The odd case for Motter Tektura

When I was in high school, my computer of choice was the Apple II. I still carried a Trapper Keeper. And I probably wore Reebok shoes. I must not have had an eye for design or detail, as I never noticed until this month that all three products used the same font: Motter Tektura.

Motter Tektura. Montage courtesy Gizmodo.

Gizmodo recently reported how this font, designed by Othmar Motter (1927–2010) in 1975, defined a decade of consumer products. But I’m surprised it made its mark on Apple, given that much of what Apple has done (and still does) is proprietary. In his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University, Steve Jobs said:

If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Apple’s Susan Kare designed many of the company’s fonts, such as Chicago, Geneva, and Monaco. While the Motter Tektura font’s use predates her 1982 addition to the Apple staff, I can still imagine the Steve Jobs of the 1970s demanding that the Apple II be branded in a way completely inimitable. With both Kare and the Macintosh years off, maybe early Apple lacked the resources to be developing its own fonts, especially if they were for marketing purposes only and not to be used by the system software itself.

But knowing that this font was on both my favorite computer from my childhood, an organizational device that my classmates mocked, and a ratty pair of mud-caked footwear … is an odd association to make, even all these years later.