Fonts from the Hallmark Design Collection Introduced by Ascender Corp.

Elk Grove Village, IL (PRWEB) September 30, 2010

Ascender Corporation, a leading provider of advanced font products, today announced an agreement with Hallmark Cards to distribute fonts from the distinguished Hallmark Design Collection, a premium set of script and lettering-style typefaces. Each Hallmark font contains the quality, innovation and care that are reflected in the Hallmark brand. The Ascender type development team collaborated with Hallmark to produce the fonts in TrueType and OpenType formats, and is making the fonts available today for licensing and instant download from Ascender?s font websites.

For more than four decades, Hallmark Cards has created typefaces influenced by art, fashion and popular culture. These fonts were developed by Hallmark specifically for proprietary use in greeting cards, framed sentiments and other forms of social expression. The agreement allows Ascender to offer designers and developers an exceptional range of script fonts with a rich tradition of typographic excellence.

The fonts in the Hallmark Design Collection feature a wide range of visual styles from timeless calligraphic lettering to handwritten characters with a contemporary look. Hallmark fonts can bring the right personal touch to cards, scrapbook pages, posters, newsletters, presentations, advertisements and websites.

?We are pleased to be working with Ascender to offer these celebrated fonts to everyone from scrapbookers to web developers,? said Jill Wiederholt, Licensing Director at Hallmark Licensing. ?The Ascender team shares a passion for creativity and excellence, and understands how to meet the demands for licensing digital fonts in today?s market.?

Ascender worked with the Hallmark lettering and font development team to develop high quality TrueType and OpenType versions with a full complement of glyphs that today?s creative professionals and software developers require. The Hallmark Design Collection fonts feature an impressive lineup of both formal and informal script and handwriting styles, including many with multiple weights. For more information or to view the fonts visit: http://www.ascenderfonts.com/foundry/hallmark/

The Hallmark fonts are also available today for use by web designers and web developers through Ascender?s innovative FontsLive.com web fonts service. This allows websites to use real fonts (instead of graphics) for formatting text and headlines, thus enhancing a site?s web typography and improving a site?s accessibility, indexability and editability.

Ascender is also proud to offer the Hallmark Design Collection fonts to its broad range of OEM/ISV customers including video game and Blu-ray publishers, software developers, web server application developers, and hardware manufacturers.

About Ascender

Ascender Corporation is a leading provider of advanced font products. Ascender?s founders are font industry experts and have been involved in developing many of the most important and influential fonts used in computers, mobile devices, consumer electronics and software products. Ascender provides multilingual, custom font development for a wide range of customers including creative professionals, enterprises, software developers and hardware manufacturers. Ascender also provides an extensive collection of TrueType & OpenType fonts for download to graphic designers and consumers through its font websites, including http://www.AscenderFonts.com and http://www.FontsLive.com

Contact: Bill Davis, Vice President

Ascender Corporation

25 Northwest Point Blvd, Suite 225 Elk Grove Village, IL 60007 USA

Phone: (847) 357 0730

Fax: (847) 357 0731

English: http://www.ascendercorp.com

German: http://www.ascendercorp.de

Ascender is a trademark of Ascender Corporation and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Hallmark, Bix Antique Script, Cluff, Forget Me Not, Geeoh, Hasty, Havix, Jewels, Kat Tail, McBoo, Okrien, Ottum, Starbabe, Succotash and Wallow are trademarks of Hallmark Cards, Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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OpenType Font Table Editor - New from Fontlab

Port Angeles, WA (PRWEB) October 22, 2010

The OpenType font format is the most popular cross-platform format for fonts today. An OpenType font file consists of a collection of tables. These binary data structures are intended to be processed by computers, and are not very readable to humans. DTL OTMaster reveals the contents of any OpenType font table in a friendly graphical user interface. It allows the user to examine and modify the contents of these tables without the need to rebuild the font from sources.

The practical applications are many and include things like:

fixing clipping in tall glyphs
adjusting kerning
visually examining glyph substitution where special glyphs like fractions, small caps and ligatures may replace regular glyphs
correcting glyph mapping in cmaps
checking the font for consistency on different platforms
editing glyphs to make corrections without harming hinting or other font parameters

?The inner structure of fonts, in particular those that support Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic or Indic scripts, can be quite complex. Typical font editors convert a font into an intermediate format, and then convert it again when the modified version is exported. During this process, some crucial aspects of the font may become ?lost in translation?. DTL OTMaster performs precision font surgery ? it changes only those parts of the font that it needs to change,? said Adam Twardoch, Fontlab Ltd.?s product and marketing manager.

