DigitalArena | Articles

View the full infographic: http://bit.ly/10ljy4b
Download the full report: http://bit.ly/15yaRqi
Read the blog post: http://bit.ly/12eaWJR

A new report from the Brand Perfect™ initiative by Monotype reveals the need for brands and technology providers to collaborate with global publishers, enabling all parties to harness the growth opportunities that a “cross-platform” approach to advertising could bring.

The report, Adventures in Publishing – The New Dynamics of Advertising, exposes an untapped opportunity available to brand advertisers who want true access to mobile audiences. In the study, primary research focused on the current state of online consumer publishing across 100 top titles in the U.K., U.S. and Germany, and identified the fragmented nature of publishing channels today.

According to IDC predictions stated in the report, sales of tablets and smartphones will outstrip desktop sales by two to one, with tablets alone on target to do so in 2013. In an independent analysis by venture capitalists, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, smartphones are expected to more than double from 1 billion units in 2012 to more than 2 billion units by 2015, with the number of tablets almost tripling in the same timeframe from 1.1 billion units to just fewer than 3 billion units. This expansion demonstrates the need for brands to ensure that their advertising strategies focus more heavily on these platforms. However, 93 percent of the publications reviewed in the Brand Perfect report have yet to offer true multi-device viewing.

Publishing for a digital generation

Of the 78 consumer-facing English language publications detailed in the report, 83 percent have at least one app available in the Apple® App Store, Newsstand app or the Google Play™ service. Of these, 65 percent have published iPhone® apps and 40 percent have published apps for the Android™ platform. All 78 publish on the iPad® device. However, only 25 percent of these were optimized for any form of tablet display, with most publishers using scaled-down versions of their desktop sites instead. Of the German titles reviewed, 10 percent are optimized for tablets. Publishers are continuing to find their mobile footing, as documented in the report, with 38 percent of publications offering an iPhone-optimized option.

Seamless advertising across all devices

Despite the emergence of responsive Web design, which enables optimal viewing experiences across a wide range of devices, the report identified that publishers are not supporting its use in online advertising. Where device-ready sites are not available, advertisements served are scaled down, often resulting in illegible typography and distorted imagery.

For a free copy of the report, Adventures In Publishing – The New Dynamics of Advertising, which includes the full results of the study, visit brandperfect.org, download it here, or contact info@brandperfect.org.

Sign up for Fonts.com Master plan: http://bit.ly/15YvHyt
Google Fonts Users Download Skyfonts: http://bit.ly/14S9P85
Register for SkyFonts webcast: http://bit.ly/ZjFbNn

Monotype teamed up with Google to offer versions of Google Web fonts designed for print. Users of Google Fonts can now work with free, desktop versions of Google Web fonts accessed through Monotype’s patent-pending SkyFonts™ technology, which enables cloud-based access to OpenType® fonts.

SkyFonts is a desktop client utility that operates in the background of Macintosh® or Windows® machines, activating and deactivating OpenType fonts that are available for all applications on the user’s system. Moving forward, as new Google font data is released, such as when characters are added to a font, or when other font enhancements or updates are made, SkyFonts delivers them to users automatically.

Users of Google Fonts can visit Fonts.com/web-fonts/google to download SkyFonts and access desktop versions of the complete Google Fonts inventory. Like Google Fonts, the service is free.

Google Fonts users with Fonts.com Web Fonts subscriptions can also use SkyFonts to install and temporarily try typefaces before purchasing on Fonts.com.

Register for SkyFonts webcast: http://bit.ly/ZjFbNn
Read Type First blog post: http://bit.ly/12Yv7Ok
Sign up for Fonts.com Master plan: http://bit.ly/15YvHyt

Monotype has enhanced its Fonts.com Web Fonts service to provide greater flexibility and choice to creative professionals. The new Master subscription plan brings together the company’s Web font solution with unlimited access to more than 7,000 desktop fonts. Combined with Monotype’s Typecast™ application for designing with Web fonts in the browser, the master subscription is an industry first that provides a comprehensive solution for working with type throughout the digital and print design processes, bringing unparalleled value to customers.

The Fonts.com Master subscription plan, which Monotype intends to expand with new features on an ongoing basis, includes:

Unlimited desktop fonts: Customers receive an unlimited download allowance of more than 7,000 traditional “desktop fonts,” while subscribed to the plan including selections from various typeface foundries and the company’s Monotype® Libraries, comprising the Monotype, Linotype®, ITC®, Bitstream® and Ascender® collections. Included are some of the world’s most widely used designs, such as the Helvetica®, Frutiger®, Trade Gothic® and Gill Sans® typefaces, in addition to a continually expanding selection of new designs.

Desktop fonts are delivered automatically and installed on up to five workstations using Monotype’s patent-pending SkyFonts™ technology. SkyFonts runs in the background of Macintosh® or Windows® platforms to activate and deactivate OpenType® fonts downloaded from Fonts.com. Desktop fonts may be used for all purposes that Monotype’s standard desktop end-user license agreement allows.

Web fonts: Subscribers receive access to more than 20,000 Web fonts, including hundreds of hand-tuned selections that offer exceptional clarity, particularly at small text sizes. Subscribers are entitled to up to 2.5 million Web font page views per month and can add an unlimited number of Web fonts to an unlimited number of websites. Customers may receive additional page view allowances by upgrading to a higher level within the plan.

Typecast: Subscribers receive access to Monotype’s Typecast application, a browser-based tool for designing Web pages with Web fonts. Designers are able to combine, compare and style Web fonts quickly without performing screen captures in third-party applications or through hand coding. Users can visually style text directly within the browser, which offers more scope for creative experimentation, better typographic control and a simplified workflow. The Typecast application enables unlimited experimentation with fonts from the Typekit®, Fontdeck®, Webtype™ and Google Fonts services, in addition to Fonts.com Web Fonts.

Customers may sign up for the Fonts.com Master subscription plan at www.fonts.com/web-fonts/master-plan. A live webcast that demonstrates how SkyFonts can be used with the new Fonts.com Web Fonts subscriptions will take place May 3, 2013, at 11:00 a.m. eastern time. Register for the webcast at http://bit.ly/ZjFbNn.

