GmbH | |
Industry | Type foundry, |
Fate | Acquired by Monotype |
Founded | Berlin, Germany (1990 ) |
Founders | Joan Spiekermann, Erik Spiekermann, Neville Brody |
Defunct | July 14, 2014 |
Headquarters | Berlin, Germany |
Key people
|
, CEO |
Products | Fonts, Digital images |
Website | FontFont.com |
FontShop International is an international manufacturer of digital typefaces (fonts), based in Berlin. It is one of the largest digital type foundries.
The FontFont library of fonts contains designs by 160 type designers, among them renowned designers such as Peter Biľak, Evert Bloemsma, Erik van Blokland, Neville Brody, Martin Majoor, Albert-Jan Pool, Hans Reichel, Just van Rossum, Fred Smeijers, and Erik Spiekermann. The aim of FontFont is to offer typefaces by designers for designers.
FontShop International was acquired by Monotype Imaging on July 14, 2014. The deal came as part of Monotype's takeover of many of the other large digital type retailers, including Linotype, Monotype, ITC, and Bitstream.
After founding the first German reseller of typefaces FontShop in 1989, Joan Spiekermann, Erik Spiekermann, and Neville Brody started an independent type foundry just one year later. They commissioned a few young type designers to make the first few FontFonts. The first font ever was FF Beowolf by the Dutch Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum in 1990. It was called a “living” font because it used a random feature of the PostScript language to generate randomly different letter forms each time when printed. The library has grown over the years by numerous FF releases (being 59 until May 2012), and is now one of the world’s largest collections of contemporary type designs.