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Apple typography covers several topics concerning typefaces that Apple Computer has used in its marketing, operating systems and industrial design. In the late 1980s Apple developed TrueType, an outline font standard, amongst other technologies created later, including QuickDraw GX and Apple Advanced Typography. Apple controls several patents important to the implementation of high-quality typeface rendering on computers. In 1984 Apple created several new fonts for the Apple Macintosh computer. Apple has used three corporate fonts throughout its history including Motter Tektura, Apple Garamond and Adobe Myriad.

Corporate fonts and brand identity

For at least 18 years, Apple's corporate font was a custom variant of the ITC Garamond typeface, called Apple Garamond. It was used alongside the Apple logo, for product names on computers, in countless ads, printed materials and on the company website. Since 2001, Apple has gradually shifted towards using Myriad in its marketing.

Motter Tektura

Prior to the first Macintosh, Apple used a typeface called Motter Tektura, designed by Othmar Motter of Vorarlberger Graphik in 1975, to accompany the Apple logo with a bite taken out of it. At the time, the typeface was considered new and modern. It was distributed by Letraset.

The type merged well with the Apple logo; The minuscule a of apple computer inc., appeared to come out of the bite. One modification to the typeface was that the dot over the i was removed.

According to the logo designer, Rob Janoff, the typeface was selected for its playful qualities and techno look, in line with Apple's mission statement of making high technology accessible to anyone. Janoff designed the logo in 1976 while working at an advertising agency in Palo Alto called Regis McKenna Inc..

In the early 1980s, the logo was simplified by removing computer inc. from the logo. Motter Tektura was also used for the Apple II logo. This typeface has sometimes been mislabeled as Cupertino, a similar bitmap font, probably created to mimic Motter Tektura.

Apple Garamond

At the time of the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984, Apple adopted a new corporate font called Apple Garamond. It was a narrow variation of the classic Garamond typeface. Specifically, ITC Garamond (created by Tony Stan in 1977) was condensed to 80% of its normal width. Presumably, Apple felt that the existing ITC Garamond Condensed, at 64%, was too narrow. Bitstream condensed the font and subtly adjusted the stroke widths and performed the hinting required to create a PostScript font which was then delivered to Apple as "apgaram."

In cases when the Apple logo was accompanied by text, it was always set in Apple Garamond. Aside from the company name, most of Apple's advertising and marketing slogans such as "Think different." used the font as well.

This typeface was virtually synonymous with Apple for almost two decades and a large part of Apple's excellent brand recognition. It was not only used in conjunction with the logo, but also in manuals, ads and to label products with model names.

Apple has kept Apple Garamond to themselves, but briefly sold ITC Garamond Narrow — Apple Garamond without the custom hinting — as part of the "Apple Font Pack" in the 1990s. A version of the font was also included, hidden away under a different name, in some versions of Mac OS X prior to 10.3, since it was used by the Setup Assistant installation program. See List of fonts in Mac OS X for more information on how the font can be extracted.

Many typographers consider ITC Garamond in general, and Apple Garamond in particular, to be poorly designed typefaces. ITC Garamond is frequently called a "pastiche" or a "Garamond in name only" that has little to do with the 16th-century typefaces that supposedly inspired it. Another common view is that the algorithmic scaling distorted the typeface. Apple changed the name of their licensed version of the typeface when they had the format of the fonts converted to TrueType for their internal use.

Adobe Myriad

In 2002, Apple gradually started using the Adobe Myriad font family in its marketing and packaging. As new revisions of its products were released, the text changed from the serif Apple Garamond to the sans-serif Adobe Myriad. The family's bolds are used for headlines, and other weights are also used accordingly. The Myriad font family was designed by Robert Slimbach and Carol Twombly for Adobe. Adobe's most recent version of Myriad is "Myriad Pro," which has some additional enhancements and character set extensions, but is not significantly changed in design.

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