Galliard Bold OS Figs & Ligs from Matthew Carter to Howard I. Gralla

It’s 1996. Book designer Howard I. Gralla needs oldstyle figures and ligatures for Galliard Bold—which apparently didn’t exist. So he asks Matthew Carter to make them. And Matthew did. He put them on a 3.5-inch floppy disk which could hold a whopping 1.44MB. (Just think about that for a second. 3.5-inch squares of plastic were manufactured by the zillions in order to hold files that today we would consider too small to even bother putting in the trash.) And then Matthew jotted off a quick note and addressed a stiff envelope with care, stamping it with his custom first-class rubber stamp (and also see here), and then walked it down the street to the Porter Square post office to send it on its way. Now, why did Howard need oldstyle figures and ligatures for Galliard Bold? Matthew’s note was dated 19 September 1996. And this magnificent book was set in Galliard in 1996. Getting the font in late September wouldn’t give him much time to get the characters in and the book printed and bound by the end of the year. We’ll be at Howard’s house next week and will look to see if American Windsor Chairs has bold oldstyle figs—or if we can find a book from the late ’90s that might have used them.