Matteson, type director at Ascender, encouraged Tom to take this font further still, and soon the glyph repertoire and feature set blossomed to a robust Pro font with a myriad of advanced typographic OpenType features.
Rebekah Pro™
Rebekah Pro is a revival of ATF’s Piranesi family, the regular being designed by Willard Sniffin, and the remaining weights designed by Morris Fuller Benton. Tom Rickner first revived Benton’s Italic for use in his wedding invitations for his marriage to Rebekah Zapf in 2006. He completed the character set in 2009.
Thought leadership.
TYPO Brand Talk Panel.
Inside the Monotype studio.
En la red.
TYPO Labs 2017
¿Es el formato de fuente variable la nueva moda?
Tom Rickner y John Hudson responden conjuntamente a las preguntas actuales sobre los formatos de fuente que están de moda, la tecnología de fuentes actual y sus fuentes Lonely Island.
TYPO Talk
Variaciones TrueType: pasado, presente y futuro
En esta charla se analizarán los aprendizajes extraídos, las capacidades y las limitaciones actuales de las variaciones, y se aportará una visión de lo que nos podría deparar esta apasionante tecnología en el futuro.
Fast Company
Cómo contribuyó Apple a democratizar la tipografía en los noventa
En 1989, Apple contrató a Thomas Rickner para hacer algo revolucionario: incorporar tipos de letra con calidad de impresión a todos los ordenadores.
Related content.
Creative Characters S3 E1: Jim Moran, Preserving print history at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum.
In our first episode of Season 3, we welcome the new Senior Director of the Monotype Studio, Tom Rickner, as a first-time host. Tom speaks with Jim Moran, master printer and collections officer for the internationally-known Hamilton Wood Type Museum. Keep reading for a glimpse into the museum’s history and to learn why the letterpress is still so important today.
From Neue to Now: How Helvetica evolved for the 21st century.
Designers and studios might be deeply familiar with Neue Helvetica, but it’s the product of a pre-digital era. Here are four reasons why it’s time to switch.