MyFonts is a digital

Digital

A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...

 font

Font

In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...

s distribution, location based in Marlborough, Massachusetts

Marlborough, Massachusetts

Marlborough is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 38,499 at the 2010 census. Marlborough became a prosperous industrial town in the 19th century and made the transition to high technology industry in the late 20th century after the construction of the...

, selling fonts through the www.myfonts.com web site. It launched in September 1999 (during the ATypI

ATypI

The ATypI or the Association Typographique Internationale is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to typography.-The organisation:...

 conference in Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

), and started selling fonts in March 2000.

MyFonts pioneered a new model of font distribution, based on the long tail

The Long Tail

The Long Tail or long tail refers to the statistical property that a larger share of population rests within the tail of a probability distribution than observed under a 'normal' or Gaussian distribution...

 phenomenon: an all-inclusive inventory from which total sales can beat those of a carefully chosen collection. Every font that meets basic technical and legal criteria is accepted for distribution. Designers set their own license terms and their own prices, while MyFonts gets a 50 percent cut of sales.

Open marketplace

Both large type foundries

Type foundry

A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Originally, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Monotype machines designed to be printed on letterpress printers...

 and the studios of individual type designers (also often called foundries) are represented at MyFonts. Classics such as Futura

Futura (typeface)

In typography, Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1927 by Paul Renner. It is based on geometric shapes that became representative visual elements of the Bauhaus design style of 1919–1933...

 and Akzidenz-Grotesk sit alongside newer fonts, and in all, fonts from over 800 foundries (in September 2011) are available for sale.

Although MyFonts is a division of Bitstream Inc.

Bitstream Inc.

Bitstream Inc. is a type foundry that produces digital typefaces . Founded in 1981 by Matthew Carter and Mike Parker among others, it claims to be the oldest such company...

 (which is a type foundry among other things), MyFonts says that sales figures alone determine a new font's appearance in such high-visibility places as the Hot New Fonts page the Rising Stars e-mail newsletter and every debut is used for web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

.

WhatTheFont font identification

MyFonts has a patented feature for identifying fonts from scanned images called WhatTheFont. It's almost entirely automated, unlike other solutions to font identification that either rely on a community of human identifiers or a series of questions.

A typical usage comprises three stages:

• the user uploads the image;
• the user is asked to verify the letters found in the image;
• the system immediately presents a list of potential matching fonts, with links for purchase

For clean scans of fonts that are in the MyFonts database, a correct or close identification is common. Whatever happens, the user then has the option of asking the "WhatTheFont Forum" of real volunteers to identify the typeface: the competitive element helps get quick identification. MyFonts has not provided details of the algorithm

Algorithm

In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...

s behind WhatTheFont.

External links

• MyFonts
• WhatTheFont
• MyFonts Blog
• Communication Arts: "MyFonts.com: Changing the Way Type is Bought and Sold" article by Angelynn Grant, Jan/Feb 2008