When Andy Cruz from House Industries came to speak to AIGA South Carolina in 2005, over dinner, he mentioned House Industries was looking at the idea of developing a system where designers could set a headlines online and pay a small amount to download an EPS file.

Last week, they finally launched the service. Photolettering.com is a service where you can customize small bits of copy and for $7 each, download the settings in EPS format. The service leverages the old Photo Lettering, Inc. library that House purchased a number of years ago and adds a few of their original creations. Each type design has a range of options and you can customize the colors. House plans on adding addition typefaces in the future.

You can also subscribe to the service if you plan on using it frequently. (I’m not sure who is going to use 1,000 settings a month for $1,000, but I’m sure someone will.)

One interesting note: The license is very reasonable. No restrictions about usage in logos or high quantity materials. You can use the settings for any purpose with two exceptions. You can’t use the letters to reverse engineer a font. And you can’t create products for sale that are based solely on the letter forms.

$7 for a setting is definitely reasonable. It will be interesting to see if this type of service catches on among designers.