[The following is an excerpt from Ed Gottschall’s reminiscence of ITC co-founder Aaron Burns in the current issue of U&lc.]
Aaron was one of the first to recognize a critical shift in typeface marketing. Type was still being set on expensive proprietary typesetting machines, and each manufacturer had an exclusive library of typefaces designed and engineered solely for their machines. They used their exclusive type libraries to sell the machines.
But in the late ‘60s Aaron realized that those days were over: the new market for typefaces required non-exclusivity. This meant that every manufacturer of typesetting machines could have every typeface. Without exclusive type libraries, the machines would have to compete on their own merits. This was a revolutionary concept, and it was a key basis for the founding of ITC.
In addition to the policy of non-exclusivity, by which ITC licensed the identical typeface to all its customers, Aaron re-invented typeface marketing to keep pace with the technological changes. ITC subscribers (as its customers — the manufactuers of typesetting machines — were known in the early days) were given the art for ITC typeface designs without charge. They paid monthly royalties to ITC, based on how many ITC fonts they sold to their customers, the type composition shops. In other words, the subscribers paid nothing until they were assured of a profit.
Three years after ITC was founded, the first issue of U&lc was published. By showcasing ITC typefaces, the magazine built a worldwide designer-driven demand that helped ITC’s subscribers market their fonts to the type shops. And by paying attractive royalties to the designers of the typefaces, ITC attracted key designers from all over the world.
Aaron saw, before most graphic designers, the upcoming technological revolution. In the 1960s and 1970s, as director of design and typography at TypoGraphics Communications, Inc. (TGC), he was one of the first to appreciate the esthetic and economic importance of photographic typesetting. He pioneered, too, in the area of computer-aided typography, and designed and produced articles, posters, brochures, and books to make the new technologies and their importance clear to graphic artists and designers. Through his writings and lectures, through the establishment of the ITC Center with its exhibitions, seminars, and traveling educational programs, and through the pages of U&lc, he made possible a steady flow of knowledge and information that reached almost 1,000,000 designers and users of design throughout the world.
The full text of this article can be found in the printed U&lc 25.2 (Fall 1998). Also in that issue you’ll find a companion article by Mike Parker (former Director of Typographic Development at Mergenthaler Linotype) about Aaron Burns and the evolution of type marketing.