The Unit Gothic series was released by Hamilton Manufacturing Co. in 1907. This sans serif family features one of the first multi width/weight type 'systems', anticipating the Univers font system by 50 years. This set of 7 fonts was designed to aid in press room efficiency and its incremental variation in widths gave poster printers unprecedented flexibility in fitting copy while using consistently harmonious fonts.

This HWT release is the first ever digital version of these fonts. Each font contains 600 glyphs including Greek and Cyrillic character sets as well as alternate characters which are based on the actual special character production patterns from the Hamilton Wood Type Museum collection.

The system features:
•HWT Unit Gothic 716 - 50% wider
•HWT Unit Gothic 717 - 25% wider
•HWT Unit Gothic 718 - (Standard width which others are based on)
•HWT Unit Gothic 719 - 25% narrower
•HWT Unit Gothic 720 - 50% narrower
•HWT Unit Gothic 721 - 62.5% narrower
•HWT Unit Gothic 722 - 75% narrower

HWT Unit Gothic digitized by James Todd

David Shields has written an essay for Slanted Magazine that gives a closer look at this font system and its place in history. Follow this link to read the article online.

View more details about this release on the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry site.

Special introductory pricing through May 31, 2013.

View eText Fonts: http://bit.ly/XovVvK
Read Press Release: http://bit.ly/10wWpry
Read Blog Post: http://bit.ly/Z8lPcS

Today, Monotype announced the release of a collection of typefaces designed for digital reading environments, including e-books, web content, mobile applications, digital publications and online newspapers. Device manufacturers, digital publishers and Web designers can now turn to a selection that includes some of the most popular text faces used in print – designed and tuned for exceptional readability on e-readers, tablets, smartphones and other web-enabled devices.

Monotype’s initial collection includes multiple weights of nine typeface families, designated for digital publishing:

Amasis™ eText
Monotype Baskerville™ eText
PMN Caecilia® eText
ITC Galliard® eText
Malabar™ eText
Neue Helvetica® eText
Palatino® eText
Sabon® eText
Ysobel™ eText

Timeless designs such as Monotype Baskerville, ITC Galliard and Sabon were redrawn to improve readability on screen. Monotype typeface designers worked to impart a richer contrast, an even color, and slightly taller lowercase characters, all while ensuring that the typefaces appear as unmistakable cousins of their original print designs. The designs also include small caps and old style figures for professional-quality publishing design.

All typefaces in the collection have been hand-hinted to display with exceptional clarity cross mobile devices from smartphones to tablets and e-readers. The fonts also take advantage of Monotype’s Edge™ tuning technology, enabling publishers to create and deliver high-quality, readable text across various platforms, formats and devices, including E Ink® screens. The fonts look and perform best with devices that use Monotype’s iType® font engine for rendering text.

The new typefaces can be integrated in a number of ways:
- The fonts may be embedded in consumer devices for use as system fonts that can be custom-tuned for optimal display and performance to meet specific OEM device requirements.
- The fonts may be bundled within the source code of an e-book or digital publication title, enabling publishers to preserve intended design, branding and layout requirements. Displays that use either e-paper or LCD technology are supported.
- The fonts may be licensed as Web fonts from Fonts.com Web Fonts for HTML-based content, enabling high-quality reading experiences across various Web-enabled devices.

To view the new collection, visit http://bit.ly/XovVvK or contact Monotype for more information at etext@monotype.com.

About Monotype
Monotype is a leading global provider of typefaces, technology and expertise that enable the best user experience and ensure brand integrity. Based in Woburn, Mass., Monotype provides customers worldwide with typeface solutions for a broad range of creative applications and consumer devices. The company’s library and e-commerce sites are home to many of the most widely used typefaces – including the Helvetica®, Frutiger® and Univers® families – as well as the next generation of type designs. Further information is available at www.monotype.com.

Monotype, iType, Palatino, Sabon, PMN Caecilia, Neue Helvetica, Helvetica, Frutiger and Univers are trademarks of Monotype Imaging Inc. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Edge and Ysobel are trademarks of Monotype Imaging Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Galliard is a trademark of Monotype ITC Inc. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Malabar is a trademark of Monotype GmbH and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Monotype Baskerville and Amasis are trademarks of The Monotype Corp. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. E Ink is a registered trademark of E Ink Corp. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©2013 Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc. All rights reserved.

The Republic Gothic series was among the last original wood type designs manufactured by Hamilton Manufacturing Co. It was first shown in Hamilton's New Gothic Faces in Wood Type (c. 1920). The design features a sans-serif style reminiscent of brush-formed letters popular with sign painters of the era.

Originally issued in 6 different widths and in both outline and solid versions, this digital release features the "Extended" width known as Hamilton Republic Gothic series 775 & 776. The pair of outline and solid is designed as 'chromatics' that can be printed one over the other to achieve multiple color effects or individually as stylistic alternatives. This release features the first ever digitization of Republic Gothic. The two fonts are carefully aligned and kerned to allow for multicolor overlayment in any digital design program. It features a full Western and Central European Character set.

Digitized by Richard Kegler and Miranda Roth

For a more detailed information regarding this release, visit the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry site.

Star Ornaments are seen as a long standing companion to many wood type poster layouts. Various manufacturers managed to derive many variations of the five pointed star motif and offered them as a ubiquitous ornament option in almost all of their catalogs. Manufacturers such as Wm. H Page, Morgans & Wilcox, Tubbs Mfg. Co. and of course, Hamilton Wood Type each had their own slight variations. This digital font features almost 100 glyphs of mostly stars, but it also features a unique star border that can create boxes just like the modular offerings of the 19th century. The twist on this digital version is the inclusion of additional connection options that become a unique lettering 'kit' that can create typography or maze-like connections using a limited set of component parts.

Digitized by Richard Kegler.

For a more detailed information regarding this release, visit the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry site.

The Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) is still accepting programming proposals for its fifteenth annual conference. TypeCon2013 will take place August 21st – 25th in the City of Roses — Portland, Oregon.

We are currently accepting proposals for contemporary and historical presentations and panel discussions, focused hands-on workshops in both the digital and non-digital realms, and a variety of programming for the Type & Design Education Forum and other special events.

