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?
Comments
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.