VINCENT CONNARETrebuchet MS is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Vincent Connare for the

Microsoft Corporation in 1996. It is named after the trebuchet, a medieval siege engine.

The name was inspired by a puzzle question that Connare heard at Microsoft headquarters: “Can you make a trebuchet that could launch a person from

main campus to the new consumer campus about a mile away? Mathematically, is it possible and how?”

Connare “thought that would be a great name for a font that launches words across the Internet”.

The Trebuchet typeface family, like Verdana and Georgia, was created for use on the screen. Designed and engineered in 1996 by Microsoft’s

Vincent Connare, it has a strong and unmistakable appearance. Its letterforms, loosely based on sans

serif typeface designs of the 1920s and 1930s, carry a large x-height and clean lines designed to

promote legibility, even at small sizes.Perhaps Connare’s greatest achievement with the Trebuchet family is to have created a font that works at heading and display sizes as well

as small sizes and low resolutions; no mean task given the low resolution of the computer

screen, which tends to dilute the characteristics of letterforms, rendering them dull and boring.

After all, a lower case, which at 8pt on the screen can be at most four or ve pixels high,

can only be drawn in a limited number of ways. One of Connare’s intentions when designing

Trebuchet was Trebuchet is well-suited to use for extended texts, User Interface scenarios

and spreadsheet design, given the font’snarrow letterforms. Trebuchet works

brilliantly on the screen and has quicklybecome a classic choice

for Web page design.

trebuchet