Review: Monotype Library Subscription

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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.

LIbrary_Home_Page

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.

skyfonts_msg

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.

neo_sans_ack

A few seconds later, Neo Sans is available in InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and in any other application on the system that uses fonts.

Skyfonts

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:

Zapfino_Compare

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.

Avant_Garde_glyphs

The Discretionary Ligatures section is extensive.

Avant_Garde_in_use

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!

indesign-magazine-issue-87

Alan Gilbertson is a designer and creative director living in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, the "Sun Coast" of the United States. He is an Adobe Community Expert who has been using Adobe design applications for more than two decades.
  • Lisa Lordi says:

    Did you ask Monotype if the subscription Library will remainas is? Will all fonts be available. I would hate to rent these fonts for a year and then find they are not offered in the subscription library the following year

    • Monotype’s saying that the library will expand, but they’re certainly not suggesting anywhere that it will shrink. That would be petty much self-defeating. Unlike, say, Netflix of Spotify having to pay royalties when a user streams a title from their servers, there is no incremental cost to Monotype when a user syncs a particular type family or individual font. You’re not really renting the fonts so much as subscribing to the service as a whole.

  • Andrew McCarthy says:

    Alan, thanks for your helpful insightful article. I am considering an MLS subscription, and you recommendations are encouraging. However, not being able to package the fonts with an InDesign file for production is problematic (licensing aside). I have a FAQ from Monotype that says the fonts can be packaged, so I am confused. Also, my understanding is that their Font Explorer font management (which requires purchase) is used exclusively to manage the fonts. What is you experience with this? Thanks!

    • Alan Gilbertson says:

      Hi Andrew. The fonts don’t appear in the InDesign Package “Document Fonts” folder. This is normal for a subscription service, and in line with usual font licensing arrangements, which generally prohibit sending a font to a print provider unless they also have a license for that font.

      They do in an ePub. Font Explorer is definitely not required. The subscription fonts are managed by the Skyfonts app, much in the same way that Typekit fonts are managed by the CC desktop app. That is, you can delete (unsync) fonts, but you have to go to the website to add a type family or individual fonts to your synced set.

      I hope that helps answer your questions.

  • Andrew McCarthy says:

    Hi, Alan.

    Thanks for your speedy and informative reply. Yes, “sharing” fonts with non-subscribers would necessitate licensing compliance (an output vendor would need to buy the same fonts), but for archiving purposes internally within a company, not being able to package the fonts with a job seems like a big drawback. Certainly sending an output vendor a hi-resolution PDF can work in most cases for print jobs, resolving the issue.

    • Alan GIlbertson says:

      I figure the worst-case scenario would be a archived document with fonts from an expired subscription, costing $15 for a one-month subscription while the document is updated and re-PDFed. (I agree as regards production files. I don’t think I’ve ever sent a live InDesign file to a print provider, but I know in some settings it’s not considered unusual.)

      You could also purchase perpetual licenses for just those specific fonts. At the very least, I find the subscription gives me much more freedom to experiment with typographic treatments I probably wouldn’t consider if I had to license several fonts just to try them out.

  • Shawn Calvert says:

    PLEASE NOTE: “the entire Monotype, Linotype, ITC, Bitstream, and Ascender libraries, ready to install for full desktop and web use.” — I’m not sure if this has changed, but the subscription IS FOR DESKTOP ONLY — NOT WEB USE! You really have to dig on their site to find this.

  • Alan, the package feature would be dismissable in our world if the fonts can be outlined. In that pdf’s are often adjusted by output vendors for specific environments, outlined type is a norm. Any problems with that? Thanks!

    • Alan Gilbertson says:

      Hi Greg. I can’t speak for Monotype (or their lawyers!), but I don’t see any restriction on outlining fonts in something you’re sending to a print provider. In fact, embedding in a PDF is permitted whether it’s outlined or not, since all that would be in the PDF is a subset of each font.