Topics for presentations at TypeCon cover a broad range of interests, including: typography; type design; font production; graphic design; new media; printing history; calligraphy and hand lettering; the book arts; advertising; type in motion; literacy; type sales and marketing; legal issues; type and design education; and other related areas.

Submission deadline: Friday, March 15th, 2013

Please refer to the program details and submission criteria for more information.

Arabesque and Bon Air, two alphabets from two different centuries, are not what most people immediately think of when they think "wood type". These quirky script fonts simulate hand lettering from very different eras and are now brought into the digital age for the first time ever. A third font, Catchwords , brings a classic printshop resource into the digital designer's toolbox.

Detailed information regarding these releases, including the "Making Of The Font" feature, can be found at the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry website: here.

HWT Arabesque is long lost Art Nouveau wood type from the Hamilton Collection. It evokes the excesses of Victorian design and the equally quirky 1960s Psychedelic era revival of the Victorian type styles. Many characters have a lively eccentricity that were all left true to the original design. Additional characters were designed to fill out the standard range of characters found in digital fonts. This font includes over 280 characters for full unicode support of Western and Central European Latin characters.

HWT Bon Air is a "Mad Men" era display font. It was one of a series of script typefaces cut into wood by the Hamilton Manufacturing Company for the Morgan Sign Machine Co. in the mid 20th Century. The font was issued with several alternate letters and ligatures to simulate the effect of hand lettering. Its lively strokes and odd details give it an exotic flavor suitable for advertising display work. The digital version includes all of the original alternates plus new characters to fill out a full European character set.

Catchwords have always been offered alongside standard alphabets in wood type catalogs and so often appear on posters as a decorative punch that they have become part of the wood type vernacular. Words like 'The', 'And', 'To', 'For', and less common abbreviations could be inserted into a design along with decorative ornaments or stars when space was tight or to add variety in the design. HWT Catchwords features over 80 words based directly on designs offered by Hamilton and other wood type manufacturers of the 19th and early 20th Century.

Hamilton Wood Type Foundry

Read The Fonts.com Blog: http://bit.ly/13KE7DT
Subscribe Here: http://www.fonts.com/web-fonts
View a Typecast Demo: http://vimeo.com/43763778

Fonts.com has redefined its Professional Fonts.com Web Fonts plans to make them more affordable, while adding a free Typecast subscription (worth $29 per month). The new professional plans start at just $40 per month and include 1 million page views per month, but additional page-view packages are available, as needed.

Like before, professional plans also include the self-hosting option and desktop fonts for creating website mockups. Current Web Font Professional plan subscribers, as well as 1 million, 1.5 million or 2 million page view Web Font Standard plan subscribers will be upgraded automatically to make life easy.

Typecast is a powerful, browser-based design app that takes the pain out of designing with Web fonts. It lets designers, pair and compare Web fonts in the browser on full-length text without having to create screenshots, assemble comps or hand-code CSS.

Sliders, drop menus and simple inputs make it easy to set text in precise detail, and because you’re designing in the browser, you’re able see changes in real time and make better, faster decisions about quality, style and rendering.

As you design, standards-compliant HTML and CSS is produced behind the scenes, allowing for the quick sharing of Web-ready designs with developer colleagues, which leads to more accurate prototypes.

Best of all, Fonts.com and Typecast work great together. All of Fonts.com’s 20,000 plus Web fonts are available in Typecast. All Fonts.com accounts are linked to Typecast, so getting the Web fonts used in your Typecast design onto your website is simple. When it’s time to export your designs and start prototyping, Typecast will determine which fonts to serve up and provide an embed code that includes them. Going forward, you can continue to use Typecast to manage the font selections in your Fonts.com Web Fonts projects.

Fonts.com aims to reshape typography on the Web, and believes this combination will help Web designers make sound typographic decisions and refinements with their favorite typefaces.

Read the ‘Adventures in Publishing’ Report - http://bit.ly/VDoBX0
View the Brand Perfect Tour Schedule - http://bit.ly/11McH46
Read Condé Nast Executive Director’s Interview - http://bit.ly/YE7g2F

The Brand Perfect Tour is returning to New York City with two events to help demystify brand management in an age where publishers are communicating across multiple platforms: from print and digital publishing to tablets and smartphones. The events, Design for Publishing and Adventures in Publishing, are intended for senior management, designers and developers working in brands and agencies who want to sharpen their creative skills and deliver compelling cross-platform brand strategies.

The first event, Design for Publishing, will be held Feb. 6 at New York’s Studio Arte, featuring an evening of discussion on the latest strategies for delivering great multi-channel reading experiences and improving the performance of advertising in publishing. Celebrated publishing designers including Mario Garcia and Robert Newman will share their perspectives on the intersection of design and technology, and how that is influencing publishing and the publishing culture.

The signature Brand Perfect event, Adventures in Publishing, will be held Feb. 8 at the Condé Nast Building. Bringing together leaders from the publishing and technology fields, the day-long event will include a master class that will help attendees create an advertising and content strategy, and learn how publishers can deliver a seamless brand experience regardless of where customers begin their journey.

Cameron Connors, executive director of The Studio at Condé Nast, and Wyatt Mitchell, creative director of The New Yorker, will deliver the keynote address, sharing how a leading publisher has taken its brand across media formats to deliver successful campaigns and interactions, wherever the reader engages. Read the Brand Perfect interview with Connors here, in which he explains how the proliferation of mobile devices and platforms has changed the user experience and inspired his team to broaden its technical and design expertise.

Jennifer Eldin of American Express OPEN will describe how the community she created is helping small business owners succeed by evolving from a campaign-based mindset to a community-oriented digital newsroom. Katrina Dodd, consultant for Contagious Communications will shed light on the rapidly evolving publishing industry, where established players find themselves competing for customer loyalty with tech companies, start-ups and authors.
The event also will feature Dan Rhatigan, type director at Monotype , who will lead The Brand Perfect Master Class. Attendees will experience a hands-on exercise that walks them through the multi-disciplinary process of conceptualizing and designing a brief suitable for cross-media execution.

