Monotype, which provides typefaces, technology and expertise for creative applications and consumer devices, has launched the Monotype Web Font platform. Offered as a free integration kit, Monotype says it enables HTML5 authoring tool providers to add comprehensive web font support to their solution and extend access to nearly 100,000 different fonts within their UI, with minimal integration and engineering effort.

Web fonts are a critical part of the workflow to create HTML5-based campaigns, as they ensure clear, consistent and dynamic text across all screens. Until now, creative authoring tool providers have been challenged to provide an intuitive user experience that shields the complexity of finding, using, and licensing and publishing web fonts.

The Monotype Web Font Platform is designed to help authoring tool providers remove the challenges of working with and gaining rights to web fonts by making it an integrated part of the design workflow. Using the Monotype Web Font Platform, designers can license new fonts, import existing brand-mandated or previously licensed fonts, and use third-party web font kits from approved independent sources, in order to create and deliver dynamic, personalised and responsive digital marketing campaigns employing legible and high-quality text across multiple screens and resolutions.

The Monotype platform offers access to a library of almost 100,000 fonts, including complimentary access and use of 14 Monotype web font families. It also includes a subsetting API, which reduces ad weight to minimise load times and network traffic. Typically, web fonts load all alphanumeric characters and symbols before rendering. Subsetting means that the font file will only contain the characters needed to display the ad or campaign’s content.

Monotype has been pushing the importance of consistent branding and fonts across channels, including mobile, for several years, but the company’s senior director, market and product strategy, Paul McKeever, told Mobile Marketing that it had been moved to create the platform by a combination of factors, including the IAB’s decision to promote HTML5 as a standard last year; and the number of high profile websites, including YouTube, moving their content to HTML5.

“Brands need an easy, convenient way to supply properly licensed web fonts to their creative agencies for the design of digital marketing campaigns,” said McKeever. “Web fonts provide crisp and sharp resolution across every screen and offer the fluidity brands need to ensure their message is delivered and rendered cleanly. HTML5 and web fonts create a consistent brand experience across any device or platform, and we’ve just made it easier than ever for creative designers to work with web fonts without leaving their preferred design environment.”

The Monotype Web Font Platform is available now as a free integration kit to HTML5 authoring tool providers. Initially, Monotype is targeting the solution at ad tech companies, with AdCade, Responsive Ads and Flyte among early users of the platform, though McKeever said it is equally relevant for website designers. Celtra has also had access to the fonts for several months via a manual integration with its platform.

Buzz Wiggins, co–founder and CTO of Adcade, said: “With the death of Flash came the broken process of working with web fonts, a common frustration for designers who responded by creating ineffective workarounds. The Monotype Web Font Platform puts the power back in designers’ hands by offering a super simple way to use web fonts – providing the creative freedom and flexibility that designers and brands need to run a dynamic and personalised campaign anywhere, anytime. At Adcade, we’re all about creating efficiencies in existing workflows and streamlining process, so were pretty excited to be able to tell designers that we’re giving them back hours of their project by working with Monotype to help resolve one of the final hurdles of the HTML5 creative design process.”

There’s more information about the Monotype Web Font Platform here.