TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Mon Jan 20 18:31:30 EST 2020






Visual Graphics Corporation (or: VGC)

Foundry from the phototypesetting era, located on 138 NE 125th Street in North Miami, FL, with designers such as Ron Arnholm, Arthur Baker, Ray Baker, Stan Biggenden, Stan Davis, Ernst Friz, Louis Minott, John Russell, L. Scolnik, Dave Trooper and Ernst Volker. The company changed its name to VGC Corp. and became a subsidiary of VRG Group N.V.

Inventors of the Photo Typositor.

List of typefaces and designers as compiled by Tim Ryan. This list has errors, as pointed out in this discussion on typophile.

My own list of typefaces. Typefaces in our list whose creators still need to be identified include Bubble (1982: Bubble Light, Bubble, and Double Bubble) and Rodin (ca. 1974).

The 450-page book Visual Graphics Alphabet Library (1985) shows all of its typefaces. PDF version of their 1972 catalog.

There are two components to the VGC collection, one is the standard collection of typefaces everyone must have (knockoffs, really), and the other one is the collection of originals. Freddy Nader explains: The reason for the VGC/Typositor catalog showing so many standards is this: in photo type days, every type house had to have a basic set of what was known as the "foundry types". These were your basic Garamonds, Baskervilles, Clarendons, etc. They simply did that in order to compete. Back then, the type house worked closely with the person designing the artwork (who usually worked for the publisher or the ad agency), and they were charging per word for display, and per page for text. So the type houses wanted to maintain a kind of continuity with their clients, and tried their hardest to be the exclusive supplier for a number of agencies. The very first photo type house, Photo-Lettering Inc, survived for the longest time on one client (J. Walter Thompson in NYC). As a side note, book publishers tried their best to stay away from photo type because of its very expensive prices. It was a hell of a lot cheaper to stick to metal type than pay the type house per page of layout. So if you look back at the mass paperback industry, it was still using metal type until late into the 1970s. They only switched to film type when competition between type houses became so fierce that the type prices dropped considerably. But film type was used in book for only a short time, then desktop publishing as we know it made it all obsolete.

View some digital typefaces that are derived from the VGC library. Another digital catalog.

Visual Graphics Corporation (or: VGC)
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Extinct 20th century foundries ⦿ Font names/aliases ⦿ Photo and film type era ⦿ Type scene in Florida ⦿ Clarendon ⦿ Baskerville ⦿

file name: V G C Inverserif 1976

file name: V G C Inverserif 1976

file name: V G C Inverserif

file name: V G C Anthem

file name: V G C Arnholm Sans

file name: V G C Baker Denmark Outline

file name: V G C Bubble 1982

file name: V G C Bubble Light 1982

file name: V G C Collins Bicentennial Open

file name: V G C Kap Antiqua Bold

file name: V G C Mardi Gras Regular

file name: V G C Mark I I I

file name: V G C Moon Bold

file name: V G C Rededication U S A

file name: V G C Scandor Normal

file name: V G C Shooting Star