Attendees will apply lessons from the master class to support the INSP (International Network of Street Papers), an organization that supports and develops over 120 street press projects in 40 countries to create employment and training opportunities for homeless people. Delegates will pool their talents to create a brand experience for INSP that can be carried across different platforms. The brief will be critiqued by Brand Perfect community design and development experts Chris Liu and Jesús Gorriti of Fjord.

About Brand Perfect
Brand Perfect is a Monotype initiative that serves as a collaborative think tank to help brands learn new cross-media marketing techniques. To learn more about the Brand Perfect event or join the Brand Perfect community to share ideas, advice and best practices, visit: http://brandperfect.org/.

About Condé Nast
Condé Nast is home to some of the world’s most celebrated media brands. In the U.S., Condé Nast publishes 18 consumer magazines, four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps for mobile and tablet devices, all of which define excellence in their categories. The company also owns Fairchild Fashion Media (FFM), whose portfolio of brands serves as the leading source of news and analysis for the global fashion community. Condé Nast has won more National Magazine Awards over the past 10 years than all of its competitors combined. For more information, visit http://condenast.com.

Designed by Franck Jalleau, Scripto is the fruit of a work on gesture and its resulting trace, along with the research on new rhythms. It steers away from usual cursive typefaces through bold and radical choices.

As a reaction to statism of typography, the dynamics and freedom of handwriting are a vast field of research to typeface designers. Franck Jalleau designed Scripto as a mean to address those ancient concerns by unubiquituous proposals. Scripto is the fruit of a work on gesture and its resulting trace, along with the research on new rhythms. It steers away from usual cursive typefaces and takes some liberty in that respect: in Scripto, slope angle is not steady, instead it features a great variety of shapes, steepness angles and counterangles. The silhouette of each word is made by assembling characters with different energies and slopes.

In order to create a rich and lively pace, characters are not systematically ligatured. Many so-called ligatures in Scripto are born from the plain connection of characters and their respective shape designs. However, a few rare characters, combined or doubled, have been ligatured to emphasize animation and differences in the setting.

Scripto is a contemporary typographic writing, vivid and brisk reflecting its author's personality. It is also a timeless typeface that has its roots and influences in some of Antique Rome cursive alphabets.

A charming demonstration of Franck Jalleau's skills, Scripto is meant for display copy or short texts.
Initially designed in 1996, the typeface was awarded a first prize at the Morisawa competition.

http://www.batfoundry.com/catalogue_7_scripto_.html

LTC Athena brings a somewhat "lost" hot-metal typeface back from obscurity into digital Opentype format.

Athena is a rare typeface whose original matrices were destroyed and therefore thought to be lost to time. In the Fall of 2012, printing historian Rich Hopkins contacted P22 type foundry regarding a collection of inked type drawings he had just uncovered from his acquisition of the Baltimore base "Baltotype" company some 20 years ago. The Athena drawings included a full upper and lower case set, numerals, basic punctuation and alternate forms of some letters.

The design is a narrow deco flavored design from the 1950s and bares resemblance to the all caps Lanston typeface, LTC Spire. Athena was designed by George Battee specifically for Baltotype and features a curious avoidance of straight lines in the stems and main strokes. The face has now been expanded to over 340 characters by Miranda Roth and includes ligatures and a full Pan-European character set. LTC Athena is released through the Lanston division of P22 in consideration of it's earlier incarnation as a metal typeface.

More details, here:
LTC Athena
P22 Blog

Read Typecast Blog – http://bit.ly/TypCas
View Condé Nast Case Study – http://bit.ly/CondeN
View Happy Cog Case Study – http://bit.ly/HapCog

Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc. has announced the commercial launch of its Typecast™ application, a browser-based tool for designing Web pages with Web fonts.

The Typecast application launches commercially after a year and a half in private and public beta programs, bringing the design community a tool that helps to save time and create better quality Web typography.

Typecast lets Web designers combine, compare and style Web fonts quickly without performing screen captures in third-party applications or through hand coding. Users are able to visually style text directly within the browser, which offers more scope for creative experimentation, better typographic control and a simplified workflow. As designers work, Typecast generates production-ready HTML and CSS code behind the scenes. When designers are ready to start building their sites, they can export that HTML and CSS, plus generate embedded code that will serve their project’s typefaces to their site.

Designers can set styles such as font size, line spacing and coloring, and also apply OpenType® features such as ligatures, small caps, fractions, lining and old style figures, and swash characters. Designers are able to try fonts on real, full-length project content, not just short snippets. Using side-by-side comparison and testing, designers can see at a glance what’s working and what’s not. Styles can be adjusted across entire projects with just a few clicks.

Typecast is available at four subscription levels, each with monthly, yearly and tri-yearly billing options. Prices start at $29 per month for an individual plan, and all plans include a free standard subscription to Fonts.com Web Fonts worth $10 per month, enabling Typecast subscribers to use more than 20,000 Web fonts on their live sites. Typecast is available as a free trial for 14 days.

Typecast allows designers to experiment with fonts from Typekit®, Fontdeck®, Webtype® and Google® Web Fonts as well as Monotype’s Fonts.com Web Fonts, which features thousands of typefaces, including timeless classics such as the Trade Gothic®, Avenir® and ITC Avant Garde Gothic® families, as well as cutting-edge designs and hand-tuned fonts.

Further information about Typecast, including a video that details the application, is available at http://typecast.com, where visitors can also view customer videos from Happy Cog, one of the world’s most respected design agencies, and international publishing company Condé Nast, which used Typecast to redesign vogue.co.uk.

A public beta program for Typecast began one week prior to Monotype’s Oct. 30, 2012 acquisition of Design by Front Limited, the company behind the Typecast application. The product continues to be developed from Belfast, Northern Ireland, where Monotype now holds an office.

Read Blog - http://bit.ly/SDzhIb
View Brochure - http://bit.ly/Wuq431

Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc. has released a new cloud-based technology that allows support for advanced, OpenType features in all popular browsers that support Web fonts and HTML5. Available to all subscribers of Monotype’s Fonts.com Web Fonts service, the first-of-its kind capability enables Web designers to use discretionary ligatures, small caps, fractions and other typographic features available in OpenType fonts, regardless of whether full, native support for OpenType features is available through the browser.

