Mike Russell Parker (born London, 1929; moved to United States in 1942) is an American typographer and type designer. Parker is best known for his work as Director of Typographic Development at Mergenthaler Linotype Company from 1959–1981.[1]
Contents |
After a Yale Design education, Parker was exposed firsthand to type history when he worked at the Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp in 1958–59, a city block comprising the establishment of the leading sixteenth century printer & publisher. The Museum remains virtually unchanged to this day. Alvin Eisenman of Yale and his mentor Ray Nash of Dartmouth helped Parker obtain a grant from the Belgian American Educational Foundation, to spend 18 months working at the Museum, at the suggestion of Harry Carter, Matthew Carter’s father and noted type historian. Parker was charged with cataloging hundreds of sixteenth century type founders' artifacts, including punches, matrixes and molds. As he describes it, " The Plantin Museum is the biggest physical manifestation of history anywhere, of any time; everything is real."
He joined Mergenthaler Linotype Company company as Jackson Burke's assistant and heir; within two years becoming Director. Under Parker's leadership over 1,000 typefaces, including Helvetica, were added to the library making them available wherever Linotype equipment was in use, including complete series of, Hebrew and Greek scripts. This was made possible through Parker’s organization of shared typeface development between the five separate companies in the Linotype Group worldwide. Parker was responsible for bringing in internationally known designers such as Matthew Carter, Adrian Frutiger and Hermann Zapf. The result was a library that became the standard of the industry.[2]
In 1981, Parker and Matthew Carter co-founded Bitstream Inc, a type design company, in Cambridge, MA. While revenues from the sale of typesetting equipment were dwindling, they recognized a business opportunity in the design and sale of type itself, due to the changing technologies that allowed type to be independent of equipment. Bitstream, largely financed through prepayment for the type library by several newly formed imagesetting companies, developed a library of digital type that could be licensed for use by anyone. Bitstream was highly successful during the 1980s when digital design and production, desktop publishing and personal computer use became virtually universal in the Western World.[3]
Mike was featured in the film Helvetica, a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. He wrote the Forward for the re-issue of Stanley Morison's Talley of Types, published by David Godine.
On April 6, 2011, Parker was awarded The Lifetime Achievement Medal of The Type Designers Club of New York. The TDC recognizes individuals in the typographic and graphic design communities who have excelled in the field of typography, whether in typeface design or type usage. Mr. Parker will be the 24th recipient of the TDC Medal. The first recipient of the TDC Medal was Hermann Zapf in 1967. In the past 44 years, the following professionals have been honored: R. Hunter Middleton, Dr. Robert Leslie, Frank Powers, Edward Rondthaler, Arnold Bank, Georg Trump, Paul Standard, Herb Lubalin (posthumously), Paul Rand, Aaron Burns, Bradbury Thompson, Adrian Frutiger, Jerry (Freeman) Craw, Ed Benguiat, Gene Federico, Lou Dorfsman, Matthew Carter, Rolling Stone magazine, Colin Brignall, Günter Gerhard Lange and Martin Solomon. The TDC Medal is not an annual award. The most recent TDC Medal was awarded to Paula Scher in 2006.
Parker's parents are Russell Johnston Parker (an American Explorer, Mining Engineer and senior Executive of Kennecott Copper Corporation) and Mildred Grace Parker.
Parker has been married twice. His first marriage was to Mary Elizabeth Hart (from 1955 to 1981), with whom he has three children: Joanna Evans, Harry Parker and Patricia Parker. His second was to Sibyl Masquelier (from 1992 to 2004: two step daughters: Phaedra Ruffalo and Ulrika Palmcrantz). Masquelier continued to be affiliated with Parker to defend the Pages patent 2005–2007. She is his authorized biographer.
Interview, September 2010, recorded by Frank Romano, RIT Professor Emeritus, detailed Parker's life and work.
Interview, September 2010, recorded by Frank Romano, RIT Professor Emeritus, detailed Mike Parker's life and work.