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The Tragicomedy of Digital Fonts [Frank Adebiaye]

A poignant article from November 2021 by Frank Adebiaye, after Hoefler sold out to Monotype. Frank gives a bird's eye view of the recent past in digital typography, with Monotype as the villain in the drama. He begins with: Digital fonts are born and killed off over and over again. Due to Windows domination on desktop computers, for most people, Arial, designed in 1982 and released as a TrueType font in 1992 is the typical digital font. It was already a mockery of Helvetica, born in 1957. He reminds us of the popular Comic Sans, Times New Roman (1932), once celebrated but now a bland typeface, and Microsoft's Calibri, now also about to be superseded. Google and Monotype got their hands on the Droid fonts, and the Open Sans and Noto superfamilies that have taken over web typography.

He writes: Monotype was saved from bankruptcy by making Arial for Microsoft, preventing the latter from paying huge royalties for Helvetica, then a Linotype asset. Linotype was eventually acquired by Monotype in 2006, so both Arial and Helvetica are Monotype assets now. But Arial and Helvetica are not the same typeface, Arial seems to be a kind of displacement of Helvetica, sharing mostly the same metrics but borrowing its shape from something much older. Google launched Roboto in 2011---a monstrosity or Frankenfont according to type curator Stephen Coles., borrowing from Helvetica, Univers, Myriad, FF Din among others. In 2014, Google developed an improved and more accepted version of Roboto. Today, Noto and Roboto are the leading actors in today's digital font tragicomedy, according to Frank.

On to the Montserrat story: Montserrat is also an informative case. From a practical point of view it is an efficient and sufficient substitute for Gotham. Despite its popularity Gotham mostly missed the webfont explosion because of licensing hassle, and the Hoefler&Co pricing strategy for the web. So Montserrat came up and filled that void. However, it seems that Hoefler&Co made some link-building using the Montserrat name to attract customers. If Montserrat is a substitute for Gotham, then Gotham is also a substitute for Montserrat. Anyway, now it is probably too late, I am afraid, Gotham is a Monotype asset, superseded on the web like many Monotype iconic assets are now.

Frank illustrates the exit of the type drama by citing Erik Spiekermann's Fira (to replace his own FF Meta) and IBM's Plex (to avoid the licensing hassle of Helvetica).

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