Stories of AppleJun 8
Fonts In Use

RIP #BillAtkinson (1951–2025). During his time at #Apple, he was central to the development of the graphical user interface of the Lisa and later the Macintosh, and is best known for creating MacPaint, QuickDraw, and HyperCard.

Atkinson is also credited for designing Venice, a chancery script bitmap font. Along with #SusanKare’s designs, it was one the “City” fonts that came with the original #Macintosh. https://fontsinuse.com/type_designers/6337/bill-atkinson

Jun 8 at 7:44amWeb
Show threadBen MitchellJun 8
@FontsInUse Those old Mac fonts are basically what got me into this. Venice 14 😍
Show threadValentina CasaliJun 8
@ohbendy fantastic
Show threadStéphanie VilayphiouJun 8

@FontsInUse and also the cool dithering algorithm named after him!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_dithering

Atkinson dithering - Wikipedia

Show threadplinthJun 8
@vvvvvilay @FontsInUse this reminds me of the time I irritated Bob Ulichney. I was working at Adobe on a PostScript printer for DEC and they wanted me to integrate Bob's dithering code. The printer was a low end model with a 68k running the whole shebang. It has no floating point. Bob's dithering code was heavily dependent on FP. It ran like molasses in January. I refactored all the inner loops to used fixed point. It ran hundreds of times faster, but it wasn't pixel identical. He refused the changes and I was required to back them out.