PrintingNews.com

Monotype Imaging Inc. has unveiled a new version of its Fonts.com e-commerce site featuring an updated look and feel, improved usability and performance, and support for French, German and Spanish languages. Fonts.com offers one of the largest selections of fonts, with more than 125,000 font products available to preview, purchase and download.

“When we surveyed our core creative professional customers to determine how best to enhance Fonts.com, the message was loud and clear – ‘let the fonts speak for themselves,’” said Carl Crossgrove, senior typeface designer at Monotype Imaging. “It’s like the difference between describing the color red and showing someone a ripe apple.”

“While we had integrated advanced capabilities into Fonts.com, the site was showing its age and in need of a facelift,” said David Harned, director of Internet development at Monotype Imaging. “Our new look and feel completes the picture – visitors can take advantage of useful features while enjoying a pleasing online experience. In addition, we enhanced Fonts.com to reach customers in their native languages, starting with French, German and Spanish. Visitors can also receive automatic updates when new fonts or content are added to the site. You can see what’s new and then jump right to the specific page. Overall, performance has been improved to make shopping for fonts, quick, easy and fun.”

Monotype Imaging conducted an in-depth usability study with graphic designers, small office workers and printers to redesign Fonts.com to better appeal to visitors with varying objectives, such as searching for a specific font, seeking options based on an idea, or simply looking for inspiration. Results from the study led to the addition of Monotype Imaging’s “font carousel,” displayed prominently on the home page. The carousel allows visitors to quickly scroll through font categories such as “formal scripts” or “decorative fonts” and view a selection of corresponding font choices. The home page also provides larger, more detailed and aesthetically pleasing showings of featured typefaces. A font preview capability is provided on different tabs found on product pages. Visitors can click tabs to render a custom text string in a specified font, view the font in different sizes as a “waterfall” graphic, or see technical font data and file names, among other options.

Fonts.com supports a new level of interactivity to help in the font selection process. “Fonts.com knows the operating system you’re working in,” said Harned. “Once you’ve clicked on a font choice, the system suggests the font format that will work best on your computer. If you need a font format other than what is displayed, you can find what you’re looking for in just one click. Help is available on the same page if you don’t know what format you need.”