Make sure your business is using 'legal' fonts & typefaces
In today’s competitive business world, one of the best ways to increase awareness of your company is through an instantly recognisable logo.
Once companies have become leaders in their respective fields, a prime way of consolidating that success is to have a logo that sticks in people’s minds. This way, as soon as people think of a sector, they immediately picture the logo of the leading organisation.
For example, if you think of Barclays Bank, you can instantly picture the light blue writing on the dark blue background. Likewise, if you think of airlines, British Airways with the blue writing on the white background, will likely spring to mind.
When a company is deciding on a new logo or marketing collateral, one of the most crucial decisions that has to be made is the style of the typeface that the name of the organisation is to appear in. Because it is used in all communications the typeface can help create the brand or corporate image, therefore being responsible for increased brand value.
One of the main considerations that needs to be taken into account when it comes to commissioning a new typeface for marketing collateral is that font designs and fonts software are actually classed as Intellectual Property (IP). Within the font design industry, this is common knowledge. However for all the major companies sometimes spending millions on their new corporate or brand identities, they are often not aware of this, meaning that the font design industry is continually subject to an alarmingly high degree of idea and content theft.
Fonts are individual pieces of design
The reason that fonts are classed as IP is that they are individual pieces of design in their own right. The art of designing a typeface is a complex and highly skilled discipline and may take many months to produce a new typeface. As such, like any software, digital fonts are Intellectual Property and are subject to copyright and trademark laws.
One of the earliest and main challenges for companies wanting to refresh their brand, or launch a new product, is to make sure that they are “font compliant” to avoid any unnecessary disruptions. The question that is therefore posed to all these companies is “how do I become compliant?”
Monotype recognised the issue of IP and fonts has become a headache for many fonts users and so developed the world’s first font licence management service, Fontwise, has been launched to help companies ensure they are fully compliant. Fontwise is the only Font Asset Management tool that can comprehensively search and locate fonts across a network and help organisations manage their font assets ultimately saving time and costs associated with font licensing. The website has more extensive information about the service and includes licensing FAQs and the golden rules to font compliance.
The bottom line is that companies have to make sure that they are using legally licensed fonts, just as they would with any other software application, because fonts are software too.
About the Author
John McCallum is Managing Director of Monotype Imaging - www.fonts.com
Posted June 23, 2009
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