Skip to content
Home / Fonts / Lanston Type Co. / LTC Italian Old Style
LTC Italian Old Style

LTC Italian Old Style™

by Lanston Type Co.
Individual Styles from $24.95
Complete family of 8 fonts: $220.68
LTC Italian Old Style Font Family was designed by Frederic W. Goudy, James Grieshaber, Paul D. Hunt and published by Lanston Type Co.. LTC Italian Old Style contains 8 styles and family package options.

More about this family
FREE 30-DAY TRIAL of Monotype Fonts to get over 150,000 fonts from more than 1,400 type foundries. Start free trial
Start free trial

About LTC Italian Old Style Font Family


LTC Italian Old Style is not to be confused with the English Monotype font also called Italian Old Style, which is an earlier design from 1911 based on William Morris’s Golden Type that is based on Nicholas Jenson’s Roman face. Goudy went back to Jenson’s original Roman and other Renaissance Roman faces for his inspiration and the result is what many consider to be the best Renaissance face adapted for modern use.

Bruce Rogers was one of the biggest admirers of Italian Old Style and designed the original specimen book for Italian Old Style in 1924 using his trademark ornament arrangement. These ornaments are now contained in the pro versions of the Roman styles—Regular Pro and Light Pro. With most digitizations of old metal typefaces, one source size is often used as reference (as was Goudy’s method for his own cuttings of his Village foundry types) so that all sizes refer to one set of original artwork. The original hot metal fonts made by Lanston Monotype (from Goudy’s drawings) and other manufacturers used two or three masters for different size ranges to have optimal relative weights—smaller type sizes would need proportionally thicker lines to not appear thin and larger sizes would require thinner lines to not appear to bulky. The variations in size ranges can also be affected by the size of the cutter head in making the master patterns. The light weights of LTC Italian Old Style were digitized from larger display sizes (14, 18, 24, 30, 36 pt) and the regular weights were digitized from smaller composition sizes (8,10,12 pt). The fitting for the regular weights is noticeably looser to allow for better setting at small sizes. Very few font revivals take this approach.


Italian Old Style, originally designed by Frederic Goudy in 1924, was digitized by Paul Hunt in 2007. In 2013, it has been updated by James Grieshaber and is now offered as a Pro font. The newly expanded Pro font includes all of the original ligatures, plus small caps and expanded language coverage in all 4 Pro styles.

Designers: Frederic W. Goudy, James Grieshaber, Paul D. Hunt

Publisher: Lanston Type Co.

Foundry: Lanston Type Co.

Design Owner: Lanston Type Co.

MyFonts debut: Dec 5, 2007

LTC Italian Old Style™ is a trademark of P22.

About Lanston Type Co.

The Lanston Monotype Company was founded in Philadelphia at the end of the nineteenth century (1887) by Tolbert Lanston. Lanston invented a mechanical typesetting device which would become the Monotype casting machine, that lead to the emergence of the Lanston Monotype Company as one of the most renowned type supply companies in the world. The Monotype caster was revolutionary and helped to usher in a new age of printing technology. In the late 1800s, Tolbert Lanston licensed his technology to an English sister company and became a major international force. Lanston Monotype grew rapidly with America’s pre-eminent type designer Frederic W. Goudy as art director from 1920 to 1947. The type library was directed by Sol Hess who also designed many of the iconic typefaces. The Philadelphia-based company eventually parted ways with its English counterpart. The thriving English Monotype became simply known as Monotype. By contrast, the Lanston Type Co. went through mixed fortunes and lost ground to Mergenthaler Linotype. The firm was sold several times to companies such as American Type Founders, Hartzel Machine Works, Mackenzie and Harris, before it was eventually purchased by master printer Gerald Giampa and re-located to Vancouver Canada in the 1980s. Giampa’s Lanston Type Co. continued supplying the American market for Monotype casters until January 21, 2000, when the hot-metal component of Lanston was tragically destroyed by a tidal wave. After this time Giampa, who was one of the earliest developers of PostScript fonts, focussed on digitization of the type collection. Under his stewardship, Lanston’s classic faces were digitized in a style that was true to the brass and lead patterns from which the metal type was made. In November 2004, P22 Type Foundry acquired Lanston Type Co. From then on, P22 has been in a continuous process of re-mastering the Lanston’s fonts, which include the classic designs of Goudy and Hess, along with newer types by such contemporary masters as Jim Rimmer, Dave Farey and Gerald Giampa.

Read more

Read less