David Berlow’s fonts have graced the pages of many well-known publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and The Wall Street Journal. He has created some of the world’s most recognizable typefaces, consulting for tech giants Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe.
But before he was a celebrated type designer, Berlow was a UW–Madison art student, “haunting the Humanities Building” and eating cold pizza “among the ruins of some project.”
“The inhumanity of the Humanities Building instilled humanity in me,” Berlow says, reflecting on his experience at UW–Madison in the 1970s.
Despite the challenges he faced as a student, which included hauling a heavy portfolio “in 30 mph winds 20 degrees below zero,” he was exposed to diverse design concepts and got a thorough grounding in a variety of artistic techniques.
“The thing I keep with me is the art of the hand,” he says.
The art and critical thinking skills he honed on campus helped launch Berlow into a career in typography spanning more than 45 years.
As a co-founder of Font Bureau, he played a pivotal role in designing hundreds of typefaces used by major corporations and publications worldwide. Throughout his career, Berlow has embraced digital innovation while continuing to value hands-on craftsmanship, allowing type to evolve with technology while maintaining its artistic roots.
From a mountaintop to Mendota
Berlow’s mother, a former art teacher at the Dalton School in New York, encouraged his creativity as a child. The only left-handed child among his five siblings, she thought he would have an artistic edge.
“I got all the tools,” says Berlow, from oil paints and watercolors, to magic markers and potato printing.
Though he was born in Boston, Berlow spent most of his childhood in Wisconsin. His family moved to Shorewood, near Milwaukee, when he was 4 months old.
“My great grandfather was born above a sausage factory in Milwaukee,” Berlow notes, highlighting his family’s deep roots in the city.
After a stint in Chicago, his family moved to Madison when Berlow was in high school, where his father, a medical doctor, became the director of the Waisman Center at UW–Madison.
After graduating from West High School in Madison, Berlow did not plan to go to college. He got in a van with some friends and set off for Colorado.
“My parents gave me a backpack and a camping stove, which was a hint,” he says. “I was going to see if I could get a job in forestry, or mud logging, or ski patrolling, or something like that.”
One day, Berlow and his friends were hiking in the White River National Forest, near Aspen.
While enjoying the scenery of the famous Maroon Bells mountains — “they look like three pyramids, just gorgeous,” he says — Berlow and his friends noticed two figures walking up the mountain.
“We looked down, and there they were, down below in tennis shoes and T-shirts, and they were coming up to, pretty seriously, 12,000 feet,” he says.
“We told them not to come up, because it was going to get dark soon, and it was going to be snowing.”
The two men were attending the Aspen Design Conference. One of them turned out to be Philip Hamilton, a professor with UW–Madison’s Art Department.
“We made the connection of both being from Madison, and he asked, ’So what are you doing out here,’” Berlow recalls.
After learning that Berlow had just graduated from high school, Hamilton extended an unexpected invitation: “Why don’t you go to school?”
Berlow asked, “Where?” to which Hamilton replied, “Madison.”
With just weeks until the start of the fall semester, Hamilton assured Berlow he could get him enrolled.
“I got in the car with him and his wife, and I drove home, and I got into school,” Berlow says. “He was my advisor, and he’s been a close friend ever since.”
At UW, Berlow was drawn to design, which he argues serves a different purpose than art.
“Artists, to me, ask questions,” he explains. “Design is supposed to answer them. I’ve always been more interested in design.”
This perspective sometimes left him feeling at odds with his fellow students, many of whom were focused on creating more abstract art.
However, Hamilton recognized and nurtured Berlow’s talent.
“I made an entirely commercial art portfolio, and he said, ‘This is good stuff,’” Berlow recalls.
In 1977, Berlow graduated with a BS in art and set off for New York City.
“I started looking for a job ’answering the question,’” he says.
Shaping the future of type
Berlow’s first job was in 1978 with the Mergenthaler Linotype company, as a letter drawing trainee. When he started, the work was by hand with pencil and paper, but after six or seven months a computer arrived. “I turned out to be the best operator,” says Berlow. “I was the most junior person, but I caught on very quickly to how the software worked.”
This was not the first technical innovation Berlow would see. From 1982 to 1989, he worked at Bitstream, where he explored and then helped spearhead fonts for the new Macintosh computer.
In 1989, he founded Font Bureau with Roger Black, which has designed some of the world’s most widely used typefaces. For over three decades, Font Bureau designed custom typefaces for almost every major American publication. Its retail library featured some of the industry’s most acclaimed fonts, including FB Moderno, Bureau Grot, and Giza among those designed by Berlow.
Now (almost) retired and living in Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, Berlow is still working.
“I have a lot of writing and some projects to finish,” he says.
Looking to the future, Berlow sees fonts going global, with designers developing more scripts and characters to become inclusive of languages from around the world.
“We don’t think about it because we have this little, tiny alphabet,” he says.
For Berlow, knowing he played a part in shaping the future of design is among his greatest accomplishments. He takes pride in the knowledge that he has helped educate the next generation of designers who will continue to innovate and build upon his legacy.
This past September, he visited his alma mater and spoke about design with UW’s Advanced Typography students.
“I’ve trained a lot of people,” he says. “Whether or not they ever mention it doesn’t make a difference, so long as I see them doing something better. I want them to do better.”