Lanston Monotype
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Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in
Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
by
Tolbert Lanston Tolbert Lanston (February 3, 1844 – February 18, 1913) was the American founder of Monotype, inventing a mechanical typesetting system patented in 1887 and the first hot metal typesetter a few years later. Life Tolbert Lanston was born int ...
, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital
typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text for publication, display, or distribution by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or '' glyphs'' in digital systems representing '' characters'' (letters and other ...
and
typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...
design for use with
consumer electronics Consumer electronics, also known as home electronics, are electronic devices intended for everyday household use. Consumer electronics include those used for entertainment, Communication, communications, and recreation. Historically, these prod ...
devices. Based in
Woburn, Massachusetts Woburn ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 40,876 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Woburn is located north of Boston. Woburn uses Massachusetts' ...
, the company has been responsible for many developments in
printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ...
technology—in particular the Monotype machine, which was a fully mechanical hot metal typesetter, that produced texts automatically, all single type. Monotype was involved in the design and production of many typefaces in the 20th century. Monotype developed many of the most widely used typeface designs, including
Times New Roman Times New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned for use by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931. It has become one of the most popular typefaces of all time and is installed on most personal computers. The typeface was conceived by Stanl ...
,
Gill Sans Gill Sans is a Sans-serif#Humanist, humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype Imaging, Monotype in 1928. It is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Johnston (typeface), Underground Alphabet", t ...
, and
Arial Arial is a sans-serif typeface in the Sans-serif#Neo-grotesque, neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows after Windows 3.1, as well as in other Microsoft programs, Apple's macOS, and ma ...
. Via acquisitions including Linotype GmbH,
International Typeface Corporation The International Typeface Corporation (ITC) was a type manufacturer founded in New York in 1970 by Aaron Burns, Herb Lubalin and Edward Rondthaler. The company was one of the world's first type foundries to have no history in the production of ...
,
Bitstream A bitstream (or bit stream), also known as binary sequence, is a sequence of bits. A bytestream is a sequence of bytes. Typically, each byte is an 8-bit quantity, and so the term octet stream is sometimes used interchangeably. An octet may ...
,
FontShop FontShop International was an international manufacturer of digital typefaces (fonts), based in Berlin. It was one of the largest digital type foundries. The ''FontFont'' library of fonts contains designs by 160 type designers, among them renow ...
,
URW URW may refer to: * Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield * Union of Russian Workers * United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum and Plastic Workers of America or United Rubber Workers of America, North American trade union * UnReal World, survival video game * Unrestricte ...
, Hoefler & Co., Fontsmith, and Colophon Foundry, the company has gained the rights to major font families including
Helvetica Helvetica, also known by its original name Neue Haas Grotesk, is a widely-used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the f ...
, ITC Franklin Gothic,
Optima Optima is a Humanist sans-serif, humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf and released by the D. Stempel AG foundry, Frankfurt, West Germany in 1958. Though classified as a sans-serif, Optima has a subtle swelling at the terminals s ...
,
ITC Avant Garde ITC Avant Garde Gothic is a geometric sans serif font family based on the logo font used in the '' Avant Garde'' magazine. Herb Lubalin devised the logo concept and its companion headline typeface, and then he and Tom Carnase, a partner in Luba ...
,
Palatino Palatino is an old-style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf, initially released in 1949 by the Stempel foundry and later by other companies, most notably the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. Palatino is optimised for legibility with open ...
, FF DIN and Gotham. It also owns
MyFonts MyFonts is a digital fonts distributor, based in Woburn, Massachusetts. It was created by Bitstream Inc., launched in September 1999 (during the ATypI conference in Boston), and started selling fonts in March 2000. In November 2011, Monotype Im ...
, used by many independent font design studios. The company is owned by HGGC, a
private equity firm A private equity firm or private equity company (often described as a financial sponsor) is an investment management company that provides financial backing and makes investments in the private equity of a Startup company, startup or of an existin ...
.


