Lance Hidy studied art and graphic design at Yale before starting his own graphic arts studio. After working with photographers Ansel Adams and Arnold Newman, Lance developed a personal silk screen style in the 1970's, in which he distilled his photographs of people to vividly-colored, glat, hard-edged shapes. He continues to use this style which has appeared on three U.S. postage stamps, and on more than forty posters for sch clients as The Boston Symphony Orchestra, Yale, Wellesley, and The Library of Congress.

In the late 1980's, while serving as a consultant to Adobe Systems, Lance developed a second photo-based style, more focused on nature, using the first releases of digital graphic software. In Newburyport, in 1989, he created the first commercially printed artwork with Photoshop produced outside of Adobe's offices. He continues to use digital photography and Photoshop software to produce prints with archival, pigmented inks on museum-quality watercolor paper.

From his work in calligraphy and typography Lance designed Penumbra, the popular family of sixteen fonts, released by Adobe in 1994, and later used for the movie, The DaVinci Code. In addition to running his studio full-time, Lance is a professor of digital graphic arts, teaching two days a week at Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill, Massachusetts.