Meiryo (メイリオ) is a Japanese typeface part of the new suite of fonts that come with Microsoft Windows Vista. It is a sans-serif and gothic font (respectively for latin and Japanese characters). It is aimed at replacing MS Gothic as the default system font for Vista on Japanese systems. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, SEHK: 4338) is an international computer technology corporation with 2005 global annual sales of close to $40 billion USD and about 64,000 employees in 85 countries and regions which develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. ... Windows Vista is the next major version of Microsoft Windows, the proprietary operating system developed by Microsoft. ... In typography, serifs are the small features at the end of strokes within letters. ... Gothic Gothic typeface (ゴシック体, goshikku-tai) is the second most commonly used style of printed Japanese characters, after Mincho. ...

It was decided that a new Japanese font was needed as the result of the current ones (mainly MS Gothic and MS Mincho) being incompatible with Microsoft's ClearType subpixel rendering technology, which significantly increases legibility of characters on LCD screens. ClearType has been available in Windows for latin fonts since the release of Windows XP. However, unlike latin fonts which use the ClearType hinting system for all sizes, the Japanese fonts embedded hand-optimized bitmap versions for all of the small sizes, as automatic scaling would remove too much detail for the font to remain legible. ClearType is a registered trademark for a technology developed by Microsoft Corporation to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens, especially flat-panel displays. ... Subpixel rendering works by increasing the luminance reconstruction points of a color subpixelated screen, such as a liquid crystal display (LCD). ... ... Windows XP is one of the major revisions of the Microsoft Windows operating system created for use on desktop and business computer systems. ...

Authors

The Japanese characters of Meiryo were designed by C&G and Eiichi Kono. The latin characters were designed by Matthew Carter, creator of the Verdana font, and are visibly similar to characters from Verdana. By having a font designed by a combination of Japanese and latin experts, Microsoft strived to make a font in which English and Japanese would present well together when sitting side-by-side on the screen. Meiryo took around two man-years to make. Matthew Carter (born 1937) is a designer of digital fonts. ... Verdana is a sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft Corporation, with hand-hinting done by Agfa Monotype’s Tom Rickner. ...

About the name

The name of the font Meiryo (メイリオ meirio) comes from the japanese word Meiryō (明瞭), which means "clarity". This refers to the fact that ClearType will make text written in Meiryo appear clearer onscreen. The Japanese spelling メイリオ is taken from the English pronunciation (the Japanese transliteration should be メイリョー or メイリョウ). This Japanese spelling メイリオ was chosen in preference to transliteration, for simpler keyboarding, cleaner appearance, and to create a unique pronunciation.

External links

• Sample at Microsoft Japan PressPass (information for journalists)
• Sample from the ClearType website

References

• ClearType page at Microsoft Design
• メイリオ on the Japanese Wikipedia
• Channel9 interview with Cleartype Team

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