History


Monotype System

The Lanston Monotype Machine Company was founded by
Tolbert Lanston Tolbert Lanston (February 3, 1844 – February 18, 1913) was the American founder of Monotype, inventing a mechanical typesetting system patented in 1887 and the first hot metal typesetter a few years later. Life Tolbert Lanston was born int ...
in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
, in 1887. Lanston had a patented mechanical method of punching out metal types from cold strips of metal which were set (hence ''typesetting'') into a
matrix Matrix (: matrices or matrixes) or MATRIX may refer to: Science and mathematics * Matrix (mathematics), a rectangular array of numbers, symbols or expressions * Matrix (logic), part of a formula in prenex normal form * Matrix (biology), the m ...
for the
printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in whi ...
. In 1896, Lanston patented the first
hot metal typesetting In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mo ...
machine and Monotype issued Modern Condensed, its first
typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...
. The licenses for the Lanston type library have been acquired by P22, a digital
type foundry A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and ...
based in Buffalo, New York. In a search for funding, the company set up a branch in
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
around 1897 under the name Lanston Monotype Corporation Ltd, generally known as the Monotype Corporation. In 1899, a new factory was built in Salfords near Redhill in
Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...
where it has been located for over a century. The company was of sufficient size to justify the construction of its own Salfords railway station. The Monotype machine worked by casting letters from "hot metal" (molten metal) as pieces of type. Thus spelling mistakes could be corrected by adding or removing individual letters. This was particularly useful for "quality" printing - such as books. In contrast, the
Linotype machine The Linotype machine ( ) is a "line casting" machine used in printing which is manufactured and sold by the former Mergenthaler Linotype Company and related It was a hot metal typesetting system that cast lines of metal type for one-time use. Li ...
—a direct competitor—formed a complete line of type in one bar. Editing these required replacing an entire line (and if the replacement ran onto another line, the rest of the paragraph). But Linotype slugs were easier to handle if moving a complete section of text around a page. This was more useful for "quick" printing - such as newspapers. The typesetting machines were continually improved in the early years of the 20th century, with a
typewriter A typewriter is a Machine, mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of Button (control), keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an i ...
style keyboard for entering the type being introduced in 1906. This arrangement addressed the need to vary the space between words so that all lines were the same length. The keyboard operator types the copy, each key punching holes in a roll of paper tape that will control the separate caster. A drum on the keyboard indicates to the operator the space required for each line. This information is also punched in the paper. Before fitting the tape to the caster it is turned over so that the first holes read on each line set the width of the variable space. The subsequent holes determine the position of a frame, or die case, that holds the set of matrices for the face being used. Each matrix is a rectangle of bronze recessed with the shape of the letter. Once the matrix is positioned over the mould that forms the body of the type being cast, molten type metal is injected. To promote its image, the company ran a magazine, the ''Monotype Recorder'', over most of the twentieth century, and also ran a compositor (typesetter operator) training school in London. In 1936, the company was floated on the
London Stock Exchange The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange based in London, England. the total market value of all companies trading on the LSE stood at US$3.42 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Paul's Cath ...
and became the Monotype Corporation Ltd. Board members of the company included future Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986), was a British statesman and Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Nickn ...
, Vice-Chairman, and other businessmen connected to publishing.


Typefounding

Monotype's role in design history is not merely due to their supply of printing equipment but due to their commissioning of many of the most important typefaces of the twentieth century. The company's first face, issued in 1896, was a rather generic design, now named ''Modern'', influenced by
Bodoni Bodoni (, ) is the name given to the serif typefaces first designed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) in the late eighteenth century and frequently revived since. Bodoni's typefaces are classified as Didone (typography), Didone or modern. Bo ...
and
Scotch Roman Scotch Roman is a class of typefaces popular in the early nineteenth century, particularly in the United States and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom. These typefaces were modeled on a design known as Pica No. 2 from the Edinburgh foundry of ...
designs. However, by the 1920s, the company's British branch was well known for commissioning popular, historically influenced designs that revived some of the best typefaces of the past, with particular attention to the early period of printing from the Renaissance to the late eighteenth century. This series of releases was a major part of the typographic renaissance of the period, an expansion of the
Arts and Crafts movement The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America. Initiat ...
interest in printing into the more workaday world of general-purpose printing. Key executives of the company in this period included historian and adviser
Stanley Morison Stanley Arthur Morison (6 May 1889 – 11 October 1967) was a British typographer, printing executive and historian of printing. Largely self-educated, he promoted higher standards in printing and an awareness of the best printing and typefaces ...
, publicity manager
Beatrice Warde Beatrice Lamberton Warde (September 20, 1900 – September 16, 1969, née Beatrice Becker) was a twentieth-century writer and scholar of typography. As a marketing manager for the British Monotype Corporation, she was influential in the deve ...
, engineering expert Frank Hinman Pierpont and draughtsman Fritz Stelzer (the latter two both recruited from the German printing industry, although Pierpont was American), under managing director William Isaac Burch, who led the company from 1924 to 1942. Despite tensions within the company, particularly between the historically minded faction of Morison and Warde and Pierpont in Salfords, notable typefaces commissioned included
Gill Sans Gill Sans is a Sans-serif#Humanist, humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype Imaging, Monotype in 1928. It is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Johnston (typeface), Underground Alphabet", t ...
,
Times New Roman Times New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned for use by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931. It has become one of the most popular typefaces of all time and is installed on most personal computers. The typeface was conceived by Stanl ...
and Perpetua, and the company maintained high standards of development allowing it to produce designs with good spacing, careful adaptation of the same basic design to different sizes and even color on the page, essential qualities for balanced body text. Historian
James Mosley James Mosley (born 1935) is a retired librarian and historian whose work has specialised in the history of printing and letter design. The main part of Mosley's career has been 42 years as Librarian of the St Bride Printing Library in London, whe ...
, who worked closely with Monotype in the 1950s and onwards, has commented:
The English Monotype Corporation of the interwar years looks in retrospect rather like one of the great public bodies of the period, for example the
British Broadcasting Corporation The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public broadcasting, public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved in ...
or London Transport... benevolent monopolies ruled by autocrats who revelled in the role of patron of the arts on a scale exceeding that of Italian Renaissance princes.

