fonts.com blog
Archive for the ‘Type for Web’ Category

by Ryan Arruda

CustomerSpotlight_SasquatchFestival

Occurring over four days at the end of May, the Sasquatch! Music Festival features an eclectic lineup of musicians performing at the Gorge Amphitheater in Quincy, Wash.

The festival’s site is a typographic delight. Utilizing colossal headlines and navigation elements all in the affable ultra weight of the ITC Kabel family, the site is reminiscent of 19th century broadsides — large, type driven, and visually arresting.

Despite the presentation being set almost exclusively in not only the same typeface, but the same weight of that selection, the use of scale as well as the muted, earthy color palette provides an engaging and navigable hierarchy.

In a slight divergence, the site’s body copy is set in the Futura family’s book weight. While certainly an aesthetic cousin of the ITC Kabel designs, Futura is decidedly more austere, making it apt for longer passages of text where former’s visually boisterous character would be to the detriment of the reader. The pairing works especially well given the contrast in the weights employed.

The ITC Kabel family is available in five weights, from the reserved book style to the hulking (yet charismatic) ultra weight. The Futura family is available in an expansive 20 styles, with weights from light to extra bold, including companion condensed widths as well. Both typeface families are available for desktop licensing, as well as online use through subscriptions to the Fonts.com Web Fonts service.


by Ryan Arruda

Ireland.com is the online presence of Tourism Ireland, an organization marketing the Emerald Isle as a premiere travel destination.

The layout of the Ireland.com site is quite kinetic, with modular content blocks of varying size overlaid upon large, vibrant photographs. The site utilizes the Rockwell typeface family nearly exclusively; it’s employed not only for headlines, but subheads, body text and primary navigation as well. Italic styles are employed for secondary navigation.

Customer Spotlight: Ireland.com

While the heavier weights of this friendly slab serif design from Monotype are strong and sturdy, its lighter weights are excellent choices for body text. A visual complement to layout of the site itself, Rockwell’s geometric letterforms mirror the gridded, modular construction present on Ireland.com.

The Rockwell family is available in four weights from light to extra bold, along with matching italics. For further flexibility, the family is also available in two condensed styles as well. Try it for yourself through the subscriptions to the Fonts.com Web Fonts service.

 


by Darren Glenister

Google FontsWhile more and more Web design is being done in the browser, much of the initial prototyping is still handled within desktop design apps. This requires Web designers who are working with Web fonts to also acquire desktop versions of their fonts. It also put an onus on Web font providers such as Google and Fonts.com to provide easy access to desktop fonts.

Google Fonts

We’ve recently paired with the Google Fonts team to help streamline this process for their users. You can now use our SkyFonts utility on Fonts.com to download and sync Google fonts to your desktop machines. Start by installing SkyFonts on your Mac or PC. Next, visit our listing of Google Fonts on Fonts.com. Finally, click the Add to SkyFonts button next to any Google font you’d like to install. SkyFonts will quickly install it on your local machine. When updates to your fonts are released, including display enhancements or the addition of new characters, the latest data will be immediately synchronized to your machine.

Fonts.com Subscription TabIf you enjoy using SkyFonts, you’ll be pleased to hear that it can also be used in other ways on Fonts.com. Access the Subscription tab of any font listing or product page and look for the ‘Add to SkyFonts’ button. This button indicates that the font is one of the 15,000+ designs available for a free five minute trial. If you have a Fonts.com Web Fonts subscription, you may also be able to install the font as a mockup font, which allows you to use the font for a day for creating website mockups or as a desktop font which allows you to use a font for general design use for 30 days. After the time period expires, SkyFonts discretely removes the font from your machine without interruption to your tasks.

SkyFonts has garnered tremendous excitement since its release late last year. We hope to build upon this momentum as we extend the platform to Google Fonts and Fonts.com and simplify the design process for the growing number of designers working in digital and print.

