Filmotype

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History Filmotype Sales Company

Filmotype Sales Company was located at 4 West 40th Street in New York City. In 1955, they published a catalog entitled Lettering Styles Display Types, from which some samples are shown in the link. The catalog has no full alphabet specimen and is thus of limited value for type historians and type revival experts. Frank J. Romano writes here: In 1952, Al and Beatrice Friedman [the founders of Filmotype] introduced the Filmotype, a simple manual phototypesetter that was not much bigger than a shoebox and used 2-inch filmstrips with all glyphs in linear order, with marks below them so that the operator could position the letter and expose it to the photo paper. The process was blind in that you could not see the letters as they were exposed. The Friedmans would go on to introduce the Alphatype phototypesetter. The Sybold Report mentions: Filmotype has a 35-year history as a supplier of filmstrip headline setters. Its founders later moved on to start Alphatype Corporation, keeping Filmotype as a subsidiary. In 1987, Harry and Seta Brodjian, who were Alphatype employees, acquired Filmotype with the intention of rejuvenating the company. In 1989, the firm began development of a digital headliner. A year later, it began digitizing its fonts. The company was renamed Filmotype Corporation. The fonts were at one point sold in packages such as a 30 dollar TrueType Font Package of 100 designer typefaces and an EZ Effects Windows program. Typefaces were renamed: Clarendon becomes Clarion, and so forth. At that point, Filmotype had offices in Glenview, IL, and was run by Gary Bunsell. About the renaming practices, the typophiles mention that Filmotype fonts were given letters&numbers by VGC when they pirated a substantial number of them. Their original names were attached by someone going through a dictionary and just picking arbitrary words for Filmotype fonts that were initially just letters and numbers also.

In 2006, the Filmotype collection was bought by Font Diner. In 2007, Font Diner started publishing digitizations of the collection: Glenlake (condensed Bank Gothic, by Mark Simonson), MacBeth (script), Alice (casual script), Zanzibar (calligraphic), La Salle (brush writing originally by Ray Baker in the 1950s, named after Chicago's LaSalle Street), Quiet, Ginger (Mark Simonson; masculine headline face genetically linked to Futura), Austin (paintbrush), Brooklyn (handprinted), Honey (handlettered script), Jessy (handwriting), Modern (i), Vanity.

In 2010, Stuart Sandler published a book entitled Filmotype by the Letter, in which he details the company's history. He also set up Filmotype as a foundry in Eau Claire, WI. Additions to the Filmotype collection in that year include the signage faces Filmotype Kentucky, Filmotype Kingston, Filmotype Harmony and Filmotype Hamlet, and the geometric sans Filmotype Fashion (orig. 1953). The signage faces were originally made by Ray Baker for Filmotype in the 1950s, and were digitized by Patrick Griffin and Rebecca Alaccari.

Activity in 2011. Patrick Griffin and Rebecca Alaccari revived the condensed sans face Filmotype Giant (2011) and its italic counterpart, Filmotype Escort (2011), as well as Filmotype Prima (a sho-card face from 1955). Neil Summerour contributed Filmotype Horizon after an oroginal signage face from 1954. Mark Simonson created Filmotype Gay, a tall monoline sans originally from 1953. Filmotype Ford (2011) and Filmotype Jamboree (2012, an informal script based on a 1965 original) are due to Stuart Sandler. Filmotype Quartz is an inline face.

Activity in 2012. Alejandro Paul contributed two scripts, Filmotype Yukon (based on Palmer style penmanship) and Filmotype Zephyr (formal italic roman).