Monotype enjoyed, in Britain at least, something approaching a monopoly in book and better-quality magazine typesetting.. .Monotype exploited the glamor of its new typefaces... with brilliant publicity, for which Morison and his devoted young American recruit Beatrice Warde were partly responsible.
The American branch lagged behind the British in artistic reputation. Their designs are now often rather obscure, since (unlike products from the British branch) few have been made widely available through bundling with
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
products. The company employed
Frederic Goudy Frederic William Goudy ( ; March 8, 1865 – May 11, 1947) was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers ...
on several serif font projects which were well received at the time, and on staff type designer Sol Hess, who created the geometric sans-serif Twentieth Century as a competitor to the German Futura.


Decline

Monotype entered a decline from the 1960s onwards. This was caused by the reduction in use of hot metal typesetting and replacement with
phototypesetting Phototypesetting is a method of Typesetting, setting type which uses photography to make columns of Sort (typesetting), type on a scroll of photographic paper. It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publ ...
and
lithography Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the miscibility, immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by ...
in mass-market printing. This offered considerable efficiencies, such as no need to print books from solid metal type, quicker setting of type and a reduced number of operators needed. It also promised a more diverse and exciting range of fonts than that possible with hot metal, where it is necessary to own life-size matrices for every size of every font to be used. Monotype made the transition to cold type and began to market its own "Monophoto" phototypesetting systems, but these suffered from problems. Its first devices were heavily based on hot metal machinery, with glass pictures of characters which would be reproduced on photographic paper replacing the matrices used to cast metal type. While this reduced the need for retraining, the resulting devices often set type slowly compared to legacy-free next-generation devices from providers such as Photon and
Compugraphic Compugraphic Corporation, commonly called cg, was an American producer of typesetting systems and phototypesetting equipment, based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, a few miles from where it was founded. This company is distinct from Compugraphics, ...
, and were often more expensive. Its devices were slow to incorporate use of electronics, and while its type library was of high quality, changing tastes and the development of other companies' libraries competed with this. Its type library was also easily pirated, since fonts have only limited copyright protection. The company was eventually split into three divisions: Monotype International, which manufactured spinning mirror switched laser beam phototypesetters; Monotype Limited, which continued the hot metal machines; and Monotype Typography, which designed and sold typefaces. A research and development department was set up in
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...
to isolate it from day to day production issues. Monotype in the UK continued to enjoy prestige through the 1970s with the patronage of major British printers such as the university presses at Oxford and Cambridge; it also enjoyed some success with its Lasercomp laser-based typesetting system from the 1970s onwards, developed by the Cambridge research group. However, new technology and finally publishing software such as
Quark XPress QuarkXPress is desktop publishing software for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment. It runs on macOS and Windows. It was first released by Quark, Inc. in 1987 and is still owned and ...
and
Aldus PageMaker Aldus PageMaker (later Adobe PageMaker) is a desktop publishing computer program introduced in 1985 by the Aldus Corporation on the Apple Macintosh. The combination of the Macintosh's graphical user interface, PageMaker publishing software, and t ...
running on general-purpose computers ate away at its competitiveness in the market of complete typesetting solutions by the 1990s. Monotype, however, has continued in business, for instance marketing typeface designs to third-party buyers, computing companies such as Microsoft (many fonts on Microsoft computers in particular are Monotype-designed) and companies and organisations such as London Transport and the UK parliament requiring custom digital typefaces. Much of its metal type equipment and archives were donated to the
Type Museum The Type Archive (formerly the Type Museum) was a collection of artefacts representing the legacy of Typesetting, type founding in England, whose famous type foundries and composing systems supplied the world with type in over 300 languages. The ...
collection in London; other materials are held at St Bride Library. The history and decline of the hot metal American Lanston Monotype Corporation is described in full detail by Richard L. Hopkins, in ''Tolbert Lanston and the Monotype. The origin of digital Typesetting''. In 2004,
P22 type foundry P22 Type Foundry is a digital type foundry and letterpress printing studio based in Rochester, New York. The company was created in 1994 in Buffalo, New York by co-founders Richard Kegler and Carima El-Behairy. The company is best known for its t ...
bought the "Lanston Type Co." from
Gerald Giampa Gerald Giampa (March 4, 1950 – June 24, 2009) was a printer, typographer and author. Biography When Gerald Giampa was born on 4 March 1950, his parents lived in a tent in Duncan, British Columbia. His interest in printing books came from his g ...
. The history of the English brand can be found in: Judy Slinn, Sebastian Carter, Richard Southall: ''The History of the Monotype Corporation'', Vanbrugh Press & Printing historical Society, Woodstock, London, 2014,


