Noto typeface family helps enable global
communications across devices, borders, cultures, languages and
periods of time
Monotype (NASDAQ:TYPE), a leader in helping to empower
expression and engagement through type, technology and expertise –
today unveiled its instrumental role in one of the most expansive
typography projects ever undertaken: the Google Noto Project. A
collaboration more than five years running between Monotype and
Google, the goal of the Google Noto project is to develop a
typeface family that encompasses all languages with a harmonious
look and feel, while digitally preserving rarely used languages, to
help enable global communications across borders, languages,
cultures and time periods. Google Noto now covers more than 800
languages and 100 writing scripts, which includes letters in
multiple serif and sans serif styles across up to eight weights, as
well as numbers, emoji, symbols and musical notations.
This Smart News Release features multimedia.
View the full release here:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161006005352/en/
No More Tofu (Photo: Business Wire)
The term “Noto” conveys the idea that Google’s goal is to see
“no more tofu,” with tofu referring to the blank
boxes that appear when a computer or website isn’t able to display
text. These boxes appear because the font that supports that text
is not available to the computer, causing confusion and a breakdown
in communication.
Monotype has played two significant roles in the Noto project to
date: researching and digitally designing the characters, writing
systems and alphabets, and applying the rules and traditions for
those individual languages to the fonts and managing the project,
including organizing outside designers and linguists around the
world who specialize in specific scripts. Google defined the
requirements and scope of the project, shared significant input
into design direction for major languages, contributed design
review and technical testing resources and expertise for a broad
range of languages, and provided the funding that made this project
possible.
“Monotype is one of the leading type companies in the world and
was a great match for all our requirements. We like the passion for
type and the technology that they bring to this project,” said Bob
Jung, director of internationalization at Google. “Creating Google
Noto was a really big project and we needed a reliable partner that
could match Google’s scale to complete it. We looked for a partner
that had the ability to create really well-engineered fonts, and
Monotype has a long history in that, and was able to offer the
diversity and breadth of experience we needed, especially in
building fonts for other languages.”
Both Google and Monotype share the goal of advancing type for
wider adoption and usage, no matter the language. The hope is that
this project will make typeface families accessible to cultures
around the world who have never been able to use them in the past.
For this to be effective, the Noto family must be both legible and
culturally acceptable.
For instance, Monotype designed the script for the Tibetan
language following deep research into a vast library of writings
and source material, and then enlisted the help of a Buddhist
monastery to critique the font and make adjustments. The monks’
constant study of Tibetan manuscripts made them the ideal experts
to evaluate Noto Tibetan, and were instrumental in the final design
of the font.
Monotype has been involved with Google Noto since 2011 when
Unicode 6.0 was released. The Unicode Consortium announced version
9.0 of its standard in June 2016, and Monotype continues to work
with Google to develop the various new scripts and additional
weights for many of the worldwide languages included with each new
standard.
Scott Landers, president and CEO of Monotype, said “We are
passionately dedicated to type and helping to advance the use and
adoption of type across many cultures, languages and geographies.
We are thrilled to have played such an important role in what has
become one of the most significant type projects of all time. The
combination of Monotype’s type expertise and Google’s innovation
has proven to be a productive relationship and we look forward to
continued collaboration that helps advance the use of type to new
places.”
Hundreds of researchers, designers, linguists, cultural experts
and project managers around the world have been involved with
Google Noto. Work on the font is ongoing as new scripts are added
to the Unicode Standard, a character coding system that defines the
characters and languages that can be displayed and used within a
computer system.
Google Noto is open source under OFL (Open Font License),
meaning that designers and developers around the world are
encouraged to contribute to the design of the scripts. The font is
also free to use, reinforcing Google’s goal of helping enable
communications across borders and cultures.
What Google and Monotype are saying about the Noto
project
“Google Noto is a daunting project in size and scope, and I’m
proud of how we’ve worked hard over the past five years to develop
a really good product that solves a problem no one else has taken
on before. Our goal for Noto has been to create fonts for our
devices, but we’re also very interested in keeping information
alive. When it comes to some of these lesser used languages, or
even the purely academic or dead languages, we think it’s really
important to preserve them. Without the digital capability of Noto,
it’s much more difficult to preserve that cultural resource.” – Bob
Jung, director of internationalization, Google.
“Even though we prioritize widely used languages, we still want
to support other languages, even if there are no people still
speaking them. There are some characters you can only see on
stones. If you don’t move them to the web, over time those stones
will become sand and we’ll never be able to recover those drawings
or that writing.” – Xiangye Xiao, product manager, Google
“I feel that looking into the future of digital communications,
Google Noto is going to be the go-to design for people to be using
to communicate across multiple cultures and societies.” – Steve
Matteson, creative type director, Monotype
"The aim of the Noto project is to provide digital
representation to all the scripts in the Unicode Standard. That in
particular is something that many different language communities
could not afford to do on their own. Google has been the benefactor
in funding this work, and in many cases, we’ve produced the first
font ever to serve a particular language community. So to me, the
aim is to serve that human community that would otherwise be
deprived of the ability to have a digital heritage.” – Kamal
Mansour, linguistic typographer, Monotype
Additional Information
The Google Noto font is available for free download now from:
https://www.google.com/get/noto/.
For more information about Google Noto, visit monotype.com/noto
or watch this video: https://vimeo.com/185700918.
About Monotype
Monotype is a leader in empowering expression and engagement
through a combination of type, technology and expertise.
Headquartered in Woburn, Mass., Monotype provides customers
worldwide with typeface solutions for a broad range of creative
applications and consumer devices. The company’s libraries and
e-commerce sites are home to many of the most widely used typefaces
– including the Helvetica®, Frutiger® and Univers® families – as
well as the next generation of type designs. Further information is
available at www.monotype.com. Follow Monotype on Twitter,
Instagram and LinkedIn.
© 2016 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google is a registered
trademark of Google Inc. Google Noto is a trademark of Google
Inc.
View source
version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161006005352/en/
MonotypeAmy Aylward, 781-970-6070amy.aylward@monotype.com
Monotype Imaging (NASDAQ:TYPE)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Monotype Imaging (NASDAQ:TYPE)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024