Charles Bigelow
Information about the typeface designer Charles Bigelow and his fonts.
Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1945, Charles Bigelow attained a BA from Reed College, where he studied anthropology and, with Lloyd Reynolds, calligraphy and the history of writing. Later he studied typography with Jack Stauffacher at the San Francisco Art Institute and with Hermann Zapf at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His other academic achievements include a Certificate of Advanced Studies from Harvard University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles.
From the 1980s and into the 1990s he was a member of the teaching staff at Stanford University. As the professor of digital typography there, he taught type design, typography and the history and theory of writing. Since 2006 he has been the Melbert B. Cary Distinguished Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology's School of Print Media. Together with Kris Holmes, with whom he founded and still runs the Bigelow & Holmes foundry, he was the co-designer of the Lucida extended family of typefaces and the Wingdings font family. He has also acted as a typographic consultant for various companies, including Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe.
[LC, October 2009]
