Mobile Font Suite Launches

Monotype, the font and imaging technology company, is partnering with Ikivo,  which provides Mobile SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) solutions, to release a suite of fonts enhanced for use on mobile phones. The suite includes over 200 fonts, delivering enhanced image quality when seen on a mobile screen. It follows monotype's launch in June, of a suite of 13 fonts optimised for use on mobile phones.
The two companies believe that the opportunities for working with text on a mobile phone have so far been extremely limited, owing to a lack of standards relating to how text should be handled on a phone. They hope the release of the ESQ (Enhanced Screen Quality) font suite will enable advertisers to present a consistent image on the phone as they do in other channels.
Scalable type brings an enormous opportunity to the mobile world says Monotype Imaging Display group Executive Vice President, John Seguin. Fonts lend personality and impact to applications, games, branded campaigns, user interfaces and most every kind of content. Users are increasingly interacting with text more than other features on their phone, validating that text is becoming one of the most important mobile phone components.Through stylistic, scalable fonts, user experiences will become more diverse and more satisfying than ever before.
The two companies are demonstrating their solution at The Smartphone Show in London which runs today and tomorrow. The demonstrations show how rich multimedia content and User Interfaces can be personalised, branded and enhanced through scalable type, powered by Monotype Imagings iType font engine, a font rendering system for memory-constrained devices, and WorldType Layout Engine, a modular library for composing, positioning and rendering multilingual text, including complex scripts such as Hindi and Arabic. For the purpose of the demonstrations, iType and WorldType have been incorporated into Ikivos SVG Player, a multimedia client framework for low- to high-end feature phones, and Ikivos Animator content authoring tool, which gives developers access to the client framework environment within the content creation workflow process.
Ikivo estimates that its SVG Player Clients have been deployed in around 150 million handsets worldwide. The companys core products include the Ikivo SVG Player, an open standard, compliant technology that allows phone manufacturers to enable their devices for Mobile SVG; and Ikivo Animator, a content creation toll that integrates into any design workflow to animate static SVG content for mobile phones.
More information on the Monotype website and the Ikivo website.