For the past five years, Google has been working on a way to connect more than just their services – the entire world. With font specialist Monotype’s help, the company has come up with a universal font that works for 800 languages and covers 100 writing scripts #objectmagic
The Noto typeface (from no tofu = no white squares instead of characters) is available for use and alteration as an open source. It comes with serif and sans serif options, numbers, emoji, musical annotations and has different weights of course. Both companies are commited to the project and intend to add more scripts and weights, considering it a work in progress.
While Noto is the most practical writing tool we’ve encountered so far, it comes with obvious restrictions. Creativity is clearly loosing terrain, while functionality becomes king in this area.
Although Monotype has consulted all sorts of specialists and asked even Tibetan monks to give their blessing before launching the code, we can’t help but wonder: are we close to witness the death of ancient fonts and scripts preserved by cultures for centuries?
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