WO2001095220A2 - Aggregation, delivery and use of branded typefonts - Google Patents
Aggregation, delivery and use of branded typefonts Download PDFInfo
- Publication number
- WO2001095220A2 WO2001095220A2 PCT/US2001/018204 US0118204W WO0195220A2 WO 2001095220 A2 WO2001095220 A2 WO 2001095220A2 US 0118204 W US0118204 W US 0118204W WO 0195220 A2 WO0195220 A2 WO 0195220A2
- Authority
- WO
- WIPO (PCT)
- Prior art keywords
- brand
- font
- file
- digital font
- computer
- Prior art date
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Classifications
-
- G—PHYSICS
- G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
- G06Q—INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES; SYSTEMS OR METHODS SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
- G06Q30/00—Commerce
- G06Q30/02—Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
Definitions
- the present invention relates generally to advertising and promotional techniques for raising brand awareness using computers and online networks. More specifically, the invention enables computer users to better, manage the appearance of documents they create using easy to recall font sets named after highly recognizable branded images.
- Computers utilize what are described as fonts to display characters (primarily text and numbers) in software applications.
- Most personal computers that are available in the marketplace today contain a relatively small number of font sets that are included by the manufacturer of the computer's operating system or a third party software developer.
- the font set generally resides within a computer's operating system and typically is accessible by virtually all of the applications used on the computer.
- the fonts are used on the computer to provide the user with typeface choices for creating emails, letters, presentations, spreadsheets and other forms of written communication.
- a known digital font technology that is commonly used in personal computers is TrueType, designed by Apple Computer, and that is now used by both Apple and Microsoft in their operating systems.
- Fonts are generally developed by artisans who also are skilled in computer programming. These artisans select the name that the user will see in the selection of fonts. Some fonts are named after the inventor, some are given names meant to describe the font (with words like long, tall, mug, short, etc.) and many are named whatever their creator determines to be appropriate.
- Computer users generally are not versed in the background of computer font development and, as a result, most users use just a few of the fonts residing on their computer. Even fewer users take the opportunity to download and install new or alternative fonts that are often available from online sources.
- Trademarks and service marks serve to identify and distinguish a company's products and services in the marketplace from the products and services of others. Businesses throughout the United States and the rest of the world spend enormous time and labor building brand awareness, which is often considered a company's most important corporate asset. Typical of these famous marks are the Coca-Cola® and Coors® brands. Trademarks typically come in many formats, and often a company's brand has a unique and instantly recognizable graphic appearance due to the font itself. Companies often go to great lengths, via strict trademark usage guidelines and contractual restrictions, to ensure that their brands are only used in a given font and in a certain way. By maintaining strict use standards, the company's brand is an easily remembered image of the company in the eyes of its customers, business partners, and the general public.
- a device (which may be a computer, a computer peripheral, or the like) includes a font display mechanism that includes or is provided with a unique set of font files.
- Each font file includes information necessary to enable a font display rasterizer to render (i.e., display, print or otherwise output) a so-called "trade font” which, according to the invention, is a font that is associated with a given brand.
- a trade font is associated with a given brand by having a character set that is identifiable from the brand itself, and by having a name identified with the company or product/service offered by the company.
- Each of the trade fonts is uniquely associated with a recognizable consumer brand through a common lettering style and, preferably, by name.
- Trade fonts are provided in or downloaded to a computer, preferably in a TrueType or compatible format.
- Software applications that have font selection capability automatically display trade font names so that a given trade font may be selected by a user of the application.
- the user Upon selection of the trade font, the user generates a document (e.g., an email, a letter, etc. as the case may be).
- the trade font name may be augmented with a hypertext link to enable a user to link to a sponsoring company's web site.
- the trade font may also have associated therewith an audio file that outputs a given audio file (e.g., a company jingle) when a user takes a given action with respect to the file name.
- a sponsoring company can increase its brand awareness both visually and aurally.
