Carol Twombly is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 calligrapher and typeface designer who has designed many typefaces, including Trajan

Trajan (typeface)

Trajan is an old style serif typeface designed in 1989 by Carol Twombly for Adobe. The design is based on the letterforms of capitalis monumentalis or Roman square capitals, as used for the inscription at the base of Trajan's Column from which the typeface takes its name. Since the inscription and...

, Myriad

Myriad (typeface)

Myriad is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Robert Slimbach and Carol Twombly for Adobe Systems. The typeface is best known for its usage by Apple Inc., replacing Apple Garamond as Apple's corporate font since 2002. Myriad is easily distinguished from other sans-serif fonts due to its...

 and Adobe Caslon

Caslon

Caslon refers to a number of serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I , and various revivals thereof.Caslon shares the irregularity characteristic of Dutch Baroque types. It is characterized by short ascenders and descenders, bracketed serifs, moderately-high contrast, robust texture, and...

. She worked as a type designer at Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...

 from 1988 through 1999, during which time she designed, or contributed to the design of, many typefaces. She retired from type design in early 1999, to focus on her other design interests, involving textiles and jewelry.

Education

Twombly attended and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design

Rhode Island School of Design

Rhode Island School of Design is a fine arts and design college located in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1877. Located at the base of College Hill, the RISD campus is contiguous with the Brown University campus. The two institutions share social, academic, and community resources and...

 (RISD) where she first studied sculpture, and later changed her major to graphic design. She credits her professors Charles Bigelow

Charles Bigelow (type designer)

Charles A. Bigelow is a type historian, professor, and designer. Bigelow grew up in the Detroit suburbs and attended the Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1982. Along with Kris Holmes, he is the co-creator of Lucida and Wingdings font families...

 and Kris Holmes

Kris Holmes

Kris Holmes is a type designer. She is with Charles Bigelow the co-creator of the Lucida font family.She received her B.A. from Harvard University and her MFA from UCLA Film School in Animation...

, whose studio she worked in, for her inspiration and stimulating her interest in typography. At Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 Twombly was one of only five people to graduate from the short-lived digital typography program.

Awards

Twombly was the 1984 recipient of the Morisawa gold prize, and the 1994 winner of the Prix Charles Peignot

Prix Charles Peignot

The Prix Charles Peignot is a major award in typeface design, given "to a designer under the age of 35 who has made an outstanding contribution to type design" . It is awarded irregularly, typically every three to five years, by the Association Typographique Internationale...

, given by the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) - the first woman, and second American, to receive this award given to a promising typeface designer under the age of 35.

Typefaces by Twombly

• Adobe Caslon
  Caslon
  Caslon refers to a number of serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I , and various revivals thereof.Caslon shares the irregularity characteristic of Dutch Baroque types. It is characterized by short ascenders and descenders, bracketed serifs, moderately-high contrast, robust texture, and...
  
   (1990)
• Chaparral (1997)
• Charlemagne (1989)
• Lithos
  Lithos
  Lithos is a glyphic sans-serif typeface designed by Carol Twombly in 1989 for Adobe Systems. Lithos is inspired by the unadorned, geometric letterforms of the engravings found on Ancient Greek public buildings...
  
   (1989)
• Mirarae (1984)
• Myriad
  Myriad (typeface)
  Myriad is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Robert Slimbach and Carol Twombly for Adobe Systems. The typeface is best known for its usage by Apple Inc., replacing Apple Garamond as Apple's corporate font since 2002. Myriad is easily distinguished from other sans-serif fonts due to its...
  
   (1991, designed with Robert Slimbach
  Robert Slimbach
  Robert Slimbach is a type designer, who has worked at Adobe Systems since 1987. He has won many awards for his digital typeface designs, including the rarely-awarded Charles Peignot Award from the Association Typographique Internationale, and repeated TDC2 awards from the Type Directors Club.-...
  
  )
• Nueva (1994)
• Pepperwood (1993)
• Rosewood (1993)
• Trajan
  Trajan (typeface)
  Trajan is an old style serif typeface designed in 1989 by Carol Twombly for Adobe. The design is based on the letterforms of capitalis monumentalis or Roman square capitals, as used for the inscription at the base of Trajan's Column from which the typeface takes its name. Since the inscription and...
  
  (1989)
• Viva (1993)
• Zebrawood (1993)

Sources

• Carol Twombly - Adobe Type Designers