| Type | GmbH |
|---|---|
| Industry | Type foundry, Stock photography |
| Founded | Berlin, Germany (1990) |
| Headquarters | Berlin, Germany |
| Key people | Petra Weitz, CEO |
| Products | Fonts, Digital images |
| Website | FontFont.com |
FSI FontShop International (FSI) is an international manufacturer of digital typefaces (fonts), based in Berlin and one of the large type foundries that exist today.
All the typefaces are published as part of the FontFont library. The library contains type designs by 160 type designers[1], among them renowned designers such as Peter Biľak, Evert Bloemsma, Erik van Blokland, Neville Brody, Martin Majoor, Albert-Jan Pool, Hans Reichel, Just van Rossum, Fred Smeijers, and Erik Spiekermann. The aim of FontFont is to offer typefaces by designers for designers. Besides type foundries such as Linotype, Monotype, and ITC, FSI FontShop International is one of the most important publishers of digital typefaces.
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After founding the first German reseller of typefaces FontShop in 1989, Joan Spiekermann, Erik Spiekermann, and Neville Brody started an independent type foundry just one year later. They commissioned a few young type designers to make the first few FontFonts. The first font ever was FF Beowolf by the Dutch Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum in 1990. It was called a “living” font because it used a random feature of the PostScript language to generate randomly different letter forms each time when printed. The library has grown over the years by numerous FF releases (being 56 until July 2011[2]), and is now one of the world’s largest collections of contemporary type designs.
Between 1990 and 2000 FSI published together with Neville Brody 18 issues of the experimental typographical magazine FUSE and organised several FUSE conferences, the forerunners of the annual European design conference TYPO Berlin.
In 2001, FSI founded their own stock photo agency called ƒStop and introduced it to the stock photography market.
FSI is licensor for four FontShops in Austria, Benelux, Germany, and the USA. FontShop USA, based in San Francisco, is owned by FSI; all the other FontShops are separate, independent companies concentrating on their own markets. While FSI publishes typefaces as a foundry, the FontShops work as resellers of FSI’s FontFonts but also of fonts from other foundries.
FSI FontShop International’s legal form is GmbH.
The main focus at FSI is the extension and maintenance of the FontFont typeface library. Fonts published as FontFonts are always named using the prefix FF. Besides text and headline fonts such as FF Dax, FF DIN, FF Meta, FF Quadraat, and FF Scala there are also special designs like the “dirty” typewriter font FF Trixie, the “living” font FF Beowolf and the world’s first digital handwriting fonts FF Erikrighthand and FF Justlefthand (FF Hands package). The library now consists of over different 600 font families.
Type designers may submit their own type designs for publication in the FontFont library. A committee of internal experts (TypeBoard) reviews submissions for aesthetical, technical, and marketing aspects and decides about publication in the library. A basic prerequisite is that the type designs are original.
FSI is also publisher of the FontBook. The FontBook is an independent compendium of digital typefaces. The first edition was published in 1991 and revised and extended three times to show as many new and updated typefaces as possible. The latest fourth edition from September 2006 contains 1,760 pages with showings of 32,000 typefaces by 90 international foundries, being the largest printed type reference book of the world. In addition to the type specimens, users can find information about the type designer, year of publication, style category, language versions and see-also references to similar alternate typefaces.[3]
In 2011, FSI published the first digital version of the FontBook. The iPad app contains 620,000 typeface specimens by 110 international type foundries.[4]
FSI also publishes the image library ƒStop. At present, 22,000 royalty-free photos by 150 photographers are offered (December 2008). The images are distributed directly as well as via some of the FontShops and Getty Images. The aim is – like for the typefaces – images by designers for designers.