Born in Dallas, Texas in 1923 and a bombardier in World War II, Phil Martin spent a number of years as a cartoonist before moving into commercial art and lettering. He also spent some time as a radio comedian.

In 1969, Martin founded Alphabet Innovations and, in 1974, TypeSpectra. These companies designed and produced over 400 film fonts for use in the VGC Photo Typositor, a machine for setting headline type. Later, some of these typefaces were licensed for use with text setting machines, and many of them are seeing new life as digital fonts through the efforts of Steve Jackaman of Red Rooster and others (including Mark Simonson).