Founded in London in 2009 by Anthony Sheret and Edd Harrington, Colophon began as a natural extension of their shared graphic design practice. Rather than approaching type design as a discipline separate from use, each typeface in the early catalogue grew from live commissions, its letterforms shaped by the specific aesthetic and conceptual demands of a given project. That practice-led method gave the library its characteristic groundedness: typefaces with clear purposes and historical awareness, refined through actual use before reaching retail.

The catalogue of 85 families reads as a coherent body of work rather than an accumulating stock. Aperçu, released in 2010, draws from Johnston, Gill Sans, Neuzeit and Franklin Gothic to produce something that sits across the grotesque tradition without being reducible to any single strand of it. Basis Grotesque, first developed as a custom face for photography title Hotshoe, extended that approach into a more structured, less idiosyncratic register. Alongside these, Fann Grotesque, Fortescue, Value Sans and Value Serif demonstrate range without drift.

Custom work has run in parallel with retail throughout. Colophon has produced bespoke typefaces for Burger King, Cadillac, Central Saint Martins and Canva, among others. The Canva Sans project, delivered in 2021, is among the more visible: a humanist grotesque built for massive cross-platform deployment.

In December 2023, Colophon was acquired by Monotype. Sheret and Harrington joined the organisation, and the Colophon library migrated from the foundry's own storefront to Monotype Fonts and MyFonts. The direct retail operation closed in March 2025.