Stay in the flow state: how the Monotype Fonts Desktop App minimizes distractions.
Monotype Desktop App
Creative
Font management
Font licensing
For designers and other creatives, a flow state is the pinnacle of creative workflows (not to mention their happy place). If you’ve ever experienced the profound calm and satisfaction of a flow state, you’ll agree with psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi calling it “the psychology of optimal experience,” as he did in his book of the same name.
Csíkszentmihályi is credited with discovering the concept of flow. He defined it as “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”
Flow has been proven time and again to enhance creativity. It’s also associated with higher-level performance, greater happiness and motivation, improved skill development, and more.
But when you’re dealing with constant interruptions, as so many designers do, it’s near impossible to achieve that coveted flow state. It’s essential to avoid “opportunity for interruptions” when aiming to reach flow, notes positive psychologist Giovanni Moneta.
Luckily, for designers who work with type, there are lots of highly effective strategies out there to minimize interruptions—and using the Monotype Desktop App is one of them.
Here are three ways the Monotype Desktop App reduces interruptions to streamline creative workflows and put flow within reach.
✨ By ensuring your fonts are ready to use in your creative tools.
When you’re still installing fonts manually, you have to go through the drudgery of installation every time you want to use a new font.
But with the Monotype Desktop App, it’s all taken care of for you: simply sync fonts (or even entire font families) from the Monotype Library. As long as you have it on your computer, the desktop app’s built-in tech ensures you can use fonts synced from Monotype Fonts in programs like Adobe Creative Cloud (and more!) whenever needed, with no need to worry about licensing compliance.
To do so, select the font you want to use from the Monotype Fonts Library on the web app, and sync it in one click. It will appear automatically in your design programs, and you can open the Monotype Desktop App to activate it or deactivate it.
✨ By detecting and auto-activating missing fonts.
When you open a new design file and are met with that dreaded “missing fonts” pop-up alerting you that you don’t have a font you need, that’s a major interruption to your work. You have to chase down your font custodians to email you the relevant font files so you can install them. But what if they’re on vacation or located in a different time zone, and you just want to get to work right away? By the time you finally hear back, the flash of creative inspiration might have already passed.
Likewise, is there anything more frustrating than accidentally using the wrong version of a font and realizing it too late? Sometimes you’re forced to start over after you’ve already put hours into your work, wasting valuable time and energy.
The Monotype Desktop App prevents these disruptions by detecting missing fonts in your projects, automatically activating the fonts you need to speed up creative workflows and minimize mistakes.
More specifically, the app scans the 150,000+ fonts in the Monotype Fonts Library to find the missing font, and—as long as you have access permissions—automatically syncs it in the correct format and version, with no need for any manual searching or waiting on other people. And because the library contains such a massive font collection, odds are that we have the one you need.
Fewer mistakes mean less time spent on reworks, so using the app offers significant efficiency benefits.
✨ By simplifying font testing.
Part of the process of selecting a font for a project involves testing out a variety of typefaces to decide which will work best for your design needs. Because Monotype Fonts subscriptions come with unlimited prototyping rights, there’s no need to download and install samples from font marketplaces, or to take screenshots of online type testers. Instead, simply sync whichever fonts catch your eye to test them out immediately.