 


by Johnathan Zsittnik

Fonts.com Web Fonts

At Monotype, we believe that type is the foundation of good design and that this principle holds true whether you’re designing for the Web, print or any other medium. With the aim of providing the tools necessary to deliver great typography for all media, today we proudly unveil a major enhancement to our Fonts.com Web Fonts subscriptions: desktop fonts. Led by our new Master subscription which includes unlimited downloads from our selection of 7,000+ desktop fonts, we now offer plans that provide everything you need to deliver incredible typography for digital and print design through one convenient subscription.

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Boundless experimentation. Limitless expression.
Our new Master subscription includes all of the amenities of our Professional plans such as our Typecast design app and the ability to self-host, with the new benefit of desktop fonts. Subscription options start at $100 per month or a little bit cheaper if you sign up for an annual or three year plan. If you’re on a Professional plan with 2.5M pageviews or more and are already paying this much, we have good news for you. Your subscription has automatically been upgraded to Master, meaning you’ll enjoy unlimited desktop fonts. You won’t have to pay more, you’ll just get more.

With the following components, our Master subscription delivers a complete typographic solution for digital and print design:
•    Millions of pageviews – The base plan includes 2.5M pageviews. Add more as needed.
•    Typecast – a seat of our powerful, browser-based app for designing with Web fonts.
•    Mockup fonts – desktop versions of your Web fonts that can be used for creating mockups of your websites.

We believe the Master subscription provides an incredible value – particularly for those who consume a lot of type or with high traffic websites. However, if you have lesser demands, we’ve also made notable enhancements to our other plans. Most notably, our Standard subscription has been bolstered with a selection of mockup fonts while our Professional subscription includes an allowance of mockup fonts and desktop fonts. Here’s a closer look at the contents of each plan.

Fonts.com Subscription Plans and Pricing

Powered by SkyFonts
Released last year to much acclaim, our SkyFonts platform uses patent-pending technology to temporarily install fonts and synchronize them across multiple workstations. We’re very excited to broaden the reach of this powerful tool by bringing it to Fonts.com. SkyFonts can be used to install mockup fonts and desktop fonts included with your subscription. You can also use SkyFonts to try most fonts available through the Web font service for free for five minutes. Even free plan subscribers can use SkyFonts for this purpose. More on this in tomorrow’s post, but Google Fonts users will be pleased to know they can now use SkyFonts to install desktop versions of Google Web fonts.

If customer requests are any indication, font trials, mockup fonts and desktop fonts will be a welcome addition to our plans. When paired with Typecast, we believe we offer a typographic solution that will cover your type needs throughout your entire digital or print workflows. If you’re in the market for a type solution, we encourage you to try a free plan. And for those already working with Fonts.com Web Fonts, consider ‘graduating’ to a Master subscription.

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by Alan Tam

I’m pleased to announce a collection of typefaces specifically crafted for high-quality e-reading experiences, particularly for content displayed at smaller text sizes.

Intended for Web and digital content publishers and device manufacturers, the suite offers some of the most widely used typefaces traditionally used for print that have been designed and tuned for ease of readability and optimized performance on the Web and across devices. Classics like the Monotype Baskerville, ITC Galliard and Sabon designs were redrawn to improve their readability in various screen environments.

Our 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. These typefaces are available now through our Fonts.com Web Fonts subscribers for use on the Web.

eText Fonts

All typefaces in the collection have also been hand-hinted to display as clearly as possible across mobile devices from smartphones to tablets and e-readers. For device manufacturers, these fonts also take advantage of Monotype’s Edge™ tuning technology, enabling publishers to create and deliver high-quality, readable text across your device platforms and formats, including E Ink screens. The fonts look and perform best with devices that use Monotype’s iType font engine.

We intend to release more  fonts on an ongoing basis as part of our Monotype Portfolio for Digital Publishing, one of our value-added suites of typefaces and technologies designed to meet the requirements of customers in specific market segments. Our Monotype Portfolio for Digital Publishing addresses the needs of customers who are developing and delivering content for immersive reading on e-readers, tablets and other devices.

