Typography on the Microsoft Campus

One of the great things about working for Microsoft was the sheer breadth of the company means there are lots of cool and interesting things going on that you can peek into even if it’s not your area. With a few exceptions your Microsoft badge gets you into the whole campus (some of the Xbox studios and the executive floor are exceptions).

As many people know I have a bit of a passion for typography and the Microsoft typography team are a very nice bunch of people happy to humor a crazy enthusiast.

Before I left I paid one final visit to the typography team to snap some cool pics. Here they are, admittedly a couple of years late, with some additional typography-related snaps from elsewhere on campus.

Microsoft Typography

Gabriola rendered in 4 level (2bpp) grey-scale using 1x1x1 LEGO pieces.

Microsoft, Linotype and Hermann Zapf collaborated on Palatino Linotype and these beautiful posters commemorate the occasion.

The old Windows Start button in its pixelated glory alongside the Blue-themed XP replacement presumably rendered in Photoshop.

Poster showing an italic single-story a aliased and then rendered with ClearType.

Lots of lower-case ‘e’ glyphs from various fonts on display in one of the Windows UI buildings.

Simon Daniels on the typography team has his surname in steel cut in Segoe.

The Mac Quadra that Vince Connare used to create the polarizing Comic Sans.

Studios

Microsoft’s XNA has had a bit of a bumpy journey but it does have a very cool logo with some subtle typography.

In our own Shark Tank scrum area we used the time-honored tradition of sticky notes to create pixels for our own sign. Sub-pixels were added later.

Our content management system’s sister team had their own sticky note sign too.

Elsewhere

Even the product fair can’t resist some blocky 8-bit inspired fonts.

Somebody made their own pretty Microsoft logo. Don’t recall where this was…

The counter behind the Microsoft company store is an explosion of typefaces.

Some more

Check out Guerilla pixels via John Berry too.

You can see the full set including a few more shots, Sonic the Hedgehog and Lara Croft at Microsoft Campus on Flickr.

[)amien