Typecast acquired by Monotype | Hacker News Reader

Typecast acquired by Monotype

typecast.com

23 pointsjonnycowboy14 comments

As a designer who studied typography and spent a few years working in print a long time ago, I love typecast. But practically speaking, Google Fonts has serviced most of my needs. It's free for one, and that's a pretty big deal. And two, I just prefer its lean implementation.

Type design is an interesting industry. It takes years to master which is not appreciated by the market. And I'm not a qualified type designer, but as a creative director (and purchasing gatekeeper) -- I feel the pricing model is really dated and beautiful type is being held hostage because of it.

Are you thinking of Typekit, maybe? Typecast is an app for typesetting web fonts, basically. It uses fonts from Google Fonts, Typekit, and I think a couple other webfont providers. It's not in competition with webfont providers at all. Although, now that it's been acquired by one, that may change.

Even though we've been acquired by Monotype (the company behind fonts.com), Typecast will continue to offer web fonts from a range of providers.

We think that designers should be able to experiment with the best type available on the web and that belief doesn't change now that we're part of a bigger company.

That's good to hear, and I appreciate the response.

Holy crap. I sure hope Monotype doesn't break Typecast (with their record of 'you-can't-embed and all: http://print21.com.au/adobe-takes-agfa-monotype-to-court-ove... )

Hey. We hope so too! The plan is for us to operate independently and continue making it easier for designers to work with type on the web.

Thanks Paul, nice to see the CEO reads HackerNews +1 ;-)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Typecast doesn't actually serve the font, right?

It always seemed like an extra hassle to have one more service in the mix, I'd rather just pick my font right in Typekit or Google Fonts even if the selection is more limited.

Yes, the fonts are still served by the providers. We make it easier to experiment with type independently of the provider but once you've finalised your type styles you don't have to serve the CSS from Typecast (although you can).

So I can serve the font from Typecast? Or are you only talking about the CSS, but not the fonts?

I was only talking about the typography styles, not the actual font files. Although that _is_ an interesting idea :)

Congratulations on this news, that's great to hear, you have the opportunity to evolve typecast! Good to see a tech company from northern Ireland doing well!

I am sure my concern is the same as many others, how will this acquisition affect how well Typecast works?

Even though we've been acquired, we're still committed to making the web a better place and I don't expect any changes to how Typecast works.

We'll be continuing to operate autonomously so there won't be any negative product changes for customers. There is no intent for this to become a Monotype-only service or to do anything other than build the best tool for working with type on the web.

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