Category Archives: Universal Type Server
Extending font management to all users – beyond your creative group
February 28th, 2013 by Jim Kidwell
You’ve got your creative team locked down and humming with Universal Type Server.
Yet, the need for corporate fonts extends beyond your creative team to practically anyone in your organization.
Those in your Sales and Marketing teams give presentations, and generate a slew of other corporate content that should branded appropriately by using corporate font assets.
You can help these users get the fonts that they need, and prevent them from using unlicensed fonts, with a new type of client software – we call it the Type Core Client.
This new client runs silently in the background, quickly distributing approved fonts to your users desktops while still extending the tight font control of Universal Type Server. Users never see it, but you know they have the fonts they need.
How does the Type Core Client differ from the standard Universal Type Client? Mainly, the Core Client doesn’t have any user interface – it’s “headless” as we like to call it. For a full comparison, see the client comparison chart.
Want to talk through your client options with Universal Type Server? Contact us for the full scoop.
Meet the West Coast Rock Stars: Kari and Max
February 18th, 2013 by Edward Smith
The Extensis headquarters are firmly rooted in the land of microbrews and skinny jeans here on the left-coast in Portland, Oregon. In our Portland and LA offices you’ll find two creative workflow experts helping companies maintain license compliance and improve their workflows using Extensis font and digital asset management solutions:
Kari Friedewald, Regional Business Manager, Extensis Portland Office
- Favorite color: Orange
- Latest book: Accidents in North American Mountaineering
- Ideal vacation spot: A long and remote climbing trip.
- During my commute: Listening to NPR
Max, Systems Engineer, Extensis LA Office
- Favorite color: Red
- Latest book: The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad
- Ideal vacation spot: Must have a good mix of relaxing beaches and great ATV (four wheeler) courses.
- During the commute: Electronic and Alternative music
Both enjoy long walks on the beach and ensuring that font and digital asset management projects are successfully completed on time and under budget. To learn more about what Kari and Max can do for you, please check out our Professional Services page.
Meet the Mid-West Cowboys: Michael and Matthew
February 15th, 2013 by Edward Smith
The Extensis headquarters are firmly rooted in the land of fixed-gear bicycles and hipster mustaches here in Portland, Oregon. So what do you do if you’re struggling with fonts and digital assets halfway across the country in the midwest? Not to worry, we have you covered with our Chicago offices that serve the central region of the United States and Canada.
In our Chicago offices you’ll find two creative workflow experts helping companies maintain license compliance and improve their workflows using Extensis font and digital asset management solutions:
Michael Liwanag
Regional Business Manager
- Favorite color: Green
- Latest book: Confessor and Good is Not Enough
- Ideal vacation spot: Hawaii – beaches, ocean fun, food, sun.
- During my commute: Lately I’ve been going through Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International and Grimnoir Chronicles series.
Matthew Nelson
Systems Engineer
- Favorite color: Orange
- Latest book: OS X Server Essentials
- Ideal vacation spot: A sandy beach with sun.
- During the commute: The Dan Patrick Show.
Both enjoy long walks on the beach and ensuring that font and digital asset management projects are successfully completed on time and under budget.
To learn more about what Michael and Matthew can do for you, please check out our Professional Services page.
Meet the East Coast Gurus: Jeremy, James, and Chris
February 14th, 2013 by Edward Smith
The Extensis headquarters are firmly rooted in the land of microbrews and skinny jeans here in Portland, Oregon. So what do you do if you’re struggling with fonts and digital assets across the country on or near the east coast? Not to worry, we have you covered with our NYC offices that serve the eastern region of the United States and Canada.
In our NYC office you’ll find three creative workflow experts helping companies maintain license compliance and improve their workflows using Extensis font and digital asset management solutions:
Jeremy Godfrey, Regional Business Manager
- Favorite color: Blue
- Latest book: Maui Revealed
- Ideal vacation spot: Maui or St. Croix… depends on if I’m departing from PDX or NYC.
- During my commute: I read the NY Post.
James Grace, Senior Systems Engineer
- Favorite color:Neon Orange
- Latest book: Travels
- Ideal vacation spot: The Beach in Cancun, Mexico
- During the commute: I listen to PopTron : SomaFM
Chris Chen, Systems Engineer
- Favorite color: Black
- Latest book: Start with Why
- Ideal vacation spot: Maldives
- During the commute: Flo Rida, David Guetta, Rihanna
All three enjoy long walks on the beach and ensuring that font and digital asset management projects are successfully completed on time and under budget.
To learn more about what Jeremy, James, and Chris can do for you, please check out our Professional Services page.
Quality Bicycle Products Trusts Universal Type Server for Font Management
December 5th, 2012 by Jim Kidwell
In order to be in the top 1% of all distributers in the cycling and outdoor industry, Quality Bicycle Products (QBP) has made a firm commitment to high performance and outstanding results (in addition to putting “every butt on a bike”).
One of the main marketing documents created by QBP is its 1,700+ page catalogue, which is considered the “bible” for bicycles, parts and accessories. Ensuring that the right fonts are available for the production of this large, complex document, as well as all other external customer-facing content, is essential. QBP relies upon Universal Type Server to keep its entire team of 50 in sync, and enable a font problem-free creative workflow.
“Universal Type Server has made it easy for our creative teams to find the fonts they need so that they can deliver impeccable creative work,” said Jon Ostroushko, Mac Administration, IT Purchasing & Solutions for QBP.