Using Monotype’s new solution, Web designers are able to use standard CSS techniques for controlling OpenType features, while relying on Fonts.com Web Fonts to ensure that pages render properly, as intended, regardless of the browser the visitor is using. When working on their Fonts.com Web Fonts project, users can use the OpenType feature control to activate individual OpenType features.

Web designers are able to see which OpenType features are available in a selected font and which features are being used in selected text. Monotype plans to release hundreds of additional Web fonts containing OpenType features this year while enhancing the OpenType feature tool to provide greater control to designers for specifying when and which OpenType features are applied to a selection of text.

Use of Monotype’s OpenType feature technology is open to all Fonts.com Web Fonts subscribers. A detailed FAQ is available on how to use the new technology at http://www.fonts.com/support/faq/opentype-features-tab.

About Monotype

Monotype is a leading global provider of typefaces, technology and expertise that enable the best user experience and ensure brand integrity. Based in Woburn, Mass., Monotype provides customers worldwide with typeface solutions for a broad range of creative applications and consumer devices. The company’s library and e-commerce sites are home to many of the most widely used typefaces – including the Helvetica®, Frutiger® and Univers® families – as well as the next generation of type designs. Further information is available at http://www.monotype.com

The Society of Typographic Aficionados is pleased to announce the fourth annual SOTA Catalyst Award. The award is targeted at young people who have created original work in type design, type history, or other areas related to typography. The award recognizes a person 25 years of age or younger who shows both achievement and future promise in the field of typography. The purpose of the award is to act as a catalyst in the career of a young person who does not yet have broad exposure in the profession.

The recipient will be awarded up to $1,500 USD in reimbursement for transportation and lodging expenses to attend the TypeCon2013 conference in Portland, Oregon — August 21st – 25th. They will also have their conference registration fee paid for and will be required to give a 20-minute presentation during the main conference program. Recipients should be available to attend the conference from Thursday to Sunday.

Judging Committee

Tim Brown
Carolina de Bartolo
Craig Eliason
Ivo Gabrowitsch

Submission Deadline

March 1, 2013

Notification of Award

April 1, 2013

Requirements

You must be 25 years of age or younger on December 31st, 2013 and must attend TypeCon2013 in Portland — making a presentation during the conference.

The following materials must be emailed to catalyst@typesociety.org by the submission deadline. A single PDF file (may be multiple pages) containing the following information is preferred:

Visual samples of a specific project or related group of work to be the topic of the presentation
A brief description of the presentation (100 words or less)
A letter explaining your involvement in typography (300 words or less)
Optional: Online links to additional work or background information

Contact Information

Include your name, date of birth, postal address, organization or university affiliation (if applicable), email, and phone number with area code. Applicants from outside the U.S. or Canada should include their country dialing code as well.

Monotype has announced the commercial release of its SkyFonts™ service, a revolutionary system that enables typographic experimentation by allowing users to try or rent fully functional fonts. SkyFonts debuts with an inventory of more than 8,000 fonts.

Users can try fonts for free for up to five minutes within any desktop application or spend credits to rent fonts for as long as they’re needed. When the trial or rental period expires or if the fonts are not renewed, they’re removed automatically from the user’s system.

SkyFonts exits beta and launches commercially with several new enhancements:

• Credit model: Customers can now purchase credits that can be used to rent fonts. Use one credit to rent a font for one day or three credits to rent a font for one month (30 days). Credits are available in packs of 15 or more at $3.00 per credit, or less if purchased in quantity. Credits can be used for one year before expiring.

• Thousands More Fonts from Top Sources: Since the service’s debut in beta, more than 5,500 fonts have been added to the SkyFonts inventory. SkyFonts now offers more than 8,000 fonts from the Monotype® Libraries which include the Monotype, Linotype®, ITC®, Ascender® and Bitstream® collections. In addition, fonts are available from popular foundry partners including Mark Simonson Studio, TypeTogether, Typodermic, Emboss Fonts, Bean and Morris, Type Associates, Mint Type, Laura Worthington, the Chank Company and Yellow Design Studio.

• Revamped Site Design: The SkyFonts.com website has been refreshed to make the service more fun to use. Customers may sign up for a free account on SkyFonts.com. For a limited time, all new accounts will include 10 free credits. Customers can use the same SkyFonts account on up to five workstations. Based on patent-pending technology relating to time-restricted use of fonts, the system software runs in the background of Macintosh® or Windows® platforms to activate and deactivate OpenType® fonts downloaded from the SkyFonts portal.
For more information, click: here.

About Monotype

Stumptown. Rip City. Beervana. PDX.

The Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) is pleased to announce that Portland, Oregon, has been selected as host city for TypeCon2013. Thanks to the top notch crew of local typophiles who have been instrumental in helping us bring TypeCon to The City of Roses.

TypeCon2013 will take place August 21st – 25th at the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower. A discounted room rate will once again be available to TypeCon attendees. Details regarding conference registration and hotel reservations will be posted as they become available.

Town Hall Meeting

Interested in helping with TypeCon2013 preparations and planning? We’re looking for plenty of volunteers who love type and design as much as we do and will be holding a town hall meeting hosted by the good folks at Extensis.

When:
Tuesday, November 27th at 7:00 pm

Where:
Art Institute Portland
1122 NW Davis Street
Portland, OR 97209

All are welcome to attend, but space is limited. RSVP to info@typesociety.org so that we know you’re coming. If you can’t make it to this meeting but would still like to participate, please contact us.

Additional information and updates will be published on the TypeCon site, via our Twitter stream, as well as in our email newsletter.

Already available on newsstands everywhere, so to speak — Quiosco, designed by Cyrus Highsmith, is now part of the Font Bureau Retail library and available for licensing and download.

While initially conceived for newspaper text, Quiosco has also found gainful employment in a variety of magazines — Sports Illustrated, TV Guide, Outside, and The Hollywood Reporter, to name-drop just a few.

With Quiosco, Highsmith continues an examination of themes and possibilities which he first explored in Prensa, inspired by the work of W.A. Dwiggins — specifically a dynamic tension between inner and outer contours. However, the crackling, electrical energy of Prensa here gives way to a more fluid, mercurial muscularity in Quiosco.

