URW Type Foundry

Last updated
URW Type Foundry.svg

URW Type Foundry GmbH (formerly URW++ Design & Development GmbH) is a type foundry based in Hamburg, Germany. [1] The foundry has its own library with more than 500 font families. The company specializes in customized corporate typefaces and the development of non-Latin fonts. [2] It has been owned by Monotype Imaging since May 2020. [3]

Contents

History

URW was founded in 1971 by Gerhard Rubow and Jürgen Weber as a management consultancy, Rubow Weber GmbH. Soon, Peter Karow joined as a third partner and later the company was renamed URW Software & Type GmbH (short: URW, which stands for Unternehmensberatung Rubow Weber). In the following years, products were developed in the graphics industry: typesetting and layout programs for publishers for the use of Digiset, and software for the Chromacom image processing system developed by Hell Verein Kiel.

In 1983, URW developed a system for cutting different lettering and figures into colored, self-adhesive foils for outdoor advertising. In 1975, Ikarus, a program that can digitally store the contours of a letter together with all necessary information for electronic typesetting, was introduced, becoming a standard in the type industry. For the revision and manipulation of single letters or whole groups of characters, URW developed a graphical editor and a multitude of programs to make fonts digitally available for different typesetting systems.[ citation needed ]

Formation of font library

In addition to software development, URW began to build its own font library. This started in 1975 in cooperation with Letraset and later with the International Typeface Corporation. This offered Karow the possibility to digitize the ITC designers' final artwork, which had to be photographed and prepared by each individual typesetting system manufacturer for their respective program at the time of phototypesetting, and to make the reproduction-ready originals cut on plotters available to all manufacturers. It was only through DTP that these digital data, initially intended for analogue use, took on a new meaning.

URW continuously expanded its digital font library, and also became known for making some of its fonts available to the open source community as free fonts. Examples include Ghostscript fonts, the most commonly known of which are Nimbus Mono L, Nimbus Roman No9 L, and Nimbus Sans L. Some popular free fonts included in modern open source systems are partially based on the Ghostscript/Nimbus fonts, such as GNU FreeFont and TeX Gyre.

URW was involved in a 1995 lawsuit with Monotype Corporation for cloning its fonts and naming them with a name starting with the same three letters. As typeface shapes themselves cannot be copyrighted in the United States, the lawsuit centered on trademark infringement. A US court decided that URW was deliberately confusing the public because "the purloining of the first part of a well-known trademark and the appending of it to a worthless suffix is a method of trademark poaching long condemned by the courts." The court issued an injunction preventing URW from using its chosen names. [4]

URW++

After URW filed for bankruptcy in early 1995, Peter Rosenfeld founded URW++ on March 1 that year. On January 1, 1996, he transferred the sole proprietorship, together with Dr. Jürgen Willrodt, Jochen Lau and Svend Bang, into a Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung.

URW++ was sold to Global Graphics plc in 2016 and renamed URW Type Foundry GmbH in 2018. Until 2019, Peter Rosenfeld was the sole managing director of URW Type Foundry, and since 2020 Christofer Linusson has been the sole managing director. URW Type Foundry was sold to Monotype Imaging in May 2020. [3]

At the time of the sale, URW held rights to thousands of original fonts, including increasingly non-Latin fonts. Of particular importance were its established relationships with Chinese and Japanese companies, for which URW developed a special software for editing Chinese characters.[ citation needed ]

URW was involved in the development of corporate typefaces for Daimler, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom, General Motors, [5] and Activision Blizzard.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palatino</span> Serif typeface

Palatino is the name of an old-style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf, initially released in 1949 by the Stempel foundry and later by other companies, most notably the Mergenthaler Linotype Company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hermann Zapf</span> German type designer and calligrapher (1918–2015)

Hermann Zapf was a German type designer and calligrapher who lived in Darmstadt, Germany. He was married to the calligrapher and typeface designer Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse. Typefaces he designed include Palatino, Optima, and Zapfino. He is considered one of the greatest type designers of all time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ghostscript</span> Interpreter for the PostScript language

Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization or rendering of such page description language files, for the display or printing of document pages, and the conversion between PostScript and PDF files.

