4-583: Ludwig & Mayer was a German type foundry in Frankfurt am Main , Germany. Many important designers worked for the Ludwig and Mayer type foundry, including Heinrich Jost , Karlgeorg Hoefer , Helmut Matheis, and most notably Jakob Erbar , whose Erbar Book was one of the first geometric sans-serif typefaces, predating both Paul Renner 's Futura and Rudolf Koch 's Kabel by some five years. Starting in 1925, Ludwig & Mayer types were distributed in
8-481: The Linotype and Monotype , for letterpress printers. Today's digital type foundries accumulate and distribute typefaces (typically as digitized fonts ) created by type designers , who may either be freelancers operating their own independent foundry, or employed by a foundry. Type foundries may also provide custom type design services. In England, type foundries began in 1476, when William Caxton introduced
12-578: The printing press , importing at least some of the type that he used in printing. Until William Caslon (1692–1766), English type generally had a poor reputation so the best type was imported from Holland . Only after Caslon had established his Caslon foundry in Chiswell Street , did the City of London become a major centre for the industry, until the end of the 20th century when famous metal-based printing districts such as Fleet Street came to
16-720: The United States by Continental Type Founders Association . When the foundry ceased operations in 1984, rights to the typefaces was transmitted to the Neufville Typefoundry . These foundry types were produced by Ludwig & Mayer: The following faces were originally faces cut for line-casting by Simoncini SA . Type foundry A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces . Before digital typography , type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting , and matrices for line-casting machines like
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