Rare vintage Garagefonts Postcards - Set of 13 (+ 2 dupes)
4" x 6"
GarageFonts was/is an independent type foundry founded in Del Mar, CA, in 1993 and now based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. GarageFonts was primarily a vehicle to distribute some of the first typeface designs created for Ray Gun magazine when art direction was by David Carson Studios.
In 1999, Ralph [Smith]'s font distribution company Phil's Fonts purchased GarageFonts from Betsy Kopshina and Norbert Shultz, the original founders of the foundry.
Ownership transferred to Jon Young, Pittsburg, PA, in June 2022.
By Type Network Staff (Great site - check them out online)GarageFonts was/is known to font lovers as one of the flagship independent foundries from the early nineties. At the height of deconstructed graphic design, it offered some of the most exciting grunge typefaces. But GarageFonts was so much more than that. Its origins can be traced back to Phil’s Photo, the reputable headline typesetting service in Washington, DC.
When I wanted to use a font that I couldn't identify, I would fax a copy to Phil's to identify.
Phil’s emphasized quality and attention to detail, and published the grand specimen book Homage to the Alphabet, a compendium of headline and display faces from the pre-desktop publishing days. Ralph Smith, who worked as a headline setter at Phil’s, learned the ins and outs of the type industry from its owner, Phil Baldus. While the digital boom in the late eighties quickly made proprietary typesetting businesses obsolete, it opened up a new market of type users hungry for fonts. Smith took the reins at the redubbed Phil’s Fonts in 1995, establishing his place as a pioneer of digital font distribution.
Smith soon gained a solid reputation for being a proponent of independent type designers, heavily promoting work from small foundries like P22, Red Rooster, T-26, and Three Islands Press alongside collections from the big legacy type makers. By the time things started kicking into gear for other resellers, Phil’s already represented over seventy foundries. Smith went out of his way to shine the spotlight on independent designers with print ads, catalogs, specimen books, THESE POSTCARDS!!!!! and a website constantly updated with typeface showings. This set him apart from other distributors, especially at the time, and earned him the admiration of many in the industry. When the people who owned GarageFonts wanted to sell, Smith was the perfect candidate to buy and promote the indie concern.
Although he never was a type designer himself, David Carson founded GarageFonts in 1993. Because he was arguably the most influential graphic designer of the grunge movement, type designers kept sending him typefaces to use in Ray Gun, the iconic music magazine that made Carson a household name. GarageFonts was established as an outlet to distribute those fonts, launching with an initial portfolio of a dozen or so that quickly grew. After Smith acquired the foundry, submissions from independent type designers from all over the world kept pouring in. While most of the early typefaces were very grungy, GarageFonts started receiving typefaces that were more versatile and better made. Those included designs from Pieter van Rosmalen—now half of Bold Monday—who produced some of the best GarageFonts entries from that period. Since the two brands were polar opposites, running Phil’s Fonts and GarageFonts in tandem put Smith in an unusual situation. Phil’s Photo had been known for high-quality historic typefaces; GarageFonts stormed the font market with wild, trendsetting grunge designs that favored visual impact over technical proficiency. This led Smith to use GarageFonts for publishing his “own” typefaces: digitizations of existing styles from Phil’s Photo’s legacy, like Homage.
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