Howard Kettler

Howard George “Bud” Kettler drew one of the most important, and most widely used, typefaces of the twentieth century—but you’ve probably never heard of him. You do, however, know his famous design. For decades, Kettler’s Courier typeface was used by more people, for more documents, than Times New Roman and Helvetica combined. Kettler designed his monospaced slab serif typeface in 1955 to resemble the output from a strike-on typewriter. Although IBM commissioned the original Courier, the company deliberately chose not to retain legal exclusivity to the design, and Courier soon became a de facto font used throughout the typewriter industry. In the 1980s and 1990s, Courier extended its use into the electronic world, in situations where columns of characters needed to be consistently aligned. Twelve-point Courier New served as the standard document typeface for the U.S. Department of State until 2004, when it was replaced with 14-point Times New Roman.