Our initial offering includes these popular designs:

Amasis eText (4 weights)

ITC Galliard eText  (4 weights)

Malabar eText (4 weights)

Monotype Baskerville eText (4 weights)

Neue Helvetica eText (4 weights)

Palatino eText (4 weights)

PMN Caecilia eText (4 weights)

Sabon eText (4 weights)

Ysobel eText (4 weights)

You can view the eText fonts here.

The Monotype eText typefaces can be licensed as Web fonts through our Fonts.com Web Fonts subscriptions. They are also ideal choices for e-book/publication titles, desktop publishing or as system fonts that are embedded in consumer electronics devices. Please contact Monotype for licensing details.

 


by Allan Haley


Xenois

There are common themes that run through each of Erik Faulhaber’s typeface designs: breadth of family size, applicability to a wide range of uses, and a search for character perfection. His Generis design is a system of four compatible families of slab serif, serif, sans serif and a “simple” sans in the spirit of American gothic typefaces. Faulhaber’s goal for Generis was to develop a suite of “generic” designs that could be used for a variety of design projects.

Generis was followed by the Aeonis family; a very large collection of typefaces inspired by Greek lapidary inscriptions and modern industrial design. Again, minimalist character construction and a variety of weights and proportions provide for typographic versatility. The newest offering from Faulhaber, his Xenois design, is the beginnings of a large super family of typefaces aimed at solving a diversity of typographic problems.

According to Faulhaber, “I melded the basic design characteristics of Generis and Aeonis to create the foundation for the Xenois family. The result is a typeface collection that is sufficiently large enough to be used in a multitude of design projects, distinctive in its individual character designs – yet minimalist in structure.”

The sub-families within the Xenois series interrelate perfectly. Proportions and underlying character shapes are completely compatible within all the designs. They have a common and obvious design bond, yet each is able to stand on its own as a distinct typestyle.

Simple shapes, a large x-height and squared shoulders, mark Xenois. Each sub-family is comprised of five weights from light to heavy, and all have companion italics. Xenois Sans is a design reduced to its simplest character shapes. Xenois Serif has serifs – but they are small, and only the most essential to ease of reading have been included in the design. Xenois Semi echoes the shapes and proportions of Xenois Sans but stroke weights have been modulated.

The complete Xenois family is available as desktop fonts from the Fonts.com and Linotype.com websites. It is also available for online use through subscriptions to the Fonts.com Web Fonts service.

Click here to learn more about – and to license – the Xenois family.

Allan Haley
Allan Haley is Director of Words & Letters at Monotype Imaging. Here he is responsible for strategic planning and creative implementation of just about everything related to typeface designs.



by Ryan Arruda

Here’s a ranked listing of Fonts.com Web Fonts’ top 100 most used Web fonts for February 2013:

Neue Helvetica
Trade Gothic
Helvetica
Gill Sans
Avenir
Univers
DIN Next
Futura
Avenir Next
Neue Frutiger
Frutiger
Optima
ITC Avant Garde Gothic
Linotype Univers
News Gothic
Trade Gothic Next
Century Gothic
Monotype News Gothic
Futura T
Arial
ITC Franklin Gothic
Neo Sans
PMN Caecilia
Agilita
DIN 1451
Rockwell
Linotype Didot
Soho
ITC Lubalin Graph
New Century Schoolbook
ITC Garamond
ITC Conduit
Neue Haas Grotesk
VAG Rounded
Frutiger Next
News Gothic No.2
Soho Gothic
Univers Next
Abadi
Palatino
ITC Officina Sans
Sabon
Adelle
ITC Century
Gill Sans Infant
Eurostile LT
Calibri
Laurentian
Sackers Gothic
Trade Gothic Next Soft Rounded
Twentieth Century
Neue Helvetica Arabic
Garamond 3
Harmonia Sans
Frutiger Serif
ITC Fenice
Camphor
Bauer Bodoni
Neue Helvetica eText
Optima nova
ITC American Typewriter
Times
Candara
Eurostile Next
ITC Officina Serif
Helvetica World
Novecento
Yakout
Plantin
Gazette
Clarendon
MSung
Monotype Baskerville
Museo Slab
Cachet
Biome
Corporate S
ITC Franklin
Slate
Sassoon Sans
Bembo
Museo Sans
Albany
Compatil Text
Klint
Georgia Pro
Huxley Vertical
Baskerville
Monotype Garamond
Akko
ITC New Baskerville
Corporate E
Amasis
Alternate Gothic
Museo
Memphis
Egyptian Slate
Neuzeit Office
ITC Bodoni Seventytwo
MHei

