Font fanatics, rejoice. One of the most iconic typeface companies is bringing several of their fonts to Adobe Typekit, for free. Adobe announced a partnership with House Industries, a company that crafts custom lettering and fonts that are widely recognized, from the Jimmy Kimmel Show to the New Yorker magazine. The partnership brings seven free-to-use fonts to the Typekit library for Creative Cloud subscribers, while 50 will be available in the marketplace for individual purchase without a subscription.
According to Matthew Rechs, Adobe’s Typekit director, House Industries fonts are iconic, essential, and often immediately recognizable among the design community, both for their style and quality. “This is absolutely one of the most prestigious partners I could imaging winning the trust of,” Rechs said. “The reason we have been able to do that, and bring partners like these into the ecosystem, is that we’ve made a business that works for them.”
House Industries is a boutique graphics company with over 25 years of font design experience. Along with developing fonts, the Delaware-based company has also designed custom lettering for well-known brands. The brand is so iconic that it has earned a permanent collection at the Smithsonian’s design museum, as well as a major exhibition at the Henry Ford Museum (opening May 27).
While 49 House Industries fonts will be coming to the Typekit marketplace for purchase, several are included with Creative Cloud subscriptions, including Sign Painter, a script font that mimics hand-drawn lettering. Those fonts are available within applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign; select the “Add fonts from Typekit” from the type menu.
The new additions include a variety of styles, including script fonts, a style that Rechs explains is easy to find, but hard to do well with the right rhythm and spacing.
“A lot of time when people think about type, they think of style, but designers think of type as tools,” he said. “[Fonts are] not necessarily about style, fashion or getting a particular look, they are trying to solve a particular problem most of the time. They have a kind of look and a kind of fashion, it’s very expressive and emotional, but a lot of it has specific utility.”
“When Rich Roat and I started House Industries 25 years ago, I was an idealistic 21-year-old with one foot in the analog world and one in the digital,” said Andy Cruz, co-founder, owner, and art director at House Industries. “Adobe’s tools have always helped us merge both of those worlds together. We’re happy that our fonts are now even more accessible to Adobe users.”
Typekit now has nearly 7,000 included fonts and almost just as main paid options, with Adobe adding thousands of new options since acquiring the platform nearly six years ago.
