At the time of the creation of the Chicago typeface in the early 1980’s, the world of digital typography was still in its infancy. There were not many typefaces designed for the low-resolution, pixel-based screens that characterized the early days of the computer leading to Chicago becoming one of the very first typefaces designed for computer screens rather than print, with its distinctive boxy, chunky look it was optimized for legibility on low resolution displays which set a precedent for all future fonts designed for the computer screen, establishing the importance of clarity when designing typefaces for the screen. In addition to this, the Chicago typeface was also one of the first proportional fonts, meaning that characters with completely different proportions such as “I” and “X” weren’t forced to take up the same 9 by 7 dot dimensions of space on-screen but were instead allowed to take up a space that was proportional to their size allowing the font to have a more user-friendly appearance and a more fluid reading experience.

The Chicago font was also a key influence for its successor, the sans-serif typeface Charcoal. Commissioned by Apple in 1994 and designed by David Berlow, Charcoal was launched with the release of the Mac OS 8 in 1996. Its smoother rounder form allowed it to become an easier to read alternative to its predecessor, updating the look of the Macintosh to suit newer computer interfaces. While it was designed to be viewed on monitor displays, the typeface did gain popularity in the printing world thanks to its clean lines and legibility.