General Magic was the company that created the Magic Cap operating
system and hand-held devices including the Sony Magic Link and
Motorola Envoy. Many concepts from Magic Cap went on to new lives in
later products like the Danger Hiptop, Apple iPhone, and Google
Android.
Before General Magic became a company in 1990, it was an internal
project at Apple called “Paradigm.” One day while I was working at
General Magic, the marketing department was throwing away old stuff,
so as the self-appointed, unofficial General Magic historian, I dug
through their trash and discovered this: a concept book from the
Paradigm days.
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Fonts are born in type foundries, which are companies that specialize in the design and creation of typefaces. Although the majority of type foundries today are digital, they led very different lives before the age of the internet, and have a fascinating history.
The Beginning of Print
Before type foundries were even a glimmer in their founders’ eyes and printing was even a thing, books were quite obviously transcribed and bound by hand, making them extraordinarily valuable and expensive. A single scribe could only produce a few books a year, and there wasn’t a lot of book ownership going on up until the 13th century or so, since literacy rates were lower and the texts that were bound tended to be religious in nature.