Ted Harrison, President of Fontlab Ltd., added: ?OTMaster allows the user to graphically examine, copy and edit font glyphs, OpenType Layout features, and kerning. It can also help users address common problems such as inconsistent linespacing across operating systems or inadequate screen antialiasing settings. Finally, it can be used to add custom symbols or company logos to fonts.?

Harrison went on to say: ?OTMaster was developed by Dutch Type Library (The Netherlands) and URW++ (Germany). We are thrilled to add DTL OTMaster to our product offerings on fontlab.com. This release marks the beginning of our collaboration with Dutch Type Library and URW++. Dutch Type Library is renowned for their excellent high-quality DTL typefaces, while URW++ pioneered the field of font technology in 1975 with the development of Ikarus, the world?s first digital outline font editor. On the other hand, Fontlab Ltd. is the home of FontLab Studio, Fontographer, TypeTool and TransType, which today rank amongst the most popular font-related products worldwide. We believe that our combined expertise will contribute to improving the overall quality of fonts and typography, and we are looking forward to further collaboration with DTL and URW++.?

DTL OTMaster for Mac OS X and Windows is available now at Fontlab Ltd.?s fontlab.com website. The suggested retail price is EUR 255.

More information is available at:

http://www.fontlab.com/dtl-urw-font-utilities/dtl-otmaster/

About Fontlab Ltd.

Fontlab Ltd. has stayed at the forefront of digital font management by remaining devoted to developing font editors and typography products. Their full line of products is dedicated to solving the most complex typography issues. These products include: AsiaFont Studio?, BitFonter?, FogLamp?, FontLab?, FontLab? Studio, Fontographer?, Photofont?, ScanFont?, TypeTool?, TransType?, FontFlasher?, FONmaker?, SigMaker? and CompoCompiler?. All products from Fontlab Ltd. carry a 60-day satisfaction guarantee. More information on all Fontlab products can be seen at http://www.fontlab.com.

About Dutch Type Library and URW++

The Dutch Type Library, known for the highly exclusive DTL? typefaces since 1990, and the Germany based company URW++ Design & Development GmbH, pioneers in the field of font technology development since the early 1970s, together develop designer tools for professional font production. Their products include: DTL FontMaster?, DTL BezierMaster, DTL IkarusMaster, DTL TraceMaster, DTL BlendMaster, DTL KernMaster, DTL ContourMaster, DTL LetterModeller, DTL OTMaster. Dutch Type Library, DTL, DTL FontMaster are trademarks of the Dutch Type Library. URW++ is a registered trademark of URW++ Design & Development GmbH. More information on all DTL products can be seen at http://www.fonttools.org.

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Ascender Corp. Releases 150 Fonts from 5 New Type Foundries

Elk Grove Village, IL (PRWEB) December 1, 2010

Ascender Corporation, a leading provider of advanced font products, today announced font distribution agreements with five distinctive type foundries located around the globe. The addition of over 150 new fonts provides Ascender's customers with a wide variety of superbly crafted text, display and script fonts. The fonts are available in the popular TrueType and OpenType font formats, and are available for immediate download at http://www.AscenderFonts.com. These new fonts are also available for licensing by software developers and hardware manufacturers to include with their products.

The type foundries who licensed fonts to Ascender include Bean & Morris, Borges Lettering, Laura Worthington, Stereotypes and Type Associates.

Bean & Morris Fonts is a collaboration of two of the most prolific personalities in Australian lettering, logo design and typography: Russell Bean and Keith Morris. The Bean & Morris font collection features a creative range of typefaces including text, display and script fonts.

Borges Lettering features the typefaces and lettering design of Charles Borges de Oliveira, a talented lettering artist and graphic designer with a delightful repertoire of handwriting script fonts.

Laura Worthington has been in the type design field since 1997 and her passion for type is still huge. Laura will draw hundreds of letters as she creates her typefaces and then she develops those characters into alternate versions which results in most of her fonts being packed full of OpenType features such as alternates, ligatures and swashes.

Stereotypes is a Germany-based type foundry showcasing a range of new fonts designed by Sascha Timplan. The expression "Stereotypes" is about the love of typography and music--it has nothing to do with clich? ideas!

Type Associates is an Australian-based typographic services group formed in 1993. The Type Associates font collection features high quality typefaces created by Russell Bean and other talented type designers with an emphasis on practical, enduring type designs.

Ascender is also proud to offer these fonts to its broad range of OEM/ISV customers including video game and Blu-ray publishers, software developers, web server application developers, and hardware manufacturers.

