Recently, I’ve been delving into the fascinating world of typeface naming origins. Surprisingly, a lot of this information is not readily available online, so I’ve taken it upon myself to research and reach out to designers for insights. One such designer I connected with was Gary Munch, the creator of the Candara font and a senior lecturer at the University of Bridgeport.
Originally, Candara was known as Sense during its development. However, it was part of Microsoft’s ClearType project, which mandated that all fonts begin with the letter C (other fonts in the project included Calibri, Cambria, Consolas, Constantia, and Corbel). To comply with this requirement, Munch changed the name to Candor, meaning “honesty”. Despite this clever choice, Microsoft decided against it. Munch then proposed variations like Candel or Caroleon, but it was the marketing team that ultimately tweaked a few letters and finalized the name as Candara.
