Love them or hate them, subscriptions and cloud-based services are here to stay. There are folks who won’t go there under any circumstances, and I understand and respect their views, but the benefits are starting to pile up pretty high.
Take fonts, for instance. Creative Cloud users already have Typekit, which just got a huge boost with the addition of the Émigré library. Even so, Typekit can be frustrating. That semibold font you need might be “web only,” while its regular weight is available for desktop use, and there are many important typefaces that aren’t part of Typekit at all. A list of “Alternatives to Helvetica” isn’t much use if your client’s identity program or style guide requires Helvetica.
In August of last year, I got a “Dear Customer” email from Linotype with a link to an online survey about font subscriptions. As a follow-up, I spent an hour or so on Skype giving my opinion on various ways that a large font library might be made available as a subscription for desktop use. While Monotype has long had the Skyfonts subscription service for web use, they hadn’t got off the ground with a decent desktop offering, so this was a positive sign.
A few months later, the Monotype Library Subscription service launched on Fonts.com, just as I needed some Neue Helvetica weights I didn’t already own. So I happily plonked down $120 for a year’s access to (as of this writing) 2,148 type families, comprising 9,000 or so fonts: the entire Monotype, Linotype, ITC, Bitstream, and Ascender libraries, ready to install for full desktop and web use. Figure that the Helvetica and Neue Helvetica families alone will set you back nearly $2,000 if you buy the complete family packs. Then there’s Avenir, Frutiger, Univers, FF Din and Din Next, Trade Gothic, Sabon, Gill, Avant Garde, Stone… it’s a long, long list.
Having your choice from some of the most important font collections in the world, without having to pile costs onto the client’s bill (or work them into the pricing of a project), is kind of a big deal.
If you’re a freelancer or small design shop, that “Can we afford it?” conversation goes away completely, just as it does with Typekit. Prepare to lose even more hours browsing for The Perfect Font (and don’t say I didn’t warn you).
Using a Monotype Library Subscription
Installing Fonts
The Skyfonts app controls everything behind the scenes. It runs on your desktop/laptop, and is the delivery vehicle and manager for your Monotype Library Subscription.
Skyfonts works somewhat like Typekit, minus the direct integration with Adobe’s Creative Cloud. Like earlier iterations of Typekit, it requires that you select the font or font-family you want from a website (fonts.com). The web interface isn’t as elegant as one might like, but it is completely integrated with the rest of fonts.com, so all the previews and sample text are available, just as they are when you’re shopping for a single font.
Clicking an “Install Family” button from this page brings up a friendly message so you know something is happening. In this case I’m going to install the Neo Sans family, which the site tells me consists of 24 styles.
After a few seconds, or quite a few seconds, depending on your Internet speed and the size of the package, the site lets you know all is well and provides a handy visual guide to what to do next. If you need this guide, perhaps you should be thinking about spending some quality time on lynda.com with David Blatner’s “InDesign Essentials” title, but it acts as a friendly reminder nonetheless.
A few seconds later, Neo Sans is available in InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and in any other application on the system that uses fonts.
The Skyfonts desktop app helps you keep track of what’s currently installed on your system as part of your subscription. There is no licensing limit to how many you can have at any one time, but for practical reasons you won’t want to install all 9,000+ fonts.
Just as with Typekit, these fonts are not visible anywhere on your hard drive, nor can you include them in an InDesign package, but you can embed them in a PDF or an ePub export, and print documents with them, just as with any other installed font.
A minor problem in the initial release of the Skyfonts app meant that it sometimes took some minutes, or a restart of InDesign or Illustrator to before newly-installed fonts would appear, but this seems to have been addressed by an update, and I have not seen any issues since then.
Using the Fonts
For all practical purposes, Monotype Library Subscription fonts work the same as regular fonts you would license and install, for as long as your subscription is active. This doesn’t always mean that they are the same as the fonts you can license, however.
In some cases, at least, the full OpenType version of a font isn’t (yet) in the subscription library. Its glyphs are instead broken out into separate font files for small caps, alternates, ligatures and ornaments.
Zapfino Extra, Hermann Zapf’s reinvention in OpenType format of his classic script, comes as a set of 12 fonts. I did a quick comparison between the Zapfino Extra LT Pro licensed directly from Linotype a few years ago (now called “Zapfino Extra X Regular” on the Linotype website) and the nearest equivalent subscription font, Zapfino Extra Regular. The download is shown first, with the fully-licensed version below. OpenType > Contextual Alternates is turned on in InDesign’s Character Panel flyout menu:
The most prominent difference in the “Extra X” version is that spectacular single-glyph “Zapfino” ligature, which magically appears as you type the final “o,” but there are many less-obvious ones. Compare the words “all good” between the two samples. I have to think that Zapf and his collaborators had some fun setting up all that OpenType programming.
The full version of the font automatically substitutes glyphs as you type, even backtracking to change already-typed glyphs. (This is so much fun to watch that it can be an engaging, if somewhat geeky, pastime to while away idle moments. Simple pleasures, and all that.) The subscription single-font version lacks the OpenType features of its big brother, being almost identical to the Type 1 version.
Choosing “Install Family” installs small caps, three sets of alternate glyphs and extra ligatures as individual fonts, like the expert and pi fonts of yore. This somewhat defeats the purpose of the OpenType format, since the regular licensed version has them built in, so it’s not clear why Monotype has chosen to do it this way.
ITC Avant Garde, by contrast, does come complete with the huge array of alternates and uppercase ligatures it’s famous for, just as with the perpetual license, as this single page from the Glyphs Panel shows.
The Discretionary Ligatures section is extensive.
You can install complete families, which in many cases will include separate Cyrillic, Western (or “Paneuropean”), Greek and Arabic sets, or you can choose only the specific fonts you need. In either case, the Skyfonts desktop app allows individual fonts to be uninstalled if they aren’t required.
Conclusion: A Monotype Library Subscription is Worth The Price
The Monotype Library Subscription is the most extensive, arguably the most important, font subscription service currently available. The rich variety and number of classic type families it makes accessible to the designer put it in a class of its own. While its interface could definitely improve, in its present form it is practical, easy to use, and integrates seamlessly with Windows or MacOS apps.
A single-user Monotype Library Subscription will set you back $14.99 per month, $119.99 per year, or $299.99 for three years. Full details, EULA and FAQ are on the website. (If you’re a type nerd, don’t click the “View Inventory” button unless you have an hour or two to spare. You have been warned!)
Editor’s note: For a full run-down of working with fonts and font management, check out issue 87 of InDesign Magazine!
This article was last modified on July 6, 2016
This article was first published on July 6, 2016
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