- Figure 1 is a simplified illustration of a computer in which the present invention may be implemented;
- Figure 2 illustrates a computer operating system display font mechanism of the prior art;
- Figure 3 illustrates a computer operating system display font mechanism that includes a set of trade fonts according to the present invention
- Figure 4 illustrates a GUI window illustrating font listboxes that display trade fonts according to the present invention
- FIG. 5 is a simplified representation of a control program for use in the present invention.
- Figure 6 illustrates an email that is generated using an AmericanAirlines® trade font according to the present invention
- Figure 7 illustrates a document that is generated using a word processor having the A-tnericanAirlii es® trade font selectable from a font listbox according to the present invention.
- a representative computer 100 has at least one processor 102, system memory (e.g., RAM) 104, disk or other permanent storage 106, an operating system 108 having an application programming interface 110, a graphical user interface 112, various input/output devices such as a display
- Illustrative applications 120 include a word processor, an email client, an electronic spreadsheet, a web browser, and the like.
- the computer also includes a network communications interface (e.g., a modem card, an Ethernet network interface card, or the like) to connect the computer to a LAN, WAN, or other computer network.
- a representative computer is a personal computer, notebook computer, Internet appliance or pervasive computing device (e.g., a PDA or palm computer) that is Pentium-, PowerPC®- or RISC-based.
- the client includes an operating system such as Microsoft® Windows (all PC versions), Microsoft®
- an operating system 202 of a computer 200 in which the present invention is implemented typically includes a digital font mechanism 204.
- a conventional digital font mechanism 204 is TrueType, which consists of two components: the TrueType fonts 206 themselves, and a rasterizer 208.
- Each digital font 206 comprises a TrueType font file (typically having a .ttf extension in Windows) that includes information used by the rasterizer 208 and the operating system software 202 to ensure that characters display on the computer screen or print out exactly as intended by the font designer.
- the fonts come in many different styles and may be supplied with the operating system (or printer) or purchased from font developers either individually or in font collections.
- a font comprises all of the characters (alpha, numeric and relevant symbols) of a given type.
- the rasterizer 208 is a computer program that generates character bitmaps for display screens and printers (otherwise known as raster devices) in a known manner by reading an outline description of the character (lines and splines) from the TrueType font file, scaling the outline description of the character to a requested size and device resolution, adjusting the outline description to the pixel grid of the raster device, and filling the adjusted outline with pixels.
- the rasterizer 208 is shown as part of the operating system, it may be included in other devices, e.g., such as printer control software.
- a digital font file contains the characters associated with a given alphabet or script, as well as additional information. Typically, this information is arranged in a series of tables and includes the shapes of each character, data about how the characters should be spaced vertically and horizontally within a block of text, character mapping details, and the like. Further technical information about the TrueType font file can be obtained from the TrueType Specification available from the Microsoft web site at the following URL, http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ tt/tt.htm, and which is incorporated herein by reference. Although fonts used in the present invention are preferably compliant with the TrueType specification, this is not a requirement. Other digital font types, such as OpenType, may be used as well. With reference now to Figure 3, according to the invention, a device
- Each font file 304 includes information necessary to enable the rasterizer 306 to render (i.e., display, print or otherwise output) a so-called "trade font” which, according to the invention, is a font that is associated with a given brand.
- a trade font is associated with a given brand by having a character set that is identifiable from the brand itself, and by having a name identified with the company or product/service offered by the company.
- a Coors® trade font would include the stylized characters that comprise the Coors® brand (i.e., the "C", “o”, “r” and “s") together with the remaining letters (preferably capitalized and lower case), numbers and symbols that make up a conventional font set.
- the font would be identified as the Coors trade font.
- the AmericanAirlines® trade font would include a set a characters in the recognizable lettering style of this brand, and the trade font would be identified as the AmericanAirlines trade font.
- the trade font may also include information that associates given word pairs (or even letter pairs) in the distinctive blue-red format commonly used in the AmericanAirlines brand.
- each of the trade fonts 304 is uniquely associated with a recognizable consumer brand through a common lettering style, color or color combination, and, preferably, by name.
