@Kristin - We offer a small selection of Font Company fonts on our site: www.AscenderFonts.com. As you noted, a much broader selection can also be found in the URW font library, because of their relationship. We don't offer Type 1 versions, but do have OpenType and TrueType for most all of these.

Thanks, Bill. I did know that and I've purchased fonts from Ascender in the past. Mostly, I was curious about company details: who worked there, how long was it opened, what was its contribution to the type world. My internet searches aren't coming up with anything interesting. Sigh.

Kristin

Hi Kristin,

Dan Barthel was the owner of The Font Company out of Phoenix, AZ and now lives in Ft Myers, FL . . . I have his phone number if you wanted to REALLY get all the inside scoop . . .

Generally speaking, he was among the first groups along with a handful of young employees he trained to scan and digitize fonts from filmstrips and did a number of conversions for Harry Brodjian of Alphatype faces in the late 1980s. Among those included were Parade and Contemporary Brush Bold which were eventually licensed by Robert Norton for Microsoft . . . I'm certain they used the Ikarus system to make their digitizations . . .

The Font Company eventually went on to digitize a good amount of faces and nearly all of them were distributed by the Precision Type Company until it closed its doors in the mid-2000s . . . Get your hands on one of those catalogs to see the entire library they released . . .

At some point in the 1990s Dan decided to close up shop and tossed all the assets digital or otherwise and start over in another business but walked away from the font business all together regardless . . .

Because of my research for the Filmotype story, tracing it through its timeline eventually lead me to The Font Company when Harry Brodjian took over the Filmotype name to release new desktop typesetters and re-release Filmotype and Alphatype fonts digitally . . . It's all documented in my Filmotype book you can get here: http://www.fontbros.com/merchandise.php

Feel free to write offline if you want to contact Dan directly via phone at diner (at) fontdiner (dot) com . . .

Best,
Stuart

Thanks, Stuart! That really is what I wanted to find out. I was a frequent customer of the Font Company for many years. I was also involved with digitizing fonts for Alphatype. Serendipity! I'll be contacting you about purchasing your book!