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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.