ITC- The International Typeface Corporation. This bad boy was founded in 1970 by designers Herb Lubalin and Aaron Burns. These guys, along with Ed Rondthaler, who owned Photo-Lettering Inc, created a mas library of more thatn seven thousand typefaces and was easily one the most successful sellers of display type. ITC did more then just sell type, it changed how the business was run. Most typeface vendors sold the equipment that made it possible to make their fonts work for the person buying. ITC was clever and ballsy by providing source material to make the consumer be able to reproduce their font on any phototype setting machines and ITC paid their designers via royalty basis on how well their designed fonts sold. ITC transitioned to the digital age slowly and changed their method of selling to keep up with the changing times. ITC also had its own publication called U&lc (Upper & lowercase). This allowed them to show off their sweet library of wicked fonts to possible consumers and their growing list of subscribers. But eventually ITC was closed and the name was sold but not gone. Its still alive but in the name of Agfa Monotype Imaging.
The Font Bureau, Inc.- I bet they thought the were real clever when they made their name the F.B.I. CHUCKLE CHUCKLE. Anywho..... The two minds of Roger Black and David Berlow founded The Font Bureau, Inc., based in Boston Mass, in 1989. pretty recent. Berlow was working at Linotype back in the day and he really got into digital typography once he joined Bitstream and really found out what is was like to use technology to his advantage when he got his hands on things like Adobe Postscript and Apple TrueType. Macs were the bomb back then and they still are now. Which is a good reason why Roger Black also got into the Mac. He was the director of some crazy magazines like Rolling Stone and New York and even NEWSWEEK. this dude was on a role. When they combined to make the F.B.I. they created proprietary familes and their foundry's output got to the point of 1,500 typefaces. Each of their typefaces have their own flair which makes the F.B.I rather popular. FB TITLING GOTHIC is a pretty sweet font that they have designed. id check it out if i were you. Its got a lot of variation of thik and thin and a real profesh feel to it. CHECK IT OUT.
FontShop International- this is another youngish company. but a sweet one at that. their work is bold, crazy cool and smooth at that. it was founded by Joan Spiekermann and Erick Spiekermann. the Hubbies made the first mail-order distributor of digital fonts. One of their main goals was to make the make FontShop grow up and be strong. FontShop has over 50 foundries around the world and they make it look easy FontShop publishes books for designers like FontBook which is a humongasaurus sized sampler and refrence guide of digital typefaces. One of their fonts, FF Meta, is pretty sweet. its a conventional font that makes the reading of it easy at angles and smaller point sizes. A real blue collar font! diggin it to say the least.
NICELY DONE!
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