International Typeface Corporation

The company was founded to design, license and market typefaces for filmsetting and computer set types internationally. The company issued both new designs and revivals of older or classic faces, invariably re-cut to be suitable for phototypesetting and later digital use and produced in families of different weights. Although it is claimed that the designers took care to preserve the style and character of the original typefaces, several ITC revivals, such as ITC Bookman and ITC Garamond in particular, have received criticism that the result was related in name only to the original faces. Among the company's notable type designers was Ed Benguiat, the creator of Tiffany and Benguiat fonts.

ITC's revival designs frequently followed a formulary of increased x-height, multiple weights from light to ultra bold, multiple widths and unusual ligature combinations, sometimes with alternate characters such as swashes.

Critics sometimes complain that, while the dramatically higher x-height increased legibility in smaller point sizes, in normal text sizes the extreme height of the lowercase characters imparted a commercial, subjective voice to texts.

ITC typefaces were widely distributed. Gene Gable commented "You could easily say that ITC designs put a face on the '70s and '80s. [...] You couldn't open a magazine or pass a billboard in the '70s without seeing [them]."

In 1986 the company was acquired by Esselte Letraset, who had taken over Letraset, originally makers of the first dry transfer lettering, and later to become developers of new typefaces for filmsetting and computer applications. In 2000, Agfa Monotype Corporation announced the acquisition of the capital stock of International Typeface Corporation (ITC) from Esselte. The transaction included ITC's complete library of over 1600 typefaces, all typeface subscriber and distributor agreements, the itcfonts.com Web site, and typographic software. At this point ITC ceased to operate as an independent entity.

In November 2005 Agfa Monotype was incorporated as Monotype Imaging, with a focus on the company's traditional core competencies of typographic design and professional printing. Famous contemporary typographers associated with Monotype include Adrian Frutiger, Hermann Zapf and Matthew Carter.