- trade fonts are included with the digital font mechanism in the device in any convenient fashion.
- the trade fonts may be included with other TrueType fonts conventional loaded in the digital font mechanism of an operating system.
- the trade fonts may be downloaded and stored in a computer operating system (or printer control routine) by a computer user accessing a given server (e.g., a web site) and downloading font files to the user's local machine.
- a given server e.g., a web site
- a set of trade files are aggregated and hosted on a server.
- Each of the trade fonts is identifiable by name (typically, the brand) and is accessible to computer users via a computer network such as the Internet.
- the operator of the server e.g., an application service provider or ASP
- Trade fonts may be stored on a computer-readable medium (e.g., a CD-ROM, optical disk, floppy disk, flash memory, or the like) and installed in a computer or other device on an as-needed basis. Trade fonts also may be delivered to a machine capable of displaying such fonts via email or other document attachments. Of course, any other convenient technique may be used. According to a preferred embodiment, a set of one or more trade fonts are aggregated and made available to a computer or other device. Once delivered to or resident within a device capable of displaying the fonts using local resources (e.g., a display font mechanism or equivalent), the trade fonts are identified and used in a conventional manner. Thus, with reference to Figure 4, a representative email client application is shown.
- a computer-readable medium e.g., a CD-ROM, optical disk, floppy disk, flash memory, or the like
- a new message window 400 is opened.
- This window includes a font listbox 402 from which the user can select a given font.
- expansion of the listbox identifies a scrollable list of fonts, and this list includes the one or more trade fonts of the present invention.
- the user may then select the trade font of interest, which will then be used for (i.e., applied to) the letterforms, numbers and symbols of the email text.
- the user can select to open a Font characteristic window 404 and select the desired trade font from the displayed listbox 406.
- the trade font is identified in the listbox by the brand name itself, which provides additional brand exposure.
- the font display mechanism includes a computer program to augment the trade fonts.
- a representative computer program is illustrated in Figure 5.
- the computer program 500 comprises program instructions (namely, software) executable by a processor for carrying out one or more of a set of user-selectable functions. These functions are identified in Figure 5 as a linking function 502, an audio output function 504, a logo output function 506, an animation function 508, a video display function 510, a font substitution function 512, and the like.
- the linking function 502 creates a hypertext link for the trade font name in the font display listbox (or elsewhere).
- the code that implements this function is responsive to selection of the link for initiating the opening of a client browser to a Company web site.
- the audio output function 504 comprises code responsive to the user taking a given action with respect to the trade font name in the listbox (or elsewhere).
- a given action with respect to the name e.g., a mouseover
- a given audio output is generated.
- a given Company brand may have a well-known audio jingle or motif (e.g., the NBC chime) associated therewith.
- these sounds may be digitized and stored in the computer (e.g., as a .wav file) and output by the audio output function 504 whenever the user performs a mouseover (or other given function) on the font name.
- the audio file may be output by the audio output function when the trade font is selected for use in the application.
- the logo output function 506 generates a display of a given logo associated with or comprising the brand in the font listbox (or elsewhere).
- the animation function 508 preferably generates an animating output on the display screen when the user takes a given action with respect to the trade font (e.g,. selecting the font for usage) This output may comprise a QuickTime movie (a .mov file) advertising or otherwise promoting the Company sponsoring the trade font.
- the video display function 510 may output a video file (either statically or via live streaming using a browser plug-in such as RealPlayer) when the user takes a given action relative to the trade font.
- the particular action that triggers the particular audio, animation or video tie-in may be predetermined or user-selectable, in the latter case using a display dialog.
- the font substitution function 512 provides a dialog to a user (e.g., when the trade fonts are installed) to enable the user to identify one or more conventional fonts (e.g., Times Roman, Arial, or the like) that will be omitted from the font listbox and replaced with a given trade font.
- these operations provide a further tie-in to the sponsoring company, i.e., the company identified with the trade font.
- Figures 6-7 illustrates the use of the AmericanAirlines® trade font for an email message and a word processing document, respectively.
