TOKYO, JAPAN – Sep 2, 2015 – Type Project, Inc. headquartered in Tokyo, Japan today announced the launch of AXIS FitFont enabling detailed adjustment of weight and width. Type Project has partnered with Monotype, the world’s largest font provider headquartered in Massachusetts, USA and Commercial Type, a quality custom font maker headquartered in New York, USA, to provide combined font sets with their Latin fonts.
FitFont is Type Project’s unique service to allow use of an onscreen slider bar to toggle font settings before purchase based on the firm’s proprietary technologies. FitFont enables AXIS Font, one of Type Project’s popular retail fonts, to offer a wider range of expressive possibilities as AXIS FitFont. The expanded portfolio provides a sans serif typeface empowered with adjustable functions of weight and width, which can be modified from Basic of 100% to Compress of 60%, to meet with diverse tastes and needs. This will accelerate the FitFont momentum initiated by the first product, TP Mincho FitFont launched in April 2015.
Expanded service
AXIS Font is the world’s first font product dedicatedly designed to a bilingual magazine written in Japanese and English. The modern and bright design has been a choice of a number of brands such as SQUARE ENIX and POLA. AXIS FitFont, available as of today, has expanded the font offering to a total of 1,071 typefaces composed of 21 width levels and 51 weights, as opposed to the retail version of AXIS Font, which offers three font widths for a total of 18 typefaces.
The newly signed international partnership enables offering of unified versions of AXIS Font or TP Mincho combined with Latin fonts provided by Monotype and Commercial Type. This is intended to meet the needs of global firms required to use corporate Latin fonts as well as design firms that have created original Latin fonts of their own, achieving a higher expressive potential. As a result, AXIS FitFont can be easily deployed in applications and systems without font merging functions.
Full renewal of FitFont service
Type Project has renewed its online shop so that users can adjust, confirm, and purchase AXIS Font and TP Mincho to fit with popular Latin fonts of Monotype and Commercial Type simply selectable from the FitFont service pull-down menu. The modifications screen allows for free entry of text (within 1,006 basic kanji characters) to determine what the font will look like in actual use.
Isao Suzuki, president of Type Project, says, “We are very pleased to be able to offer fonts that provide consistent design and quality while giving users the ability to make subtle adjustments to kerning through weight and contrast. This solution provides ideal fonts for corporate brands, as well as immediate integration with Latin fonts that have served numerous companies up to now. We believe this service will increase brands’ value.”
Availability
AXIS FitFont is available as a single font for ¥29,500 from Type Project’s official online shop. Users can select the weight and width they desire before adding the item to their cart. FitFont is available exclusively as a download.
Type Project Online shop: https://shop.typeproject.com/en/
Those wishing to combine AXIS Font with Latin fonts from other foundries can contact Type Project via the “inquiry” on online shop page for details or an estimate. Combined fonts require a license for AXIS Font or TP Mincho, a license for the respective Latin font, and fees for the integration (from ¥250,000). The resulting combined font will be delivered in about two months.
* The usage approval by the Latin font maker (designer) is necessary to combine fonts for not listed in the pull-down menu.
Chris Roberts of Monotype, a global sales partner of Type Project, says, “With growing diversity among digital devices and media, we increasingly get inquiries from companies for corporate fonts and branding fonts for specific products. As most of our clients are firms with a global reach, we have more and more projects these days that involve pairing European and Japanese fonts. FitFont is a revolutionary service that met this demand faster than the rest, and we have high expectations about its ability to meet clients’ needs in a speedy fashion.”
Christian Schwartz, a founding member of Commercial Type, says, “We think FitFont is a very impressive system, and we expect that it will make it much easier for publications and corporations to find the right multilingual typographic voice. We are delighted to be part of this cross-cultural collaboration, with Japanese and Latin-based type designers each concentrating on what they do best.”
About Type Project
To broaden the potential of letters. This is the central motivation behind Type Project. Since its founding in 2001, the company has provided fonts like AXIS and TP Mincho that are intended to serve as new standards. In 2003, AXIS Font Basic received the Good Design Award, and in 2008, the Condensed and Compressed versions of the font received the award. Type Project has also achieved many milestones with corporate fonts for company branding and “city fonts” that have defined various cities’ identities. “Make life more comfortable and richer through letters.” With this guiding principle, Type Project envisions our role as a 21st-century typeface design company presenting the letters that are ideally suited to the information-based society of the future.
About Monotype Imaging
From era of mechanical typesetting machines, Monotype has been providing typefaces of high quality for more than 125 years. We are proud that outstanding type designers of Monotype are constantly producing new typefaces and our library has more than 18,000 fonts, including famous typefaces; Arial, Times New Roman, Helvetica, and Frutiger. Customers of today are in a variety of industries; Printer manufacturers, ITs, Automobiles and Game makers etc. We are growing with 450 employees. Our group turnover is 185 million US$, and EBITAT is 52 million US$. Monotype KK, operating for more than 20 years, is providing our services to Japanese customers. Now we have 10 employees here in Japan.
About Commercial Type
Commercial Type is a joint venture between Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz, who have collaborated since 2004 on various typeface projects, most notably the award winning Guardian Egyptian. The company publishes retail fonts developed by Barnes and Schwartz, their staff designers Miguel Reyes and Greg Gazdowicz, and outside collaborators, and also represents the two when they work together on type design projects. Following the redesign of The Guardian, the team headed by Mark Porter, including Barnes and Schwartz, was awarded the coveted Black Pencil by the D&AD. The team was also nominated for the Design Museum’s “Designer of the Year” prize. In September 2006, Barnes and Schwartz were named two of the 40 most influential designers under 40 in Wallpaper*.
Official site: http://typeproject.com/en/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/typeproject
Twitter: https://twitter.com/typeproject
Type Project, Type Project logo, TP Mincho and FitFont are registered trademarks of Type Project Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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