US Firm Acquires Belfast Design Agency

A Belfast design agency has been bought by a major US firm for £3.2m.

Design by Front, which employs 14 people at its studio on Ormeau Avenue, his being bought by Monotype Imaging.

The US firm has paid £1.6m in cash, while the remainder will be dependent on performance targets.

Monotype is particularly interested in a Design by Front product called Typecast which is designed to enable web designers to style web fonts quickly and easily.

The Belfast office will serve as the main development hub for Typecast.

Employees of the Northern Irish company will continue to work from their current locations.

Chief executive of Monotype Doug Shaw said: "The web has become a critical publishing platform, where brands need to represent themselves with clarity and consistency across connected devices.

"As a typographic design tool, we believe Typecast has the potential to take web fonts to a whole new level of productivity and creative expression."

Managing director and co-founder of Design by Front Paul McKeever said: "Good typography is essential for Web design. That's the fundamental idea behind Typecast.

"We created Typecast simply to make it easier to work with Web fonts, and to give Web designers precise typographic control to make the Web a more beautiful, readable place. We look forward to bringing to the Web design community a powerful application that's actually easy and fun to use."

(IT)