The Mergenthaler Linotype Company is a corporation founded in the United States in 1886 to market the Linotype machine, a system to cast metal type in lines (linecaster) invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. It became the world's leading manufacturer of book and newspaper typesetting equipment; outside North America, its only serious challenger for book typesetting was the Anglo-American Monotype Corporation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helvetica</span> Neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface

Helvetica, also known by its original name Neue Haas Grotesk, is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arial</span> Neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface

Arial is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts in the neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows after Windows 3.1, as well as in other Microsoft programs, Apple's macOS, and many PostScript 3 printers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Futura (typeface)</span> Geometric sans-serif typeface

Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Paul Renner and released in 1927. It was designed as a contribution on the New Frankfurt-project. It is based on geometric shapes, especially the circle, similar in spirit to the Bauhaus design style of the period. It was developed as a typeface by the Bauer Type Foundry, in competition with Ludwig & Mayer's seminal Erbar typeface of 1926.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Univers</span> Sans-serif typeface family

Univers is a large sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteenth-century German typefaces such as Akzidenz-Grotesk, it was notable for its availability from the moment of its launch in a comprehensive range of weights and widths. The original marketing for Univers deliberately referenced the periodic table to emphasise its scope.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Courier (typeface)</span> Monospaced slab serif font of IBM

Courier is a monospaced slab serif typeface. Courier was created by IBM in the mid-1950s, and was designed by Howard "Bud" Kettler (1919–1999). The Courier name and typeface concept are in the public domain. Courier has been adapted for use as a computer font, and versions of it are installed on most desktop computers.

Ikarus is a type design and production software developed by URW and Brendel Informatik foundries, for converting existing typefaces and logos into digital format for use on computer driven printing, plotting and sign cutting devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monotype Imaging</span> American typesetting and typeface design company

Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with consumer electronics devices. Incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Woburn, Massachusetts, the company has been responsible for many developments in printing technology—in particular the Monotype machine, which was a fully mechanical hotmetal 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 used typeface designs, including Times New Roman, Gill Sans, Arial, Bembo and Albertus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Type foundry</span> Company that designs typefaces (fonts)

A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Monotype, for letterpress printers. Today's digital type foundries accumulate and distribute typefaces created by type designers, who may either be freelancers operating their own independent foundry, or employed by a foundry. Type foundries may also provide custom type design services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bookman (typeface)</span> 1869 serif typeface

Bookman, or Bookman Old Style, is a serif typeface. A wide, legible design that is slightly bolder than most body text faces, Bookman has been used for both display typography, for trade printing such as advertising, and less commonly for body text. In advertising use it is particularly associated with the graphic design of the 1960s and 1970s, when revivals of it were very popular. It is also used as the official font of Indonesian laws since 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sabon</span> Serif typeface

Sabon is an old-style serif typeface designed by the German-born typographer and designer Jan Tschichold (1902–1974) in the period 1964–1967. It was released jointly by the Linotype, Monotype, and Stempel type foundries in 1967. The design of the roman is based on types by Claude Garamond, particularly a specimen printed by the Frankfurt printer Konrad Berner. Berner had married the widow of a fellow printer Jacques Sabon, the source of the face's name, who had bought some of Garamond's type after his death. The italics are based on types designed by a contemporary of Garamond's, Robert Granjon. It is effectively a Garamond revival, though a different name was chosen as many other modern typefaces already carry this name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nimbus Roman No. 9 L</span> Serif typeface

Nimbus Roman is a serif typeface created by URW Studio in 1982.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nimbus Sans</span> Sans-serif typeface

Nimbus Sans is a sans-serif typeface created by URW++, based on Helvetica.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nimbus Mono L</span> Monospace typeface

Nimbus Mono is a monospaced typeface created by URW Studio in 1984, and eventually released under the GPL and AFPL in 1996 and LPPL in 2009. In 2017, the font, alongside other Core 35 fonts, has been additionally licensed under the terms of OFL. It features Normal, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic weights, and is one of several freely licensed fonts offered by URW++. Although not exactly the same, Nimbus Mono has metrics and glyphs that are very similar to Courier and Courier New.

FontShop International was an international manufacturer of digital typefaces (fonts), based in Berlin. It was one of the largest digital type foundries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Century type family</span>

Century is a family of serif type faces particularly intended for body text. The family originates from a first design, Century Roman, cut by American Type Founders designer Linn Boyd Benton in 1894 for master printer Theodore Low De Vinne, for use in The Century Magazine. ATF rapidly expanded it into a very large family, first by Linn Boyd, and later by his son Morris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Karow</span> German entrepreneur

Peter Karow is a German entrepreneur, inventor and software developer. He holds several patents in the field of desktop publishing and is known for his work on computer fonts. He contributed with several books and patents to the development of operating systems for computers. He is recognized as the inventor of outline computer fonts.

References

  1. PC Mag. 1991.
  2. "URW++: Großer Bestand an eigenen Schriften". Macwelt magazine (German). 17 December 2008. Retrieved 2 November 2012.
  3. 1 2 "Monotype Agrees to Acquire URW Type Foundry". Monotype. 18 May 2020. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
  4. Lawrence D. Graham (1999). Legal Battles that Shaped the Computer Industry. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 47–48. ISBN   978-1-56720-178-9.
  5. "General Motors". URW Type Foundry. Retrieved 2021-01-04.

Further reading