WOBURN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Monotype today announced that it has acquired London boutique type foundry Fontsmith. With a focus on the craft, design and technology of typography, Fontsmith adds a collection of innovative and award-winning typefaces to the Monotype library and enriches the expertise of the Monotype Studio – building upon Monotype’s international team of type designers.
With the acquisition of Fontsmith, Monotype will immediately expand its library of type IP to include 70 new edgy, colorful and workhorse brand font families, including popular designs such as FS Albert, FS Brabo, FS Koopman, FS Meridian, FS Millbank and FS Untitled. The Fontsmith designs will be included as part of Monotype’s Mosaic solution and available for purchase on MyFonts.com. Monotype’s Mosaic solution empowers creative teams to discover, share and prototype limitlessly with 14,000 of Monotype’s premier fonts – while making it easier to license, deploy and manage the usage of fonts across enterprise and partner networks.
“Fontsmith has been a trendsetter in the type community and with this acquisition we’re thrilled to add a well-respected library of fonts and an innovative group of type designers to the Monotype family,” said Monotype CEO Scott Landers. “Their collective experience, expertise, and body of work will add immediate value to our customers through the Monotype Library, Monotype Studio and Monotype’s Mosaic solution.”
Fontsmith has created custom or modified typefaces for some of the world’s most prestigious brands including BBC, British Gas, Colgate, ING and Lloyds Bank, among others. The company has won several industry awards for its library of fonts including European Design Awards in 2018 and 2019 for FS Irwin and FS Neruda, respectively, and the Print and Typography and Lettering Award for FS Siena in 2017. Fontsmith has been at the leading edge of variable font design. In June 2019, the company introduced one of the world’s first variable font logos for WPP’s new campus in Amsterdam. They designed the logo in tandem with Dutch branding agency VBAT.
Jason Smith founded Fontsmith in 1997. “After 23 years of building Fontsmith into one of the premiere boutique type foundries in Europe, we’re excited to join creative forces with Monotype to create an even more powerful, forward-thinking Monotype Studio. Our combined expertise will help us better serve the creative industry in ways that we’ve never done before,” Smith said.
Smith started his design career as an intern at Monotype when he was just 18 years old, studying under esteemed type designers Robin Nicholas and Pat Saunders. “This is a full circle story. My earliest type design experience at Monotype inspired me to follow my passion and drove me to blaze my own trail in design. To come back to where it all started is both nostalgic and exhilarating.”
Financial details of the acquisition will not be disclosed.
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