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| Formerly | Lanston Monotype Machine Company (1887–1936) Monotype Corporation (1936–1999) Agfa Monotype Corporation (1999–2004) |
|---|---|
| Company type | Private |
| Nasdaq: TYPE | |
| Industry | Pre-press and pre-media services machinery industry and plant construction  |
| Founded | 1887; 138 years ago (1887) (as Lanston Monotype Machine Company) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Headquarters | , U.S. |
Key people | Ninan Chacko (CEO) |
| Products | Fonts |
| Parent | HGGC |
| Subsidiaries |
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| Website | www |
| Footnotes / references [1] | |
Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded asLanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 inPhiladelphia byTolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digitaltypesetting andtypeface design for use withconsumer electronics devices.[2] Based inWoburn, Massachusetts, the company has been responsible for many developments inprinting technology—in particular the Monotype machine, which was a fully mechanicalhot 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 usedtypeface designs, includingTimes New Roman,Gill Sans,Arial,Bembo andAlbertus.
Via acquisitions includingLinotype GmbH,International Typeface Corporation,Bitstream,FontShop,URW,Hoefler & Co., Fontsmith,Fontworks [ja] and Colophon Foundry, the company has gained the rights to major font families includingHelvetica,ITC Franklin Gothic,Optima,ITC Avant Garde,Palatino,FF DIN andGotham. It also ownsMyFonts, used by many independent font design studios.[3] The company is owned byHGGC, aprivate equity firm.[4]
The Lanston Monotype Machine Company was founded byTolbert Lanston inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1887. Lanston had a patented mechanical method of punching out metal types from cold strips of metal which were set (hencetypesetting) into amatrix for theprinting press. In 1896, Lanston patented the firsthot metal typesetting machine and Monotype issued Modern Condensed, its firsttypeface. The licenses for the Lanston type library have been acquired byP22, a digitaltype foundry based inBuffalo, New York.
In a search for funding, the company set up a branch inLondon around 1897 under the name Lanston Monotype Corporation Ltd, generally known as the Monotype Corporation.[5][6] In 1899, a new factory was built inSalfords nearRedhill inSurrey where it has been located for over a century. The company was of sufficient size to justify the construction of its ownSalfords 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, theLinotype machine—a direct competitor[7]—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 atypewriter stylekeyboard 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, theMonotype Recorder, over most of the twentieth century, and also ran acompositor (typesetter operator) training school in London.[8][9] In 1936, the company was floated on theLondon Stock Exchange and became the Monotype Corporation Ltd. Board members of the company included future Prime MinisterHarold Macmillan, Vice-Chairman, and other businessmen connected to publishing.[9][10]
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 namedModern, influenced byBodoni andScotch Roman 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.[11][12][13][14] This series of releases was a major part of the typographic renaissance of the period, an expansion of theArts and Crafts movement interest in printing into the more workaday world of general-purpose printing. Key executives of the company in this period included historian and adviserStanley Morison, publicity managerBeatrice Warde, engineering expertFrank 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.[15] Despite tensions within the company, particularly between the historically minded faction of Morison and Warde and Pierpont in Salfords, notable typefaces commissioned includedGill Sans,Times New Roman andPerpetua, 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.[16][17][18][19]
HistorianJames Mosley, 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 theBritish Broadcasting Corporation orLondon 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.[20]
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 withMicrosoft products. The company employedFrederic Goudy onseveral serif font projects which were well received at the time, and on staff type designerSol Hess, who created the geometric sans-serifTwentieth Century as a competitor to the GermanFutura.[21][22][23][24]
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Monotype entered a decline from the 1960s onwards. This was caused by the reduction in use of hot metal typesetting and replacement withphototypesetting andlithography in mass-market printing.[25][26][27] 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.[28][29] 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.[30]
Monotype made the transition to cold type and began to market its own "Monophoto" phototypesetting systems,[31] but these suffered from problems.[32] 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.[33][34] 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 andCompugraphic, and were often more expensive.[35][36] 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.[35] 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 inCambridge 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.[35][37] However, new technology and finally publishing software such asQuark XPress andAldus PageMaker running on general-purpose computers ate away at its competitiveness in the market of complete typesetting solutions by the 1990s.[38]
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 asLondon Transport and the UK parliament requiring custom digital typefaces.[39][40][41] Much of its metal type equipment and archives were donated to theType Museum collection in London; other materials are held atSt Bride Library.[42]
The history and decline of the hot metal American Lanston Monotype Corporation is described in full detail byRichard L. Hopkins, inTolbert Lanston and the Monotype. The origin of digital Typesetting.[43] In 2004,P22 type foundry bought the "Lanston Type Co." fromGerald Giampa.[44]
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,ISBN 978-0993051005
In 1992, The Monotype Corporation Ltd. appointedAdministrative 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 sellingpre-press software and hardware,raster image processors 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-Compugraphic acquired the company, which was renamed Agfa Monotype. In late 2004, after six years under the Agfa Corporation, the Monotype assets were acquired byTA Associates, a private equity investment firm based inBoston. 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 handwrittenPersian script, PersianNasta'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.[45]
On 2 October 2006, the company acquired Linotype GmbH, a subsidiary ofHeidelberger Druckmaschinen.[46]
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 developingMicrosoft JhengHei, the default traditional Chinese interface font forWindows Vista. The deal also secured an exclusive relationship with Creative Calligraphy Center (CCC), a font production company inZhuhai, China, with 30 production specialists.[47]
On 11 December 2009, the company acquired Planetweb, a developer specialized in applications and development tools for embedded devices.[48]
On 8 December 2010, the company acquiredAscender Corporation, a provider of fonts and font technologies used in computers, mobile devices, consumer electronics and software products.[49]
In March 2012, the company acquiredBitstream Inc., a digital font retailer. The deal also gave Monotype ownership of theMyFonts font sale website used by many independent designers and its WhatTheFont recognition service.[50][51]
On 15 July 2014, the company acquiredFontShop, the last large independent digital font retailer.[52]
In October 2019 Monotype changed ownership to HGGC, aprivate equity firm.[53] A few months later, on January 27, 2020, the company added FontSmith, an independentLondon foundry, to its font catalog.[54]
On May 18, 2020, Monotype made another major expansion by purchasingURW Type Foundry from Global Graphics plc.[55] In late 2021 it continued its expansion by acquiring iconic New York companyHoefler & Co. (created byJonathan Hoefler in 1989), thus increasing its library with well-known fonts such asGotham, Knockout, Mercury, Sentinel, Chronicle, Decimal, andArcher.[56]
On 19 July 2023, Monotype acquired Japanese type foundry Fontworks.[57]
On 4 May 2023, Monotype Corporation acquired 39 typefaces from theFont Bureau library, but not the company.[58]
In 2024, Monotype acquired the rights to typefaces from US type foundry Sharp Type, but not the company.[59]
The surviving records of the progress of some of the classic typefaces demonstrate that their exemplary final quality was due to a relentless willingness on the part of 'the works' to make and remake the punches over and over again until the result was satisfactory. The progression of series 270 from the weak Poliphilus Modernised to the familiar Bembo is an object lesson in the success of this technique. That it was [engineering manager Frank] Pierpont himself who was central to this drive for quality is made abundantly clear by the abrupt changes that are seen after his retirement in 1937.
This issue of Monotype is set in a trial font of a new version of Garamond's design ... the type ornaments, modelled on 16th century ones, will also be available.
The Monotype Monophoto was described by Compugraphic co-founder Bill Garth as 'the only machine ever invented with no stationary parts'.
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