  • Aileen says:

    Hello Alan, Thank you for the helpful article. I purchased the Monotype Library Subscription, installed SkyFonts and installed several fonts. Everything proceeded as shown in your article. However, the fonts do not show up in Adobe applications, and the SkyFonts client only worked at the time of installation; it does not open after restart. I’ve found no useful troubleshooting information through the Fonts.Com or SkyFonts websites, nor through a general web search. Fonts.com does not answer support emails. I have a conventional computer setup: Windows 7, 64-bit. SkyFonts+Fonts.com have been around for a while now, and I’m surprised both to be experiencing problems, and to not be able to get a fix for them.

  • Alan Gilbertson says:

    Ouch. That’s not a happy situation. I didn’t have problems with Skyfonts on Win 7, and it’s working smoothly for me on both the Win 10 Creators Update and the latest Insider Preview, and for clients on both Windows and Mac. If you’re sure that your OS installation is fully up to date, and you’ve run sfc /scannow to repair any problems that may have crept into the system, you might try Skyfonts.com tech support, which is probably a better place to ask. Scroll all the way down their home page for the link.

    If other cloud services such as Adobe Creative Cloud, Dropbox or Google Drive work, then it’s hard to know why Skyfonts isn’t operating correctly.

  • Laura Brady says:

    Hey Alan. I have mixed feelings about the Monotype subscription. It has been glitchy and tricky to use, in my experience. And the print out from InDesign didn’t match the PDF on a 300-page novel — which is highly problematic in book publishing.

    But I see in my email this morning that they are discontinuing the service, which means my emails about the UX of using this subscription have fallen on deaf ears. Compared to how easy it is to use Typekit, the Monotype sub is a non-starter.

  • Alan GIlbertson says:

    Hi Laura. Apart from some early teething troubles with Skyfonts that were resolved fairly quickly, I haven’t seen more problems with the MSL than with Typekit, and certainly haven’t seen any differences between InDesign output and PDF in any of the book (or other) projects where I’ve used MSL fonts. I’m hard-pressed to imagine how that could even happen, technically.

    It’s interesting that you found Typekit/Adobe Fonts easier to use than MSL. I never liked Typekit, though. When Monotype/fonts.com added their greatly improved search filtering to the site, there was no contest. (For what it’s worth, they never paid much attention to my UX suggestions, either, although I was in email correspondence with more than one of their PMs and marketing people at different times. )

    Possibly Monotype feels that MSL will be a duplicative effort now that they are distributing through Adobe Fonts, but the Monotype/Linotype/ITC catalog on Adobe Fonts seems to be a small subset of what’s on MSL. Avant Garde, for example, has only Book, Medium and Bold on Adobe Fonts (no obliques), whereas MSL has five weights with italics in regular width and the same in condensed. Some important type families, such as Helvetica, Helvetica Neue, Univers, Frutiger Neue and Avenir, are entirely missing from Adobe Fonts.

    It would be a shame if MSL were to go away without fully transitioning to Adobe Fonts. Their recent email doesn’t *quite* say they’re discontinuing the service, but that they’re “no longer accepting new customers,” are “working through potential changes” to the subscription service and that “not much will change” in the meantime. It’s anyone’s guess what they mean by that.

  • Djakoman says:

    Hey Alan. I have question,could you help me out. I got free 14-day trial subscription on monotype,and i want to cancel it. I don’t know how to do that,i was searching on their website but no where to be found. Could you help me out about that? Thanks :)

    • Hi Djakoman. You did this recently, so your free trial is the new, messy, buggy, Monotype Fonts service that will replace the MSL. You can just uninstall it. The trial will expire without your being billed. Contact [email protected] directly if you need more info.

      I assume the change is to protect against font piracy (deliberate or accidental), but it’s doing so at the expense of usefulness and it is a very immature product at this point, pre-beta at best. I tried it out and abandoned it because it just got in the way.

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