For most of Linotype’s existence, font development has been aimed exclusively at the company’s own typesetting products. During this long and prosperous period, Linotype became the standard against which all other font libraries were measured. Later, under the leadership of Mike Parker, the company made Helvetica the closest thing to a household word that a font name has ever achieved.

Not until the early 1980s, however, were the first tentative steps taken to make its font library available for use on equipment other than its own.

The most dramatic of these steps was the milestone agreement with the then tiny company called Adobe Systems. Under this agreement, Linotype fonts in PostScript format would eventually become universally available for use with imagesetting equipment from all vendors as PostScript became the standard Page Description Language. The other effect of this standardization was, of course, that fonts from other vendors would now work on imagesetters developed by Linotype.

With the consolidation of the company first with Hell and later with Heidelberg, this famous font library thrives under the experienced leadership of Bruno Steinert.

In August 2006 it was announced that Monotype Imaging has acquired Linotype. For the past few years it had been a subsidiary of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, the famous manufacturer of printing machinery.