By deploying Universal Type Server, QBP:
- Stores their large font library into a single location
- Standardized on Adobe Creative Suite 5 paired with the font auto-activation plug-ins of the Universal Type Client
- Connected their Universal Type Server to Active Directory for easy user management
Learn more about how QBP uses Universal Type Server to manage fonts in their workflow.
Update Now Available: Universal Type Server 3.2
August 15th, 2012 by Jim Kidwell
Today we released an update to Universal Type Server (v3.2). This update includes a number of fixed issues relating to directory services and other minor server issues.
The update is available free of charge to all existing Universal Type Server 3 customers who have an active Annual Service Agreement.
Universal Type Client update includes Adobe CS6 plug-ins
July 11th, 2012 by Jim Kidwell
Today we’re happy to release an update to the Universal Type Client font manager that includes font auto-activation plug-ins for Adobe® Creative Suite 6 (CS6) applications.
The updates are available as a FREE download for both OS® X and Windows®, and include plug-ins for Adobe InDesign®, Illustrator® and InCopy®*.
Download the new Universal Type Client installers here.
Universal Type Server is used by organizations to ensure the efficient distribution, organization and license compliance of fonts in creative workflows. Type Server is employed across many industries including advertising and marketing agencies, broadcast and media, business, finance, retail, educational, nonprofit and government agencies.
Notable Extensis font management clients include: The Art Institutes, J Walter Thompson, Publicis Groupe, Simon & Schuster, Smithsonian Institution, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and USA Today.
* NOTE: We will make a new Photoshop CS6 plug-in available as soon as an issue within Photoshop has been resolved by Adobe. Adobe CS5 & 5.5 plug-ins remain functional for Photoshop.
National Geographic Society Selects Universal Type Server to Manage Thousands of Fonts
March 13th, 2012 by Jim Kidwell
The National Geographic Society, a media icon for more than 100 years, manages its library of more than 10,000 fonts used to create its collection of magazines, books and interactive media. We’re extremely proud that Universal Type Server is trusted by this prestigious institution to manage their font collections.
National Geographic Society has hundreds of creative professionals who work across multiple publications, including the flagship National Geographic magazine, National Geographic Traveler and National Geographic Kids. Their breadth of magazines, books and marketing materials are read by more than 300 million people each month in every country in the world. In keeping with the brand’s upstanding reputation for visual and editorial excellence, National Geographic Society uses thousands of fonts to create these iconic pieces.
With such a vast library of fonts, it’s imperative that National Geographic Society have a system to distribute fonts to their creative teams while maintaining effective font licensing control. Keeping all the various design groups in synch, and legal with the right fonts, is critical.
According to Dave E. Smith, VP of Publishing Systems Technology for National Geographic, “It’s imperative that we comply with font license terms without hindering production work. Universal Type Server allows us to manage font distribution and use across our organization while delegating some control and freedom to our publishing groups.”
Taking some of the stress off of the Information Technology department, Universal Type Server allows various workgroup administrators to grant or remove access to workgroup fonts, effectively controlling the number of individuals who consume font licenses. The reporting and data export functionality of Universal Type Server also allows the team to gather, examine and share font usage data in an easily decipherable and searchable format.
National Geographic Society is part of Extensis’ prestigious list of global customers who are using Universal Type Server, including Condé Nast, Future Publishing, Young & Rubicam, The Art Institutes and Conair.
To explore more about how Universal Type Server can help your team maintain font compliance, see http://typeserver.com.
Universal Type Server 3.1 update now available
March 8th, 2012 by Jim Kidwell
Today we released an update to Universal Type Server. We’ve stocked it full of new server features that we’re sure you’ll love.
The new features of version 3.1 include:
- Improved LDAP features including workgroup and permission mapping, synchronization, services browsing and real-time focused LDAP synching
- Kerberos single sign-on improvements
- User management administration usability and speed improvements
- Improved user management within workgroups
- Ability to upload font license files to the server
- Additional fixed issues and feature improvements
This update is free of charge for all users with current Annual Service Agreement.
For a complete list of updates included in this release, see the release notes on the Support page.
Data deduplication and font management
January 18th, 2012 by Jim Kidwell
The duplication of files, fonts and other data can be a huge problem for any team. Not only does it fill up storage media, it also makes it incredibly more difficult to locate what you’re looking for.
If you’ve had a creative team for very long, you will inevitably start building up a collection of fonts. Some creative teams that have been around for decades have built up massive collections of tens of thousands of them. Now, if these fonts are just stored individually on a network drive or other location, it’s quite easy to build up a massive number of duplicate font files.
One of the benefits of implementing a top quality font manager is that fonts are all stored in a central location. In Universal Type Server and Suitcase Fusion, this location is called the “Font Vault.” Only a single unique copy of a font is allowed within the Vault, effectively deduplicating the data . This means that those twelve identical copies of Helvetica that are floating around your file server would effectively be cleaned up, and only a single clean copy would remain.
While many it is fairly easy to cleanup your collection on your own, our ICS team is called in to help some groups. Some of these groups have had massive collections with no real organization to speak of, and it’s not unheard of for a over 20,000 files to be whittled down to the essential 7,000 fonts for those teams. This streamlining was accomplished through data deduplication in the Font Vault, as well as removal of corrupt and outdated fonts.
If you would like to chat with our team about how effective font management and even our ICS team can help clean up your team’s mess, please contact us.