Quiosco, as seen in the pages of Sports Illustrated, circa 2009.

From the current issue of Outside magazine.

The new Quiosco premium fonts include the FB Extended Latin character set, which covers all major languages and dialects written with the Latin alphabet, plus a host of professional OpenType layout features including small caps, ligatures, both lining and oldstyle figures (plus tabular forms of each), and fractions.

Quiosco comes in six styles (three weights): Regular & Italic, Semibold & Semibold Italic, and Bold & Bold Italic.

Quiosco supports Spanish, Slovak, Czech, Turkish, Polish, Latvian, Hungarian, and many more.

For Immediate Release:
Buffalo, NY USA- November 2, 2012

The Hamilton Wood Type Foundry announces two new fonts- HWT Antique Tuscan No. 9 and HWT Borders One…and a newly redesigned HWT Foundry site.

HWT Antique Tuscan No. 9 is a very condensed 19th century Tuscan style wood type design with a full character set and ligatures. This design was first shown by Wm H Page Co in 1859 and is the first digital version of this font to include a lowercase and extended European character set.

HWT Borders One features a collection of 80 modular decorative elements from the Hamilton Wood Type Collection. The borders and streamers found in this font are based directly on the designs offered by the Hamilton Manufacturing company at the end of the 19th Century.

These two fonts join HWT American Chromatic, the inaugural font from The Hamilton Wood Type Foundry that coincides with the US Presidential election season. HWT American Chromatic evokes classic Americana with stars and multi-color layering options. This highly decorative font set can be used in print and online display for sincere and ironic uses alike. The original design from 1857 was created as a two part font that selectively overlapped parts of each letter to achieve a third color where the inks overlapped. These 'chromatic' fonts are considered among the high points of the wood type era. Coincidentally, the latest introductions of web based typography allows for layering and transparency that directly parallels the innovations of the 19th century…for today's web use.

To learn more about these releases including background information, source materials and general information regarding the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry, visit the newly redesigned HWT foundry site:
http://www.hamiltonwoodtype.com/index.html

About The Hamilton Wood Type Foundry (HWT)
The Hamilton Wood Type Foundry is a joint venture between P22 type Foundry and the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum that brings 19th Century ingenuity into relevance with the latest online technologies. HWT will see a large collection of wood type designs converted into digital fonts that can be used with the latest Webfont CSS and Opentype programming abilities. P22 is working with the Hamilton Museum and other collections of scarce printed specimens as well as actual wood type to render these classic designs into fully functioning computer fonts for a wide array of design uses. The inclusion of HWT to the P22 roster is a perfect addition to the legacy of keeping classic designs relevant and usable in contemporary design.

contact: P22 type foundry/ jimy@p22.com

Play video: http://vimeo.com/43763778

Typecast Web Design Tool Creator, Design By Front, Acquired by Monotype Imaging

Monotype Imaging has acquired Design By Front Limited, developers of the Typecast™ application, a browser-based tool for designing Web pages with Web fonts.

Monotype acquired all outstanding shares of the privately-held, 14-person firm based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for up to $5.1 million in cash. Monotype paid $2.6 million in cash upon closing, with an additional $100,000 accrued pending final adjustments, with the remainder to be paid contingent on attainment of certain performance criteria through 2014.

The acquisition is expected to enhance Monotype's product offering, add complementary skill sets to the company's creative expertise, and strengthen Monotype's growth businesses, particularly in Web font services.

Employees of the newly acquired company will continue to work from their current locations, with the Belfast office serving as the main development hub for Typecast.

Currently in public beta, Typecast enables Web designers to combine, compare and style Web fonts quickly without performing screen captures in third-party applications or through hand coding. Users can visually style text directly within the browser, which offers more scope for creative experimentation, better typographic control as well as a simplified workflow, thanks to Typecast's ability to generate production-ready HTML and CSS code behind the scenes, as designers work.

Web designers are also free to make various adjustments such as font size, line spacing and coloring, in addition to employing OpenType® features including ligatures, small caps, fractions, lining and old style figures, and swash characters. Designers can try fonts with all pieces of content, not just small snippets. Side-by-side comparison and testing allow users to see at a glance what's working and what's not. Styles can be adjusted across entire projects with just a few clicks.

Typecast will be offered alongside Monotype's Web font solution, combining high-quality Web fonts with Typecast's easy-to-use typographic design capabilities. Monotype's Fonts.com Web Fonts features thousands of typefaces, including timeless designs such as the Trade Gothic®, Avenir® and ITC Avant Garde Gothic® families, in addition to cutting-edge selections and hand-tuned fonts. Typecast customers, however, can continue using any Web font solution that Typecast supports, including the Fonts.com Web Fonts, Typekit®, Fontdeck® and Google® Web Fonts offerings.

Typecast represents the latest innovation in Monotype's portfolio of products aimed at enhancing productivity and creative expression for today's graphics professionals. Last month, Monotype announced its SkyFonts™ service, now in private beta, which expands creative freedom through cloud-based, rental access to fully functional desktop fonts. Customers are able to try thousands of fonts for free within any desktop application and then rent selected fonts for as long as they're needed.

Further information about Typecast, including a video that details the application, is available at http://typecast.com/monotype-acquires-design-by-front.

Forward-looking statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements, including those related to expected growth in Monotype Imaging's offerings to manufacturers of consumer electronics devices, that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially. Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: risks associated with changes in the economic climate, risks associated with the company's ability to integrate the products, and risks associated with the company's ability to integrate the acquisition. Additional disclosure regarding these and other risks faced by the company is available in the company's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the risk factors included in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended Dec. 31, 2011, as amended, and subsequent filings. The financial information set forth in this press release reflects estimates based on information available at this time. While Monotype Imaging may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so, even if an estimate changes.

About Monotype Imaging
Monotype Imaging is a leading global provider of typefaces, technology and expertise that enable the best user experience and ensure brand integrity. Based in Woburn, Mass., Monotype provides customers worldwide with typeface solutions for a broad range of creative applications and consumer devices. The company's library and e-commerce sites are home to many of the most widely used typefaces — including the Helvetica®, Frutiger® and Univers® families — as well as the next generation of type designs. Further information is available at www.monotypeimaging.com.

