Charter Member

In the early days of the personal computer, type designer Matthew Carter created the Charter typeface for Bitstream, his company at the time. It has proven to be a successful and lasting design. Originally, it was not created with screen use in mind but, rather, printing with the low resolution printers of the time (as was Adobe’s Utopia and another Bitstream offering, Deja Vu aka Vera). However, it works quite well as a digital display. I’d say it looks better than some designed specifically for that purpose (including Carter’s later Georgia).

Bitstream gave away rights to Charter early on (as they did with Deja Vu), making it free to use for most purposes. One can find various free downloads of Charter in both truetype and opentype formats, as well as a commercial version with more features. There is also X-Charter, which adds more opentype features, and Charis from SIL.

Charis is sort of Charter; that is, it does not derive directly from the original typeface but is a redrawn clone of it. The two look pretty much identical (there are subtle differences and Charis has wider line spacing) but Charis adds in support for more languages, as well as phonetic symbols. These are things I do not need personally but others might. What Charis does offer me is a range of useful opentype features. That is why it is the version of Charter I use myself.

Use for what? It is my ‘utility font’ on my computer, for notes and information and such. For some time I used the excellent Sitka (also a Matthew Carter design) for this, but it is a Microsoft proprietary typeface and I decided I did not want to depend on anything without an open license. All the more so were I to use it in a book! I have published one novel set in Charis, the science-fiction time travel tale ‘When Man Was Young.’ It looks fine to me and I do feel its classy but no-nonsense appearance is suited to SF (as well as nonfiction).

This brings us to Adobe’s Source Serif, also an open license typeface and one with a considerable resemblance to Charter. This is largely due to both drawing from the same Eighteenth Century type designs of Pierre-Simon Fournier. That Charter did influence Source directly, as well, I have little doubt. One could certainly substitute one for the other without most readers noticing. Source is a little more oriented toward screen use; however, I have used it without problem for one novel (also science fiction), ‘Alienese.’

Charter/Charis may be as close to being a ‘desert island’ font for me as any I could name. It’s not my first choice for writing drafts—either fiction or poetry—but it would work well enough. Though some genres might call for a different look, it certainly is acceptable for printing books. Charis is available for download both from SIL International and through Google Fonts.