Bitstream Inc.

Products

Bitstream created a library of "classic" fonts (usually under different names for trademark reasons) in digital form. For example, Times Ten was released as Dutch 801, Akzidenz-Grotesk as Gothic 725, Antique Olive as Incised 901, Bembo as Aldine 401, Berthold Block as Gothic 821, Bodoni Campanile as Modern 735, Choc as Staccato 555, Eurostile as Square 721, Frutiger as Humanist 777, Gill Sans as Humanist 521, Kabel as Geometric 231, Memphis as GeoSlab 703, Metro as Geometric 415, Optima as Zapf Humanist, Oscar as Formal 436, Peignot as Exotic 350, Plantin as Aldine 721, Profil as Decorated 035, Syntax as Humanist 531, Torino as Industrial 736 and Univers as Zurich. The Bitstream font collection is most widely used through its inclusion with the CorelDRAW software, as well as other Corel products such as WordPerfect Office.

The company received extensive criticism for its strategy of cheaply offering digitisations of pre-existing typefaces that it had not designed. While technically not illegal, font designer John Hudson would describe its selling of large numbers of typefaces on CD at discount prices as "one of the worst instances of piracy in the history of type".

Bitstream developed a number of fonts on its own, such as Charter, by Matthew Carter, Iowan Old Style by John Downer and the freeware Bitstream Vera family of fonts.

One of their best known fonts is Swiss 721 BT, which is a Helvetica clone with condensed versions and a rounded version. It was among the first digitally available Swiss family typefaces, being designed for that purpose in 1982.

Another Bitstream product is Font Fusion, a font rasterizing engine developed jointly with Type Solutions, Inc., which was later owned entirely by Bitstream.

The multi-byte character set was named Bitstream International Character Set (BICS).