Sandoll Chosen as One of 2024 FT Asia-Pacific High-Growth Companies for Two Consecutive Years

Achieves industry leadership through long-standing domestic and global font business experience and font-related technology

Focuses on CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) font production

SEOUL, South Korea–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#AppleSDSandollGothicNeo–Global typeface design foundry Sandoll (CEO Young-ho Yun, KOSDAQ: 419120) has been selected for two consecutive years as one of the ‘Asia-Pacific High-Growth Companies’ announced by the UK’s Financial Times (FT).

Since 2018, the Financial Times has announced 500 companies with high revenue growth rates among companies in 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific region in collaboration with the global research specialist Statista. This evaluation targeted companies with revenues exceeding $100,000 in 2019 and exceeding $1 million in 2022.

Sandoll, founded in 1984, is a font company in South Korea that has produced ‘Noto Sans KR’ and ‘NotoSerif KR’ created jointly by Google and Adobe. In addition, it has developed Apple SD Sandoll Gothic Neo’ the system font for Apple, and has been responsible for multilingual font projects for global companies such as Hyundai and LG, possessing global-level font production and service capabilities, unique to a domestic company.

Between 2019 and 2022, Sandoll recorded a 155% increase in revenue and an average annual growth rate of 37%, achieving high growth for the second consecutive year with strong indicators last year. This is attributed to Sandoll’s achievements in leading the industry through its long-standing domestic and global font business experience and related technological developments.

Sandoll has proven its competitiveness and potential in the expanding global font market by exclusively handling IBM’s multilingual font series, IBM Plex’s CJK project.

The IBM Plex project, released by IBM under the Open Font License (OFL) since 2017, is a dedicated font project. Sandoll is responsible for producing Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fonts. The Korean version, ‘IBM Plex Sans KR,’ was released in 2020, and the Japanese version, ‘IBM Plex Sans JP,’ in 2021. The Chinese version, IBM Plex Sans TC/SC, is scheduled for release this year.

Sandoll plans to expand its global font production business area and pursue continuous growth. Particularly, it focuses on CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) font production.

Sandoll’s decision to focus on CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) font production is due to the increasing presence of global companies in the Asian market, where CJK fonts have become essential. However, fonts in the classic Chinese cultural sphere, such as CJK fonts, have far more characters and complex forms than fonts in other language groups, requiring expertise tailored to corporate requirements and significant time and effort for production and maintenance.

To this end, Sandoll has conducted in-depth research tailored to the characteristics of CJK fonts and corporate requirements. By combining this with the top-notch hinting technology (hinting: technology that makes pixels on LCDs (liquid crystal displays) appear sharp) possessed by Sandoll, it provides fonts suitable for various user environments.

Sandoll stated, “CJK fonts have far more characters and complex forms than fonts in other language groups, requiring significant time and effort for production and maintenance. Therefore, skilled production experience and capabilities are required.”

They further added, “Based on our production technology, expertise, and design capabilities, Sandoll has been producing fonts that reflect the identity and originality of companies and providing them to customers. Building on these capabilities, Sandoll will continue to produce and provide customized fonts that effectively express the identities of classic Chinese-specific countries and the brand values of individual clients.”

Contacts

Sandoll

Da Young Kim

dayoung@sandoll.co.kr