If you love letters, check this out

[Rodi]

PLINC had the largest type library in the western world. when they closed in the mid to late 80's they had 12,000 fonts. They were a service to the advertising industry of Madison Avenue. They did all sorts of great stuff. What they did, they did best, and most expensive. In the late 60's a bunch of PLINCs started ITC, which was revolutionary for being a cold foundry that was not tied to hardware (that was WOW!!)

www.photolettering.com

http://www.photolettering.com/a/3gfe1c0a

They were bought out by House Industries and now have subscriptions to setting lines of type. It is neat, but the fonts thus far, un-thrilling.

 

[SignosaurusRex]

This was brought up here back in April.
http://www.signs101.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79188&highlight=photolettering
At that time they had 45 faces and currently they are up to 47. I kinda wish I still had my old photo-lettering unit and all the ribbons, or at least the typeface catalog, but that went away shortly after they closed.

Photo-Lettering

New York based Photo-Lettering, Inc. (affectionately known as PLINC) pioneered photocomposition starting in 1936, and lasted until the desktop publishing era.

Their main business was setting headlines and advertising text from an amazing library of over 10,000 type designs, the largest library from a single foundry before or since. A great variety of optical effects could enhance the work, made possible by many different lenses. (Now every Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw user has the same power available to them, only now more open to abuse...) In their later years they also offered text setting with about 1,000 fonts from the library.

Photo-Lettering designers included Bob Alonso, Vincent Pacella, Vic Caruso, and the master Ed Benguiat.

But for a lack of funds the company might have made the transition to digital. In the late 1980s they went out of business. A few of their original fonts were digitized in the 1990s and 2000s by ITC and Nick’s Fonts.

In April 2003, House Industries announced they had purchased the entire physical assets of Photo-Lettering, material amounting to 1500 cubic ft (42 cubic meters). House collaborated with Ed Benguiat himself to develop a set of fonts inspired by his work for Photo-Lettering and named in his honor: Ed Script, Ed Interlock, Ed Brush, Ed Roman, Ed Gothic and Bengbats (a dingbat font). The collection was released late 2004.

In April 2011 a project that had been talked about for years was finally launched: a new Photo-Lettering service where customers request individual line settings of lettering. These are delivered as PDF, not as font files. It offers features that standard font formats cannot, for example “layered” lettering of a design one might expect at the funfair can be customized in multiple colors.The “Lettersetter” engine, by Erik van Blokland and Tal Leming is at the core of the system. Alphabet development is led by by Ben Kiel and Ken Barber; the 1960s-style website is by Bondé Prang, Ben Kiel and Andy Cruz

Here's a link to a little bit of interesting info about PL which some valuable (to some) info can be gleaned.
http://www.forgotten-ny.com/STREET SCENES/photo-lettering/photo.lettering.html

 

[visual800]

same ole same ole
cool though

 

[round man]

Ya know,....all things eventually go back to where they started,....back in the day when those type foundries were in their heyday designers and the type all kinda thumbed their nose at us signmen,...looking down on us as though we were the bastard step children of the advertising industry,..well whadaya know,...looks like they are trying to emulate our work these days,...seems the computer age took all the $$$ out of their foundry collections and they have had to rethink their game plan,...funny how alot of those 'decorative faces look alot like the same letter styles designers put down as ginger bread twenty five years ago,.....

 

[Rodi]

PLINC had the best library. If they had 1/5 of them on that site, it would be really cool, but a hand full of fonts, that you can actually purchase, what is the point, right? The idea behind PLINC was to use fonts for projects, but not buy the whole font. Some great fonts came out from them to the graphic arts in general Dom Casual.

Most stuffy designers were too cheap to go and buy from PLINC, and they had a library that you would love Round Man, serious 12,000 fonts!!! You'd call/fax your order in and they would deliver the best layout you would ever see. Conversations went like this "you said this, but we sent you an alternate because we thought it looked better." You paid, but it was great.

All the founderies sneered at sign guys because they could not replicate what could be done by hand to machine. Good fonts are good fonts, and most even have a purpose now and again.