Photo Lettering's One Line Manual of Styles, 1971

It is the catalog of Photo Lettering Inc., famous American foundry that was active from the 1960s to the beginning of the 80s. This exhaustive catalog released in 1971 is actually a testimony of a most prolific period in type design due to the explosion of photo-titling.

The main reason for the exhaustivity of Photo Lettering One Line is the transition from metal type to photocomposition. Whereas the metal type industry obliged designers to produce the whole alphabet, photocomposition finally permitted to create designs that were only visible on a few letters: the character set behind each line of the catalog often did not exceed the characters shown, that besides, weren’t even pangrams.

The freedom given with the possibility to show only a selection of characters led to one of the most exhaustive panorama of artistic direction in type design. Photo Lettering One Line explores to its very ends each concept on which their design relies: for example, dotted fonts will be developed into different shapes and sizes until all options are exhausted. At the studio, we use this book to think outside the box and to open up the possibilities of variations for a family.

Documents: Biblioteca Produzione