About Ascender

Ascender Corporation is a leading provider of advanced font products. Ascender's founders are font industry experts and have been involved in developing many of the most important and influential fonts used in computers, mobile devices, consumer electronics and software products. Ascender provides multilingual, custom font development for a wide range of customers including creative professionals, enterprises, software developers and hardware manufacturers. Ascender also provides an extensive collection of TrueType & OpenType fonts for download to graphic designers and consumers through its font websites, including http://www.AscenderFonts.com

Contact: Bill Davis, Vice President

Ascender Corporation

25 Northwest Point Blvd, Suite 225 Elk Grove Village, IL 60007 USA

Phone: (847) 357 0730

Fax: (847) 357 0731

English: http://www.ascendercorp.com

German: http://www.ascendercorp.de

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Blue Collar Interactive Launches FontFuse Website and Contest for VIP trip to SXSW Interactive from WebINK

Hood River, OR (PRWEB) January 26, 2011

Full-service digital agency, Blue Collar Interactive, today announced the launch of FontFuse (http://fontfuse.WebINK.com), a font pairing design resource that allows designers to explore over 2,000 high-quality web fonts to create a font pairing that can be shared, rated and commented on. Created for leading software developer, Extensis? to showcase their WebINK? font library, this is the first web application of its kind to help designers quickly select and pair appropriate typefaces or browse selections from other users. To kick off the launch of the FontFuse website, WebINK is hosting a font pairing contest to send one lucky winner on a VIP trip for two to the 2011 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive event in Austin, TX.

Blue Collar Interactive developed the concept for the FontFuse website to help Extensis gain awareness for WebINK, a web font service that offers more than 2,000 high-quality fonts from 14 type foundries. Realizing that this newfound depth of fonts available on the web has made finding the right fonts more interesting and challenging for designers, Blue Collar intended to solve these challenges by creating a resource that would allow for font exploration and social sharing of font selections. FontFuse allows web designers and developers to explore the Extensis WebINK library, then use tools to quickly create their own typeface pairs. Site visitors can explore, create, share and comment on the typeface pairs and easily license the fonts that they?d like to use for their own design projects.

?Selecting the best fonts for design jobs has always been a challenge for today?s designers,? says Thomas Phinney, Extensis Product Manager for Fonts and Typography. ?FontFuse allows users to select pairs of high quality web fonts for use in headlines and body copy, and then share that knowledge with the rest of the design community.?

In celebration of the launch of the FontFuse website, Extensis announced a font pairing contest sponsored by WebINK that kicks off today, and will send a lucky winner and a guest to Austin, TX for the popular SXSW Interactive event on March 11-15, 2011. To enter, visitors simply have to sign up for an account at http://fontfuse.WebINK.com and create a font pairing from the library of high-quality web fonts. The entrant with the most community votes by the close of the contest on February 25, 2011, will win SXSW Interactive registration and airfare for two, hotel accommodations, and will be WebINK?s? honored guest at its cocktail reception at Austin?s new W Hotel on Monday, March 14, 2011. For full contest details visit: (http://fontfuse.webink.com/sxswcontest).

WebINK is a cloud-based web font rental service that gives designers access to high-quality web fonts, enabling them to use real typefaces on websites without worrying about supported font formats or font licensing issues. As a result, designers are no longer limited to the short list of fonts that work on the web, and now have the creative freedom to spec a font pairing from thousands of high quality font choices. WebINK fonts are standards-compliant, SEO-friendly, and implemented in HTML using simple @font-face CSS rule. FontFuse extends the value of WebINK by helping web designers and developers to create the best pairings.

?Typography is the cornerstone of strong visual communication and there is nothing else that currently exists for web designers and developers as a resource to create and share font pairings,? said Tom Lehmann, Partner and Creative Director at Blue Collar. ?FontFuse is a great place to learn about type, share ideas and more than anything, be inspired.?

Blue Collar Interactive handled the concept for the FontFuse website, and all branding, strategy, web design and development and advertising campaign extensions including PPC, email marketing and online advertising.

?The Blue Collar team has done what no other agency has done for me in the 15-plus years I have been hiring outside agencies?they delivered what they promised,? said Brad Dunzer, Extensis Web Technology Manager.

Blue Collar is a full-service digital agency that offers a wide range of creative and client services, web development and interactive marketing services. Their management team consists of three founding senior partners and an advisory board of junior partners that leverage a well-balanced suite of expertise to offer clients ?one-stop-shopping? for their interactive needs. Blue Collar?s gritty, hand-shake approach to creative marketing solutions, is backed by a dedication to strong business relationships through hard work, brutal honesty, integrity and trust. For more information about Blue Collar Interactive and their suite of services, visit: http://www.bluecollaragency.com.

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