Thomas W. Phinney II

Thomas Phinney was born in the United States, but raised largely in Canada. After finishing an undergraduate degree in psychology and political science, he almost went into journalism, but instead pursued his passion for typography. He got an MS in typography and printing at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1997. Thomas briefly taught font production and worked for a variety of clients, including Monotype, Apple and Microsoft, before joining Adobe’s typographic staff in 1997. While at Adobe, he helped define the company’s approach to implementing, testing and evangelizing OpenType fonts, and got an MBA from UC Berkeley. He left Adobe in 2008, and is now Vice President of FontLab, while consulting and teaching on the side, and is based in Portland, OR.