Richard Kegler, Daniel Farrell, William Woeffell, and Paul Fox first conceived of P22 as an artist's movement in the mid-1980's. The founders created paintings, mail art and poetry under the guise of a single mysterious identity, "P22." They submitted works to juried shows, infiltrated a national snow sculpture contest, and launched an ambitious mail art campaign featuring papier maché heads and the like. Hiding behind the anonymity of P22, the men sent out their mail art using the US Postal service's cancellations as embellishments. Shortly thereafter, two of the original members relocated, one to Albany and the other to San Francisco, and one member left to explore other interests, leaving only one person working to keep P22 alive. Three of the original founders continued to correspond and the mail art movement flourished until Dan Farrell's return to Buffalo in 1997. By this time, P22 Inc. had proven itself as a viable business and was thriving.

As in all underground movements, traces of legitimacy crept in: in 1991, Richard Kegler, using William Woeffel's postcard collection, produced the "Buffalo Views Postcard Book." This elaborate book, which celebrated Buffalo's heyday, introduced P22 Publications to the public and sold over 7500 copies.

P22 type foundry came into being as a result of Richard Kegler's 1994 Digital Arts master's thesis project. Richard's thesis included animating Marcel Duchamp's large glass, incorporating optical images in 3-D, creating a music program that produced a random note at a random interval (determined by a computer), and displaying quotes and idioms by Marcel Duchamp in a projection room. Richard needed the perfect font for this room of quotations. Finding nothing satisfactory, he enlisted the help of his friend, Michael Want, to digitize Marcel Duchamp's handwriting. The result was the first font ever created by P22. Since then, the company has gone on to offer over 400 more.

Richard Kegler had been showing his one-of-a-kind handmade books at the New York International Gift Show since 1987. In August of 1994, when a buyer asked, "What else do you have?" Richard replied, "Well, I designed a font...and...I have an idea for packaging...and...it's available for the Mac, but I'm sure I can do it for Windows." The buyer ordered a dozen copies. The rest of the story is a coffee-fueled blur of frenetic font designing. Thanks to the August 1994 Gift Show orders, Richard was able to officially retire as a bookbinder. Richard's wife, Carima El-Behairy, resigned her post at Buffalo State College and the two incorporated P22 in February, 1995.