Two font companies with the largest Chinese and Western font libraries cooperate. What does this mean?

In the past, the era when domestic designers and companies had to purchase some commonly used English fonts through overseas websites has finally passed. Nowadays, through Founder Font Library, people can easily purchase English fonts such as Helvetica, Arial, Frutiger, and Gothic.

On June 13, Peking University Founder Information Industry Group and Monotype, the font supplier with the largest market share in the United States, held a strategic cooperation signing ceremony in Shanghai. Founder Electronics and Founder Script, two subsidiaries of Founder Information Industry, will fully cooperate with Monotype in the Chinese corporate market and individual market, and act as agents for the sales of Monotype's more than 8,000 Western font products.

China's font industry is expanding year by year. This cooperation not only means that Founder Font Library will provide more than 95% of the world's fonts in the future, but also means that China's font design industry is booming, and the Chinese people's vision of "seeing words as faces" has become increasingly clear.

Font design is a big business, it just started in China

"Monotype's revenue in fiscal year 2017 exceeded US$200 million, and Japan's Morisawa Font also had annual revenue of about 400 million yuan," Zhang Jianguo, general manager of Founder Electronic Font Business Department and general manager of Founder Handwriting, told Jiemian reporters, "But there is still a certain gap between China's font industry and Europe, the United States and neighboring Japan."

Font design has been dormant in China for a long time. Originally, in the 1990s, paper media was still the mainstream of the market - many publishing houses and printing plants purchased fonts directly from font libraries. At that time, there were many domestic font suppliers such as Founder, Hanyi, and Huawen.

But with the advent of the Internet era, the problem of font piracy has become increasingly rampant. In addition, Chinese consumers had weak copyright awareness in the past. People did not realize that they needed to pay to use fonts, and they did not understand the time and effort that font designers put into a font. In 2007, Founder and Xu Jinglei jointly launched a "Founder Jinglei Font". The price of this font was only 10 yuan, but only more than 2,000 sets of the genuine version were sold, while there were hundreds of thousands of pirated copies on the market.

On the other hand, the design of Chinese fonts is much more difficult than English fonts. The launch of a Chinese font must include at least 6763 basic Chinese characters, while the English font only has 26 basic English letters. "When we develop a Chinese font, we often need a team of five or six people, which takes half a year to a year and a half to complete; while the English font can be completed by one designer in as little as one month," Zhang Jianguo lamented to Jiemian reporters. road.

The long development process, expensive labor costs and meager revenue from genuine sales led Founder to almost ax the font business around 2000. However, as the country strengthens the protection of intellectual property rights and upgrades consumption, more and more people are aware of the importance of font copyright and are willing to pay for it.

The type design industry is beginning to revitalize. Consumers' aesthetics have improved - people realize that even the aesthetically pleasing billboards on the street cannot do without a good font; on signboards in airports, train stations and other places, even subtle differences in fonts can give people a better visual impression. It makes a huge difference in look and feel and daily use. Young people who are committed to China's own Chinese character design have joined the industry, and the font design environment has become more relaxed and free.

Founder font is also one of the driving forces that promotes the prosperity of China's font industry. As profitability improves, Founder is also able to cooperate with more outstanding font designers: According to Zhang Jianguo, Founder currently has more than 100 contracted designers and can launch more than 100 new fonts every year. Among them is Guo Bingquan, a font designer who has developed fonts for the famous Japanese font supplier Shuyan and Monotype. "Currently, Mr. Guo only cooperates with Founder. It is only in the past few years that Founder can afford to pay these famous font designers." Design costs," Zhang Jianguo said.

From enterprises to individuals, where are the new growth points of font design

Although the font industry is full of potential today, there are still many growth points to be discovered.

Outside of the commercial market, the growth of the market for personal purchase of fonts cannot be ignored. With the development of smart phones and social networks, Chinese young people's demand for personalization is also increasing, such as system fonts for Android phones, fonts and emoticons in chat software such as QQ...Chinese young people are demanding personalization and fun. The passion for fonts is at the forefront of the world.

Seeing the potential of the personal Internet market, Founder Handwriting launched the "Handwriting Calligraphy" APP, launching a series of fonts for famous calligraphers, film and television stars, Internet writers, popular IPs, etc. Users can choose to replace them through the theme stores of more than 20 mobile phone manufacturers System fonts for mobile phones; in mobile QQ, there are many colorful fonts and dynamic fonts for people to download and use. These fonts are not expensive and people only need to pay a few dollars to use their favorite fonts.

According to Zhang Jianguo, the number of individual users using Founder's font service exceeded one million last year, with an annual growth rate of 20% to 30%. "China's font industry has a scale of more than 300 million yuan. Although compared with commercial fonts, the size of personal fonts is still small," Zhang Jianguo said, "but there are still many opportunities to be explored."

In addition, the development of social networks and smart devices has also made font design possible for ordinary people. At the 2017 Founder spring and summer font launch conference that we have reported, Huang Xuejun, product manager of Founder’s electronic font business department, introduced that his 8-year-old son used a writing app to turn his handwritten words into a font called "ink" "Eight years old" has received a share of 8,000 yuan in the past year. This was almost unimaginable in the past. Something that seemed to have a high threshold was actually very close to ordinary people. Even five years ago, no one would have imagined that one day, fonts would be able to hold spring and summer trend conferences.

In the future, Founder plans to develop more fonts that suit the tastes of young people and put research on font consumption trends on the agenda. Along with cooperating with Monotype, an excellent font supplier, Founder also plans to join hands with Chinese mobile phone and other hardware and software manufacturers to jointly explore the overseas individual user market.

“The next step is to develop the Japanese font and Korean font markets while establishing a foothold in the Chinese market, and introduce more good things,” Zhang Jianguo told Jiemian reporters. “However, the Chinese market is still the most important. Our roots are in here."