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Photo Lettering - Alphabet Thesaurus Vol.2

alphabet thesaurus

Photo Lettering website

Photo-Lettering was a mainstay of the advertising and design industry in New York City from 1936 to 1997. PLINC, as it was affectionately known to art directors, was one of the earliest and most successful type houses to utilize photo technology in the production of commercial typography and lettering. It employed such design luminaries as Ed Benguiat and sold type drawn by the likes of Herb Lubalin, Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast as well as countless other unsung lettering greats. The company is best known by most of today’s graphic designers for its ubiquitous type catalogs.

House Industries purchased the entire physical assets of Photo-Lettering and is carefully digitizing select alphabets from the collection and plans to offer them through the new Photo Lettering website.

To celebrate, I thought it would be nice to dig up one my Photo Lettering catalogs. Here for your viewing pleasure is Alphabet Thesaurus Vol.2

alphabet thesaurus

Alphabet Thesaurus Vol 2 - A Treasury of Letter Design

alphabet thesaurus

photo lettering

photo lettering

photo lettering

alphabet thesaurus

alphabet thesaurus

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06.01.09 in Off our book shelves by Dave

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I have that one and a few other PLINC books as well. Ed Benguiat gave a few of us in his type class various books, and I also had a dear family friend who sadly passed away several years ago but bequeathed me his library. Some real gems in there.

What a beautiful book. MUST HAVE!

seriously one of the best grain edit posts ever. thank you!

Mille, you had Ed Benguiat as a teacher? I’m jealous. That must of been a great class. Was this in New York City?

It was great to go through your post. Keep up the good work.

Its wonderful to read. keep sharing. thanks

wow such beauty!
could I please ask you which two PLINC alphabets these are?:
http://grainedit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/alphabet-thesaurus-3.jpg

Hi pipeleak,
Thats Ed Benguiat’s Interlocked. The top is Swiss Interlock 8 and the bottom is Fiorello Condensed Interlock.

Thank you so much.

I did have Ed at SVA in NYC, foundation year in 1999. He was (is? I don’t think he’s gone) quite the character and would tell us stories about Herb Lubalin and Saul Bass and playing jazz with Woody Allen.

He had us try a paste up headline and drilled good kerning into our heads. He didn’t teach a whole lot practically speaking, but we had plenty of other teachers for that. It was fun to just be in his class.

I don’t think any of us really realized *who* he was at the time…

I feel like a pest, but does anyone know whether either Swiss Interlock 8 or Fiorello Condensed Interlock are available as fonts for mac?

Interlock is part of the Ed Benguiat collection over at House Industries.
http://www.houseind.com/fonts/edbenguiatfonts/viewfonts

What is your source for calling Photo-Lettering “PLINC”? PLINC was first the name of a promotional publication designed by Ed Benguiat for Photo-Lettering. Benguiat hoped the name would catch on; but all the old-timers I worked with on Madison Avenue in the mid ’80s called the shop Photo-Lettering or “PL” for short, as did I. Ask the folks who were around then, it was a favorite name of Ed’s but never caught on while the shop was open.

Great post! This one looks sick! I don’t have vol 2 but Vol 3 is def one of my favorite type catalogs i own. It’s been an invaluable tool.

This is brilliant stuff really. Very useful indeed!

Here’s a look into the beta version of Photo-Lettering from House Industries:

http://www.idsgn.org/posts/introducing-photo-lettering/

It’s interesting how people used to select their letters in the past. With Microsoft and other softwares, picking font styles is so much easier today. It’s when you see the letters in book-form you appreciate the art of it so much more.

Please tell me why the Gap is using my Dellacroce Marquee Gothic in their advertising campaign in this month’s Vanity Fair without paying me any residuals?

11.22.09 |

Carl Dellacroce |

Off our book shelves |

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