The cost of creating a typeface (in 1963)

Thierry Blancpain

Spurred by these old comments made by Ze Frank:

"For a very long time, taste and artistic training have been things that only a small number of people have been able to develop. Only a few people could afford to participate in the production of many types of media. Raw materials like pigments were expensive; same with tools like printing presses; even as late as 1963 it cost Charles Peignot over $600,000 to create and cut a single font family."

Is that number substantiated and was this true across a longer timeframe and wider range of foundries? It seems too much money to me to realistically have been the standard cost for a new typeface, so little new typefaces would have been released if that was the case. But what do I know about type production in 1963?

Dan Reynolds

What is a “single font family” here? An upright design in a single weight, but ca. 16 different point sizes? A single size for a new design? Regular and Italic in ca. 16 sizes? Regular, Italic, and Bold, each in ca. 16 sizes?

Mark Simonson

Compared to now, very few new typefaces we're released, and cost was probably a big part of the reason. If it was metal type, that figure doesn't seem unreasonable. Although I wonder which type family was being referred to. Egyptienne perhaps?

James Puckett

If that number is correct it probably includes marketing costs. Printed advertising was damned expensive before digital typesetting and cheap Chinese printing.

Dave Crossland

What else could the 600k be broken down into?

James Puckett

What else could the 600k be broken down into?

Rough design, tight drawings, revisions, more tight drawings, spacing, more revisions, more tight drawings, cutting metal test fonts, proofing, testing, more revisions, more tight drawings, more spacing, adjusting drawings and spacing for different sizes, cutting matrices, casting the type, and then storing the type prior to shipping. 

Dan Reynolds

Right. In addition to design, prototyping, cutting, and marketing – and the salaries of all those people over the time they are working, maybe over the course of three to six month – there is the cost of the upkeep of the machines, the labor of the typecasters themselves, the cost of the type metal used to cast the amount of type they hope to sell initially, the rent or taxes on the building, etc.