ITC Reviewer's Comments

International Typeface Corporation (ITC), popular with many font providers, offers their updated fonts before making the new designs available to other websites and wins our "TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award."

ITC is a division of Monotype Imaging who has been designing typefaces for over 125 years. ITC also provides access to fonts.com, also owned by Monotype Imaging.

This service offers fonts in most popular formats and many licensing options along with a notable variety of customization services. ITCfonts.com provides fonts for everything from cell phone digits to book typefaces.

Although ITC offers remarkable specialized services, it falls one-step behind their sister company fonts.com, because they offer fewer fonts.

Ease of Use:  

ITCfont.com hosts an easy to use website. Through the homepage, you can access a font search tool as well as the top five fonts, "what's hot" and "what's new", business and classic fonts and a direct link to U & lc Magazine Online.

Feature Set:  

ITC, known for its classical designs, has recently expanded to include more contemporary designs and illustrative fonts (Design Fonts). They now offer over 1500 unique fonts and provide access to the entire fonts.com collection (see the fonts.com review for complete details). Fonts are available in TrueType, PostScript Type 1, OpenType and Unicode formats.

This site offers the famous ITC 1500 Library that currently includes 1580 fonts in PostScript and TrueType format with a 20-user license. Although this collection is available through other sites, only ITC offers the up-to-date version of this reasonably priced collection.

ITC specializes in customization; they offer a variety of licenses, many specialized features and a good selection of historic fonts.

The font licenses available through ITC include:

• Standard (up to five users at one location)
• Multiple CPU and Site
• Corporate and Custom Type
• Embedding, streaming and web server
• Library
• OEM/ISV

ITC specializes in custom work including these abilities:

• Creation of custom typeface design
• Digitization of artwork
• Creation of logos and symbols
• Development of custom character sets
• Creation Enhanced Screen Quality (ESQ) fonts
• Non-Latin font development
• Font format conversions
• Multilingual and Unicode compliant fonts
• Custom editing of printer fonts
• Consulting on typefaces, fonts and font technologies

Their historic collection includes many archived fonts including old typefaces used in historic books and other printed materials. ITC is a good resource to find fonts to give a 19th century look to a digitized or printed product.

ITC hosts an excellent search tool that is capable of searching by keyword, classification, designer or foundry. They also provide a unique search option called "Search by Site", which asks a series of questions related to how you want a font to look such as whether certain letters drop below the baseline and so on. After you answer the questions, the search produces a list of fonts that incorporate the appearance you desire.

ITC also provides a backup CD for purchased fonts and a free Euro upgrade within 90 days of purchase—the Euro upgrade includes the new Euro symbol.

Ease of Download:  

Like most services, we did not encounter errors or delays when downloading their fonts.

Available Tools:  

ITC does not offer free online tools, such as a text manager. However, conversions, editing and font creation is available for purchase through either fonts.com or ITC.

Help/Support:  

ITC offers exceptional support including toll-free telephone numbers for the United States and the United Kingdom. They also provide a physical address for mail correspondence and an email form to instantly send your questions or comments.

ITC and fonts.com provide many additional supports, including a newsletter and an online magazine. If you subscribe to the free newsletter, you also have access to some free font downloads.

Summary:  

For customized and historic fonts as well as typeface consulting, ITC is an invaluable resource. They offer high quality, time-tested classic designs and a distinctive library collection.