Ryan Arruda
Ryan Arruda is the Web Content Strategist at Monotype Imaging. Ryan holds a bachelor’s degree in film studies from Clark University, and an MFA in graphic design from RISD.



by Johnathan Zsittnik

Our Fonts.com Web Fonts service has always provided great typefaces. Now it’s even easier to create great typography – thanks to the addition of the Typecast  design tool.

Subscribe or upgrade to a Professional subscription now.

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New Professional subscriptions from $40/month

Fonts.com Web Fonts Professional PlanExcellent news: We’ve redefined our Professional subscriptions to make them more affordable, plus we’re including a free Typecast subscription (worth $29 per month) with every Professional plan. From new fonts and our most popular fonts hand-tuned for the Web, to new technology such as OpenType feature support and new services like Typecast, we’re always adding more to our Fonts.com Web Fonts subscriptions and will continue this trend going forward.

Our new Professional plans start at just $40 per month and include 1M pageviews per month, but you can add additional pageviews as needed. Like before, Professional plans also include the self-hosting option and desktop fonts for creating website mockups. If you’re currently subscribed to a Professional plan or a 1M, 1.5M or 2M pageview Standard plan, we’ll upgrade your account automatically to make life easy.

Create better Web typography with less hassle

Just as exciting is the free Typecast subscription you’ll get with your Pro plan. This tool could completely reshape the way you build websites.

3_color palette

Typecast is a powerful, browser-based design app that takes the pain out of designing with Web fonts. It lets you view, pair and compare Web fonts in the browser on full-length text without having to create screenshots, assemble comps or hand-code your 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 you to quickly share Web-ready designs with developer colleagues and get more accurate prototypes in return. In the video below, Typecast’s Creative Director Jamie Neely offers you a look at the app in action:

Typecast — Experiment with Type from Typecast on Vimeo.

Typecast + Fonts.com Web Fonts: the perfect type pairing

Best of all, Fonts.com and Typecast work great together. You can design with every one of our 20,000 Web fonts in Typecast. Your Fonts.com account is linked to Typecast, so getting your design’s Web fonts onto your website is simple. When you’re ready 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 projects.

We want to play a part in reshaping typography on the Web, and feel this combination will help you make sound typographic decisions and refinements with the Fonts.com typefaces you know and love. To our new and current subscribers, we hope you enjoy Typecast. We sincerely believe it will help you create far better designs. We also believe it makes Fonts.com Web Fonts a far better offering and remain committed to growing these plans  with additional great services like Typecast as your needs evolve.

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Johnathan Zsittnik
Johnathan Zsittnik is the eCommerce Marketing Manager at Monotype Imaging. Johnathan holds both a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a master’s degree in business administration from Bentley University.



by Allan Haley

Italics are the aristocrats of type: elegant, beautiful, and dignified. Their history can be traced back to a time before there were fonts of type, when only scribes and the most educated communicated with the written word.

Traditional typographic history would have us believe that italic types were invented by Aldus Manutius in the late 15th century as a space saving device. The story is told that Manutius hired Francesco Griffo da Bologna to develop a cursive type for a new series of small books that he was planning to produce. It is said that Manutius’ goal was to reduce paper costs and thus make his publications less expensive. Then, as now, paper was expensive, but saving paper was not the goal in the creating of italic type – and Manutius never sold an inexpensive book.