- the letterforms and other characters of the respective documents conform to the AmericanAirlines® brand, and this creates a strong and lasting visual imprinting of the brand when the document is read.
- a company can raise the visibility of its brand in a completely new type of communication medium.
- Companies who make their brands available for use in this manner e.g., via licensing their marks in connection with computer- generated fonts
- companies will have a significant interest in using trade fonts in company communications to further emphasize their brand identity.
- a set of trade fonts are generated, aggregated, and made available for use on a computer.
- the trade font is a digital font file that contains the characters (letters, numbers, symbols) associated with a given Company brand, as well as additional information about the shapes of each character, data about how the characters should be spaced vertically and horizontally within a block of text, character mapping details, and the like.
- the trade font typically has a name that is identical to a variant of the Company brand that defines the trade font.
- a trade font is created by identifying a particular consumer brand of interest, generating a set of characters for the font (if necessary) based on the characters in the consumer brand, and associating a brand name with the trade font.
- a "document” may be any electronic file, usually a text file, created with any software application that uses digital fonts.
- the inventive mechanism is preferably implemented in a set of digital font files and associated computer software.
- the above- described functionality is implemented in software executable in a processor, namely, as a set of instructions (program code) in a code module resident in the random access memory of the computer.
- the set of instructions may be stored in another computer memory, for example, in a hard disk drive, or in a removable memory such as an optical disk (for eventual use in a CD ROM) or floppy disk (for eventual use in a floppy disk drive), or downloaded via the Internet or other computer network.
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Description
Claims
Priority Applications (2)
Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
---|---|---|---|
EP01944297A EP1316037A1 (en) | 2000-06-07 | 2001-06-06 | Aggregation, delivery and use of branded typefonts |
AU2001266723A AU2001266723A1 (en) | 2000-06-07 | 2001-06-06 | Aggregation, delivery and use of branded typefonts |
Applications Claiming Priority (2)
Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
---|---|---|---|
US58892700A | 2000-06-07 | 2000-06-07 | |
US09/588,927 | 2000-06-07 |
Publications (1)
Publication Number | Publication Date |
---|---|
WO2001095220A2 true WO2001095220A2 (en) | 2001-12-13 |
Family
ID=24355891
Family Applications (1)
Application Number | Title | Priority Date | Filing Date |
---|---|---|---|
PCT/US2001/018204 WO2001095220A2 (en) | 2000-06-07 | 2001-06-06 | Aggregation, delivery and use of branded typefonts |
Country Status (3)
Country | Link |
---|---|
EP (1) | EP1316037A1 (en) |
AU (1) | AU2001266723A1 (en) |
WO (1) | WO2001095220A2 (en) |
Cited By (2)
Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
---|---|---|---|---|
US6868269B1 (en) | 2000-08-28 | 2005-03-15 | The Directv Group, Inc. | Integrating coverage areas of multiple transponder platforms |
US7317916B1 (en) | 2000-09-14 | 2008-01-08 | The Directv Group, Inc. | Stratospheric-based communication system for mobile users using additional phased array elements for interference rejection |
-
2001
- 2001-06-06 WO PCT/US2001/018204 patent/WO2001095220A2/en not_active Application Discontinuation
- 2001-06-06 EP EP01944297A patent/EP1316037A1/en not_active Withdrawn
- 2001-06-06 AU AU2001266723A patent/AU2001266723A1/en not_active Abandoned
Cited By (2)
Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
---|---|---|---|---|
US6868269B1 (en) | 2000-08-28 | 2005-03-15 | The Directv Group, Inc. | Integrating coverage areas of multiple transponder platforms |
US7317916B1 (en) | 2000-09-14 | 2008-01-08 | The Directv Group, Inc. | Stratospheric-based communication system for mobile users using additional phased array elements for interference rejection |
Also Published As
Publication number | Publication date |
---|---|
EP1316037A1 (en) | 2003-06-04 |
AU2001266723A1 (en) | 2001-12-17 |
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