Vincent Connare designed the Trebuchet typeface for Microsoft in 1996. It is named after a medieval siege engine called a trebuchet. Connare intended Trebuchet to be easily readable even at small font sizes on computer screens. Some key features include a large x-height, clean lines, and narrow letterforms that make it well-suited for extended text, user interfaces, and spreadsheets. Trebuchet has become a classic choice for web design because it works well at various sizes and resolutions.

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VINCENT
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Trebuchet 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.
and clean lines designed to promote
legibility, even at small sizes.
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
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’s
narrow letterforms. Trebuchet
works brilliantly on the screen and
has quickly become a classic choice
for Web page design.
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.