IPC Media, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Inc., the publishing division of AOL Time Warner, and one of Europe’s largest magazine publishers. Over 64% of adults in the UK read an IPC magazine.
Controlling the distribution and use of fonts throughout the organisation was a full time concern for IT management. Tracking purchasing was difficult and since there appeared no foolproof way of checking the total number of licences required, an enterprise-wide licence was purchased as a catch-all.
But was this necessary? More to the point, how could the company clearly prove that it was correctly licensed and therefore legal without a management system in place?
Team Goals
Simon Twigger, Senior Project Manager and Chris Glynne, Head of Magazine Technology at IPC spearheaded the initiative.
As a team, their goals were to:
- Ensure that the company was operating legally
- Centralise and simplify the font licensing process
- Maintain transparent real-time records of font licences
- Maximise cost efficiency of font purchases
The Solution
Evaluation of many software auditing tools and consultancy services revealed that Fontwise from Monotype was the only satisfactory solution to IPC’s font licence management requirements.
Comprising a unique utility to search and list every font installed on each client across the network; the service reconciles existing fonts with licences and provides online centralised font licensing database for font evaluation, selection and purchase.
The Process
From a list of over 11000 fonts generated with Monotype’s ListFonts utility and a stack of paper licences Monotype produced a complete online database for IPC highlighting font usage by their preferred business view. This listed each magazine’s selected fonts and the number of licences available.
At any point in time the number of licences in use can be seen and licences can be shared across the group.
When art directors need a font they go to the database to find it and then purchase a licence. The font is immediately downloaded and the database is updated. Monotype also sources fonts from different suppliers on request and updates the on-line database accordingly.
The Benefits
Simon Twigger sums up:
“Number one - we know that we are legal. The initial audit has helped us reduce our licensing commitment by over 200 licences accurately and this has helped to centralise purchasing.
Two Help Desk staff now use the database as a management tool, saving time. Workflow is definitely more centralised but that hasn’t negated any independence that the art directors have to choose the fonts they want.
I think that the work with Monotype enabled us to take the steps necessary to achieve font legality and equally important - to maintain that legality. I don’t think that we would have been able to do this without Monotype’s help.”
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