Consolidation, reorganization, and expansion

In 1992, The Monotype Corporation Ltd. appointed Administrative Receivers on 5 March and four days later Monotype Typography Ltd. was established. Cromas Holdings, an investment company based in Switzerland, bought the Monotype Corporation Ltd. and Monotype Inc. (excluding Monotype Typography) and five other direct subsidiary companies in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Singapore. Monotype Systems Ltd. was the adopted name for the new organization with Peter Purdy as Chairman, the name Monotype was under license from Monotype Typography Ltd which retained the trademark Monotype. Monotype Systems Ltd. focused on selling
pre-press Prepress is the term used in the printing and publishing industries for the processes and procedures that occur between the creation of a print layout and the final printing. The prepress process includes the preparation of artwork for press, media ...
software and hardware,
raster image processor A raster image processor (RIP) is a component used in a printing system which produces a raster image also known as a bitmap. Such a bitmap is used by a later stage of the printing system to produce the printed output. The input may be a page ...
s and workflow. Cromas Holdings reorganized its publishing interests with the formation of the International Publishing Asset Holding Ltd. effectively controlling Monotype Systems Ltd., QED Technology Ltd., and GB Techniques Ltd. The company acquired Berthold Communications; the UK subsidiary of the German composing equipment supplier. In June 2002, Monotype Systems Limited was re-branded, IPA Systems Limited, as this marked the end of the existing trademark licence with Monotype Corporation. In the US Monotype Inc became alfaQuest Technologies Limited. Both companies still sell pre-press software and hardware. In 1999,
Agfa Agfa-Gevaert N.V. (Agfa) is a Belgian-German multinational corporation that develops, manufactures, and distributes Analog photography, analogue and digital imaging products, software, and systems. The company began as a dye manufacturer in 1867 ...
-Compugraphic acquired the company, which was renamed Agfa Monotype. In late 2004, after six years under the Agfa Corporation, the Monotype assets were acquired by
TA Associates TA Associates Management, L.P. is an American private equity firm and was one of the early modern-era private equity firms in the United States. The firm leads buyouts and minority recapitalizations of profitable growth companies. TA invests acros ...
, a private equity investment firm based in
Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
. The company was incorporated as Monotype Imaging, with a focus on the company's traditional core competencies of typography and professional printing. Monotype was the first company to produce a digital version of the handwritten
Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
script, Persian Nasta'liq. A Chinese "keyboard" was developed to typeset Chinese characters; it consisted of a book with a stylus. As the pages were turned, the page number was detected electrically and this was combined with the position of the character selected by the stylus on a large grid. In 2003, the company launched Fontwise, the first software to audit desktops for licensed and unlicensed (not necessarily illegal) fonts. On 2 October 2006, the company acquired Linotype GmbH, a subsidiary of
Heidelberger Druckmaschinen Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (), sometimes referred to as Heidelberg or Heideldruck for short, is a German precision mechanical engineering company with registered offices in Heidelberg (Baden-Württemberg) and headquarters in nearby Wiesloch-W ...
. On 18 September 2006, the company acquired China Type Design Limited, a typeface design and production company based in Hong Kong. CTDL was responsible for developing
Microsoft JhengHei Microsoft JhengHei (微軟正黑體) is a sans-serif typeface included in Windows Vista or later and Microsoft Office 2007. It follows the Standard Form of National Characters prescribed by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China (Taiwan ...
, the default traditional Chinese interface font for
Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
. The deal also secured an exclusive relationship with Creative Calligraphy Center (CCC), a font production company in