Monotype is a trademark of Monotype Imaging Inc. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. SkyFonts is a trademark of Monotype Imaging Inc. Typecast is a trademark of Design By Front Limited. Avenir, Trade Gothic, Helvetica and Frutiger are trademarks of Linotype Corp. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions in the name of Linotype Corp. or its licensee Linotype GmbH. Univers is a trademark of Linotype GmbH registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. ITC Avant Garde Gothic is a trademark of International Typeface Corp. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. OpenType is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corp. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Typekit is either a registered trademark or trademark of Adobe Systems Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Fontdeck is a registered trademark of Clearleft Ltd. Google is a registered trademark of Google Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2012 Monotype Imaging Inc. All rights reserved.

Typeface Legibility Attributes (Credit Steve Matteson)

Monotype and MIT AgeLab co-present at Telematics Munich 2012 on the Impact of Typeface on Driver Demand. Monotype Imaging is a Gold sponsor of Telematics Munich 2012– Europe’s largest telematics conference, Oct. 29-30, at Munich Hilton Park Hotel.

Presentation: The Impact of Typeface on Future HMIs

Join Monotype’s Dave Gould and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) AgeLab Research Scientist Bryan Reimer as they present results of a new study that sheds light on how optimizing typeface design can reduce driver distraction. They’ll examine how focused typeface design can enhance human-machine interface (HMI) ergonomics to produce user interfaces that align with European Commission specifications.
Monday, Oct. 29 at 16.05-16.40, Conference Room A

Full results of the study are available in an MIT AgeLab white paper, in addition to a video that highlights the research and its findings.

Panel: Designing superior HMIs: HTML5, Smartphone Integration and Beyond

Vladimir Levantovsky, Monotype’s senior technology strategist will take part in a Telematics panel to examine the potential of new UI development tools such as HTML5 to enrich the user experience. The panel will examine how to boost the automaker’s scope for intuitive HMI solutions that aid in establishing multiple points of connectivity. Moderated by IHS iSuppli senior infotainment analyst, Luca De Ambroggi, the panel will include experts from Continental, RIM, Symphony Teleca, and Luxoft.
Monday, Oct. 29 at 16.40-17.15, Conference Room A

For more information about Monotype’s automotive expertise, click here.

View Video: http://bit.ly/XnLxf6
Read Blog: http://bit.ly/U8uEG8

Have you ever eyed a typeface for a specific job but were hesitant to purchase because you knew you wouldn’t have much use for it with future projects or clients? Have you ever been burned by a font purchase because it looked better on the website where you purchased it than it did in your document? If you’re only going to use for a short period of time, or want to take the plunge with a font before you try it in your design doc, try SkyFonts by Monotype Imaging, a beta service that enables users to try thousands of fonts for free within any desktop application and rent selected fonts for as long as they’re needed.

Monotype Imaging’s beta SkyFonts™ service expands creative freedom through cloud-based, rental access to fully functional fonts. Users are able to try thousands of fonts for free within any desktop application and rent selected fonts for as long as they’re needed.

Based on patent-pending technology, SkyFonts consists of a system extension, which runs in the background of Macintosh® or Windows® machines to activate and deactivate OpenType® fonts downloaded from the SkyFonts portal. Users are able to see and select from thousands of Monotype® typefaces listed on the portal. More than 1,500 fonts from the company’s Monotype, Linotype®, ITC® and Bitstream® libraries are available during beta, with more fonts to be added over time. Rented fonts can sync automatically to up to five machines registered to a single SkyFonts account.

The SkyFonts service operates on a credit-based system, whereby credits are used to rent fonts on a daily or monthly basis. Users can also try fonts for free for five minutes. When the trial or rental period expires or if the fonts are not renewed, they’re removed automatically from the user’s system. Beta participants will receive credits free of charge that will expire at the conclusion of the beta, at which point SkyFonts credits will be available for purchase. Pricing information will be released in the coming months.

To be among the first to experience SkyFonts and provide feedback, please visit SkyFonts.com. Over the coming weeks, Monotype intends to steadily add more participants into the beta program. Detailed information on SkyFonts and the beta program, in addition to frequently asked questions, are available at SkyFonts.com.

About Monotype Imaging
Monotype Imaging is a leading global provider of typefaces, technology and expertise that enable the best user experience and ensure brand integrity. Based in Woburn, Mass., Monotype Imaging provides customers worldwide with typeface solutions for a broad range of creative applications and consumer devices. The company’s library and e-commerce sites are home to many of the most widely used typefaces – including the Helvetica®, Frutiger and Univers® families – as well as the next generation of type designs. Further information is available at www.monotypeimaging.com.

Steve Matteson, Monotype Imaging’s creative type director, will present “Discovering the Goudy Legacy” at the 2012 APHA Conference – the 37th annual conference presented by The American Printing History Association (APHA), Oct. 12-13, at Columbia College Chicago, Center for Book and Paper Arts.

Frederic W. Goudy was a prolific American book and type designer. He is famous for his prodigious output, designing more than 100 typefaces between 1896 and 1941, which was considered the golden age of printing. His wife, Bertha M. Goudy, a self-taught book designer and compositor, was one of America’s pre-eminent female graphic designers. On Nov. 6, 1933, Time Magazine published “Art: Type Couple,” on the growing influence of the Goudys in typography and design. In “A Tribute to Bertha M. Goudy,” written by Frederic Goudy and composed by Matteson, Goudy wrote that his wife “enabled me to attain a measure of success which I could not have achieved without her.”

Matteson’s presentation will explore the impact this duo had on the state-of-the-art of graphic communications, printing, type design and typography. He’ll discuss how they lived, entertained and worked together. Matteson has an extensive background in the history of typography, design and printing. His work can be found everywhere from Android mobile products to e-readers such as the Barnes & Noble Nook device. He lectures frequently about the Goudy legacy and has created numerous Goudy revivals including the Friar Pro, Bertham Pro, and Goudy Ornate MT typefaces.

Saturday, Oct. 13 at 11:00 a.m.
Columbia College Chicago, Center for Book and Paper Arts
Register online or download the registration form.

