Typographic expert Pepper Howard had just been offered a job at Adobe but she declined in favour of Quantel, who became the first digital graphics manufacturer to convince traditional type foundries such as Monotype, ITC and even Howard's previous employer Letraset, that selling digital licences of their fonts was the future.
The Paint Box would come with a handful of master founts (yes, that is the correct spelling) and more could be installed, each supplied on an 8" floppy disk.
This is the user interface to view the font library on an original Paint Box. Each font could be selected by browsing by name or preview image
Quantel invested so much into purchasing typeface licenses, the top-of-the line V-Series Paintboxes such as the Esprit came with over a thousand fonts pre-installed, which needed their own book and wall chart!
Head over to the website's GRAPHICS section to watch a TV News Graphics Designer putting the Paintbox's typography to work.