A type foundry is a

company A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity representing an association of people, whether natural, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common purpose and unite to achieve specific, declared ...

that designs or distributes

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

s. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold

metal A metal (from ancient Greek, Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, e ...

and

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...

typefaces for hand

typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or '' glyphs'' in digital systems representing '' characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random ...

, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Monotype, for letterpress printers. Today's digital type foundries accumulate and distribute typefaces (typically as digitized fonts) created by type designers, who may either be freelancers operating their own independent foundry, or employed by a foundry. Type foundries may also provide custom type design services.

England

In England, type foundries began in 1476, when William Caxton introduced the

printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the ...

, importing at least some of the type that he used in printing. Until William Caslon (1692–1766), however, English type generally had a poor reputation with the best type imported from

Holland Holland is a geographical regionG. Geerts & H. Heestermans, 1981, ''Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal. Deel I'', Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, p 1105 and former Provinces of the Netherlands, province on the western coast of the Netherland ...

. Only after Caslon had established his

Caslon foundry The Caslon type foundry was a type foundry in London which cast and sold metal type. It was founded by the punchcutter and typefounder William Caslon I, probably in 1720. For most of its history it was based at Chiswell Street, Islington, wa ...

Chiswell Street Chiswell Street is in Islington, London, England. Historic England have seven entries for listed buildings in Chiswell Street. Location The street, in St Luke's, Islington, runs east-west and forms part of the B100 road. At the west end it be ...

, did the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

become a major centre for the industry, until the end of the 20th century when famous metal-based printing districts such as

Fleet Street Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was n ...

came to the close of their era. The industry was particularly important in Victorian times, when education became available to all due to the new school boards, and firms such as Charles Reed & Sons, the printer and type founders were in their heyday. The St Bride Printing Library in the City of London encourages wider public interest in the history of type founding for the printed book and newspaper.

Modern corporate type foundries

* Adobe Type * Apple Inc. * Google LLC * Letraset * Monotype Imaging **

Ascender Corporation Ascender Corporation was a digital typeface foundry and software development company located in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Illinois in the United States. It was founded in 2004 by a team of software developers, typographers, and font ...

a subsidiary of Monotype Imaging **

Bitstream A bitstream (or bit stream), also known as binary sequence, is a sequence of bits. A bytestream is a sequence of bytes. Typically, each byte is an 8-bit quantity, and so the term octet stream is sometimes used interchangeably. An octet may ...

a subsidiary of Monotype Imaging **

FontFont FontShop International was an international manufacturer of digital typefaces (fonts), based in Berlin. It was one of the largest digital type foundries. The ''FontFont'' library of fonts contains designs by 160 type designers, among them reno ...

a subsidiary of Monotype Imaging, Located in Germany ** International Typeface Corporation (ITC) a subsidiary of Monotype Imaging **

Linotype GmbH The Mergenthaler Linotype Company is a corporation founded in the United States in 1886 to market the Linotype machine (), a system to cast metal type in lines (linecaster) invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. It became the world's leading manufactur ...

a subsidiary of Monotype Imaging, Located in Germany ** URW Type Foundry a subsidiary of Monotype Imaging, Located in Germany ** Hoefler & Co. (H&Co) a subsidiary of Monotype Imaging, located in New York City

Large form type foundries

* Berthold Type Foundry * Elsner+Flake * Emigre * Font Bureau *

House Industries House Industries is a type foundry and design studio based in Yorklyn, Delaware. The company was created in the 1990s in Wilmington, Delaware by co-founders Andy Cruz and Rich Roat. The company is best known for its typeface creations, which hav ...

* Neufville Typefoundry ( Fundición Tipográfica Neufville)

Notable independent type foundries

* Blambot * Chank Diesel *

Comicraft Comicraft is a company which provides graphic design and lettering services to various (primarily comic book) companies. History The company was founded by Richard Starkings in 1992. Starkings had been working for Marvel UK for five years, but ...

Dalton Maag Dalton Maag is an independent font foundry with offices in London, UK, and São Paulo, Brazil. It designs fonts for use in corporate identities, logos, and other text uses. Dalton Maag has a library of 30 retail fonts as of 2016 and offers custo ...

* Darden Studio * Larabie Fonts/Typodermic * Mark Simonson Studio * Parachute * P22 Type Foundry * Sandoll Communications * Scriptorium Fonts * Typofonderie / formerly *

Typotheque Typotheque is a type foundry and design studio from The Hague, Netherlands that develops and markets original typefaces. In October 2009, Typotheque became the first type foundry to introduce the concept of webfonts. The typefaces sold under ...

Specialty type foundries

The League of Moveable Type
— The first

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

type foundry

Defunct (historic) type foundries

* American Type Founders *

Barnhart Brothers & Spindler Barnhart Brothers & Spindler Type Foundry was an American typeface company founded as the Great Western Type Foundry in 1873. It became Barnhart Brothers & Spindler ten years later. It was a successful foundry known for innovative type design an ...

* Bauer Type * Binny & Ronaldson *

Caslon Type Foundry The Caslon type foundry was a type foundry in London which cast and sold metal type. It was founded by the punchcutter and typefounder William Caslon I, probably in 1720. For most of its history it was based at Chiswell Street, Islington, was the ...

* Charles Reed & Sons * Deberny & Peignot * Grafotechna *

Inland Type Foundry The Inland Type Foundry was an American type foundry established in 1894 in Saint Louis, Missouri and later with branch offices in Chicago and New York City. Although it was founded to compete directly with the "type trust" (American Type Fo ...

Louis Pouchée Louis John Pouchée (1782 – 15 March 1845), was a London type founder and entrepreneur. Career Pouchée is first recorded as the proprietor of Alamode Beef and Veal House (1811–1812) and Pouchée & Co Coal Merchants (1811–22), both in Ho ...

Stephenson Blake Stephenson Blake is an engineering company based in Sheffield, England. The company was active from the early 19th century as a type founder, remaining until the 1990s as the last active type foundry in Britain, since when it has diversified in ...

* VEB Typoart

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Type Foundry Publishing