Mantika Sans Italics

Printers of the time spoke of “writing” a typeset page as if it were a letter to a friend. As this somewhat unusual terminology implies, the typeface provided a much closer link between printer and reader than it does today. Certain styles of type were reserved for specific groups of readers. Manutius was not so much trying to save space with the development of his italic, than he was appealing to the educated, worldly, and wealthy readers of the early Italian Renaissance (who’s handwriting style the italic type mimicked). As for the books’ size, Aldus’ goal was to sell books that were portable.

Jürgen Weltin also had something special in mind when he drew the italics for his Mantika™ Sans typeface family. The characters are inclined at only 4.5° (the usual angle for italics is between 10° and 12°) and, as a result, appear to be almost upright. In contrast to this, character shapes are quite fluid and reminiscent of brush-drawn scripts. The overall effect is enhanced by the script-like terminals. “Within the variety of forms of the italics there are many contrasting elements that create dynamism,” Weltin explains. “The result is a pleasant, but distinctive, interaction between the rounded and almost upright forms.” Mantika Sans Italic, in addition to being a perfect complement to the Roman designs, can also be used on its own to set display headlines and short text passages.

Mantika Sans is available in two weights; regular and bold, both of which have corresponding italics sets. It has been designed so that the widths of the four related cuts are identical, meaning that a change of font within a single layout will have no effect on line length or layout consistency.

Click here to learn more about – and to license – the Mantika family

Allan Haley
Allan Haley is Director of Words & Letters at Monotype Imaging. Here he is responsible for strategic planning and creative implementation of just about everything related to typeface designs.



by Ryan Arruda

Here’s a ranked listing of Fonts.com Web Fonts’ top 100 most used Web fonts for January 2013:

Neue Helvetica
Helvetica
Avenir
Gill Sans
Trade Gothic
Univers
Futura
DIN Next
Neue Frutiger
Avenir Next
Frutiger
Linotype Univers
ITC Avant Garde Gothic
Optima
PMN Caecilia
Trade Gothic Next
Century Gothic
News Gothic
Arial
Monotype News Gothic
Neo Sans
Agilita
DIN 1451
ITC Franklin Gothic
Linotype Didot
Rockwell
Univers Next
New Century Schoolbook
ITC Lubalin Graph
Soho
ITC Garamond
ITC Conduit
Neue Haas Grotesk
News Gothic No.2
ITC Century
Abadi
Adelle
Frutiger Next
Eurostile LT
Sabon
VAG Rounded
ITC Officina Sans
Calibri
Soho Gothic
Twentieth Century
ITC Fenice
Trade Gothic Next Soft Rounded
Garamond 3
Laurentian
Harmonia Sans
Neue Helvetica Arabic
Gill Sans Infant
Bauer Bodoni
Neue Helvetica eText
Sackers Gothic
Candara
Frutiger Serif
Eurostile Next
MSung
Biome
Palatino
Sassoon Sans
Slate
Yakout
Novecento
ITC Officina Serif
Times
Museo Slab
Clarendon
Klint
Helvetica World
Cachet
Bembo
Futura T
ITC Franklin
ITC Bodoni Seventytwo
Compatil Text
ITC American Typewriter
Albany
Georgia Pro
Rotis II Sans
Serifa
Monotype Garamond
Baskerville
Plantin
ITC Stone Sans
Glypha
Museo Sans
Neuzeit Office
ITC New Baskerville
Gazette
Heisei Kaku Gothic
Iridium
Memphis
Akko
Corporate S
Mitra
CHei2
Egyptian Slate
Basic Commercial

Ryan Arruda
Ryan Arruda is the Web Content Strategist at Monotype Imaging. Ryan holds a bachelor’s degree in film studies from Clark University, and an MFA in graphic design from RISD.