The billion dollar font
Emailed on July 26th, 2019 in The Friday Forward
On Friday Monotype, a design firm responsible for creating typefonts, announced that it would be acquired by HGGC (a private equity firm). You may not know who monotype is, but you definitely know their fonts (you're reading one now).
Started in 1887 as a manufacturer of typesets for printing presses, Monotype invented many of your favorite fonts. Monotype brought us such hits as Arial, Perpetua, and Times New Roman. Rising to public fame as the default typeface on Microsoft computers.
So how much are these fonts worth? Just shy of a billion. HGGC is set to pay $825 million for Monotype.