Zhuhai Zhuhai; Yale romanization of Cantonese, Yale: ''Jyūhói''; Chinese postal romanization, also known as Chuhai is a prefecture-level city located on the west bank of the Pearl River (China), Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern ...
, China, with 30 production specialists. On 11 December 2009, the company acquired Planetweb, a developer specialized in applications and development tools for embedded devices. On 8 December 2010, the company acquired
Ascender Corporation Ascender Corporation was a digital typeface foundry and software development company in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Illinois. It was founded in 2004 by a team of software developers, typographers, and people previously involved in dev ...
, a provider of fonts and font technologies used in computers, mobile devices, consumer electronics and software products. In March 2012, the company acquired Bitstream Inc., a digital font retailer. The deal also gave Monotype ownership of the
MyFonts MyFonts is a digital fonts distributor, based in Woburn, Massachusetts. It was created by Bitstream Inc., launched in September 1999 (during the ATypI conference in Boston), and started selling fonts in March 2000. In November 2011, Monotype Im ...
font sale website used by many independent designers and its WhatTheFont recognition service. On 15 July 2014, the company acquired
FontShop FontShop International was an international manufacturer of digital typefaces (fonts), based in Berlin. It was one of the largest digital type foundries. The ''FontFont'' library of fonts contains designs by 160 type designers, among them renow ...
, the last large independent digital font retailer. In October 2019 Monotype changed ownership to HGGC, a
private equity firm A private equity firm or private equity company (often described as a financial sponsor) is an investment management company that provides financial backing and makes investments in the private equity of a Startup company, startup or of an existin ...
. A few months later, on January 27, 2020, the company added FontSmith, an independent
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
foundry, to its font catalog. On May 18, 2020, Monotype made another major expansion by purchasing
URW Type Foundry URW Type Foundry GmbH (formerly URW++ Design & Development GmbH) is a type foundry based in Hamburg, Germany. The foundry has its own library with more than 500 font families. The company specializes in customized corporate typefaces and the dev ...
from Global Graphics plc. In late 2021 it continued its expansion by acquiring iconic New York company Hoefler & Co. (created by
Jonathan Hoefler Jonathan Hoefler (; born 1970) is an American type designer. Hoefler founded the Hoefler Type Foundry in 1989, a type foundry in New York. Early life Jonathan Hoefler was born on August 22, 1970, in New York City to Doreen Benjamin and Char ...
in 1989), thus increasing its library with well-known fonts such as Gotham, Knockout, Mercury, Sentinel, Chronicle, Decimal, and Archer. On 19 July 2023, Monotype acquired Japanese type foundry Fontworks. On 4 May 2023, Monotype Corporation acquired 39 typefaces from the Font Bureau library, but not the company. In 2024, Monotype acquired the rights to typefaces from US type foundry Sharp Type, but not the company.Monotype Acquires an Award-Winning Type Collection from Sharp Type's Library and Welcomes Sharp Type as a Creative Partner
/ref>


Typefaces


See also

* Linotype typesetting machine *
Monotype typefaces Monotype fonts were developed by the Monotype company. This name has been used by three firms. Two of them had their roots in "hot metal" or lead type in the printing industry. They did not adapt when the market changed as computer, offset and p ...
, hot metal typefaces * Monotype System


References


Bibliography

*


Further reading

*
Lanston Monotype Co. history
{{Woburn, Massachusetts 1887 establishments in Pennsylvania 1999 mergers and acquisitions 2004 mergers and acquisitions 2019 mergers and acquisitions Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Design companies established in 1887 Letterpress font foundries of the United States Manufacturing companies established in 1887 Woburn, Massachusetts Technology companies established in 1887 American companies established in 1887