Recently I explored why Times New Roman, Arial, and Helvetica became some of the most widely used fonts out there, and that got me thinking: All these fonts are typeface sets that had to be designed at one point, letter by letter. So who does the designing?

Fonts are born in type foundries, which are companies that specialize in the design and creation of typefaces. Although the majority of type foundries today are digital, they led very different lives before the age of the internet, and have a fascinating history.

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