Can certain typefaces mitigate driver distraction? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) AgeLab and the New England University Transportation Center set out to find the answer along with Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: TYPE), a leading global provider of typefaces, technology and expertise for creative applications and consumer devices. Initial results of an exploratory study show that certain type styles can reduce glance time – the time away from watching the road when driving while interacting with in-vehicle displays.

“The study indicates that the right typefaces can make a difference in reducing the amount of time not focused on the road, and therefore, gets us closer to our goal of improving driver safety,” said Bryan Reimer, research scientist at MIT AgeLab and one of the principal researchers of the project. “With digital information and entertainment increasingly available through in-vehicle displays, we know that text in cars is here to stay. Given this reality, text needs to be as easy to read as possible. Your eyes need to get back on the road very quickly for obvious reasons.”

Full results of the exploratory study are available in an MIT AgeLab white paper. Portions of the study will be presented by the MIT AgeLab at the Automotive User Interface (AutoUI 2012) conference in Portsmouth, N.H., Oct. 17-19, where Reimer is scheduled to speak.

During the study, drivers interacted with a multi-line menu display designed to model a text-rich automotive human machine interface (HMI). Data, including eye tracking measurements from 82 participants, were collected across two driving simulation experiments. Participants ranged in age from 36-75 and were asked to respond to a series of address, restaurant identification and content search menus displayed using two different typeface designs. Among the men in the first study, a humanist style typeface resulted in a 12.2 percent improvement on glance time as compared to a square grotesque typeface. Consistent with this observation, results from the second experiment, where the extent to which modifications in contrast (decreasing screen brightness) impacts glance behavior were assessed, a 9.1 percent improvement on glance time resulted among men using the humanist typeface, as compared to the square grotesque design. Among women in the first study, glance time between the two typeface designs was virtually equivalent. Women in the second study showed a 3.3 percent improvement on glance time with the humanist style over the square grotesque typeface.

“Across both experiments, it’s very notable that the two different testing conditions showed a lowering of visual demand of around 10.6 percent among the men,” said David Gould, director of product marketing at Monotype and part of the research team. “This difference in glance time represents approximately 50 feet in distance when traveling at U.S. highway speed. Although we’ve only scratched the surface and more typeface studies need to be done, we see this as a call to action for auto manufacturers, their suppliers and safety standards bodies to recognize that typeface style can represent a critical element of the driving experience.”

Monotype typeface experts believed that a typeface from the humanist genre would demonstrate distinct advantages in legibility in limited glance-time applications as compared to a square grotesque style. Humanist typefaces, such as the Frutiger® design which was used in the study, are characterized by open forms that lead the eye horizontally, making them ideal for reading small text. Humanist styles are noted for their highly distinguishable shapes, which help to lessen at-a-glance ambiguity. By contrast, square grotesque styles, such as the Eurostile® typeface which was also used in the study, adhere to a rectangular form that’s repeated in a large number of characters, resulting in letterforms with similar shapes, potentially increasing ambiguity. Other attributes, such as tight spacing inside the letterforms, can cause characters to appear blurry.

“The humanist genre is ideal for automotive interfaces. It’s deeply rooted in our psyche because it’s founded on the classic book typefaces we are so used to reading,” said Steve Matteson, creative type director at Monotype who was part of the research team. “Eurostile is actually very popular in automotive today – it conveys power and energy. However, the letterforms are mechanically rigid and compact, tightly spaced, and in some cases are nearly indistinguishable from each other.”

Government bodies, the auto industry and safety committees worldwide are addressing the need to reduce driver distraction risks. In the U.S., the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has proposed voluntary guidelines to limit potential distraction risks. Among the guidelines’ cited statistics are that 17 percent of all crashes reported to police (an estimated 899,000) in 2010 involved reports of distracted driving. Of these, 26,000 involved adjusting a device/control integral to the vehicle. The guidelines recommend that devices allow for drivers to complete tasks in two seconds or less while not watching the road, since glances longer than two seconds are correlated with an increased crash/near-crash risk.

About Monotype Imaging
Monotype Imaging is a leading global provider of typefaces, technology and expertise that enable the best user experience and ensure brand integrity. Based in Woburn, Mass., Monotype Imaging provides customers worldwide with typeface solutions for a broad range of creative applications and consumer devices. The company’s library and e-commerce sites are home to many of the most widely used typefaces – including the Helvetica®, Frutiger and Univers® families – as well as the next generation of type designs. Further information is available at www.monotypeimaging.com.

The Brand Perfect Tour London – Adventures in Retail is back in town for the third time. This Think Tank and Master Class will be held at the Royal Society of the Arts (RSA) on 11th October and will address the issues retailers are facing when attempting to create and deliver multi-channel experiences. Delegates will discover how brands such as John Lewis and McDonald's are faring in an increasingly technology driven environment, where they have found success and the challenges they have faced.
As technology advances, consumers have the ability to interact with the brand at any time and on any device. But converting these opportunities into sales, while at the same time creating a consistent experience across all platforms, can create considerable hurdles for designers, developers and brand managers.

Brand Perfect is an industry movement, conceived by Monotype Imaging, to help brands keep pace with technological change and learn how to deliver seamless interactive experiences. This year’s event will help brands determine how a creative idea can be executed and will look at the key drivers for creating a frictionless retail experience.

The event will feature presentations ranging from cross-platform media design to the ingredients developers require in a brief to ensure consistent campaigns. The keynote will be delivered by Martijn Bertisen, Head of Retail at Google, who will look at how disruptive technology is changing the face of retail and how consumers will respond.

Attendees will also gain hands-on insights into best practices, as they participate and contribute in the Brand Perfect Design Master Classes. With a brief from the fashion charity TRAID, delegates will be tasked with working on and improving the digital front-end experience of TRAID’s retail offering.

Finally, Kati Price, Head of Digital at The Design Council, will chair a panel discussion featuring Scott Morrison from Diesel, David Law of SomeOne, René Batsford of The Coffee Mob and Michael Aneto of Perfect Fools. The panel will discuss how technology has enabled brands historically, what’s coming around the corner and how brands can manage cultural change to keep pace with technological advances.

To learn more about the Brand Perfect event or join the Brand Perfect community to share ideas advice and best practice visit: http://brandperfect.org/

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