The sense of "foreign" exotic implies depends, of course, on context: exotic in France is not the same as exotic in the United States (where, in some places, "French" itself may qualify as "exotic"). Specific allusions to locale, therefore, are meaningless without a specific audience in mind. But notions of outlandishness, curious or bizarre qualities, or even glamour - perhaps a somewhat outdated interpretation - all are conveyed by unusual shapes, proportions, and odd color combinations.

Graphic and experimental typefaces are most often immediately associated with the exotic; they often try, purposely, to flout convention. Typefaces with extreme exaggerations of width, posture, or weight - and sometimes all three -as well as proportional discontinuity among characters or counterspaces, typify exotic typefaces. Added to these structural extremes may be graphical substitutions of abstract shapes, curls, dots, and so on, for the expected stems, diagonals, and cross-strokes of a classical face. Alternatively, strange size changes between letters within the alphabet, tilting off-baseline in straight setting, bleeding, burn marks, extra limbs, and illustrative or abstract inclusions-all these stylistic possibilities may characterize a typeface as exotic. If the type becomes difficult to read because of these formal alterations, chances are it's an exotic face.

Linotype (originally Mergenthaler Linotype) is a corporation founded in the United States in 1886 to market the Linotype machine, a system to cast metal type in lines invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. It became the world’s leading manufacturer of book and newspaper typesetting equipment; outside North America, its only serious challenger for book production was the Anglo-American Monotype Corporation.

In the 1980s Linotype began to exploit its font libraries for other equipment, including an agreement with Adobe Systems to make some of the most famous Linotype fonts available in PostScript Type 1 format.

In 1997 Linotype Library was formed as a separate division of the Heidelberg Group, under the leadership of Bruno Steinert, and since then it has developed one of the world’s largest font libraries. It is based in Bad Homburg, Germany.

In 2005 Linotype Library changed its name to Linotype GmbH, and in August 2006 Linotype GmbH was acquired by Monotype Imaging, with the intention of maintaining Linotype as a separate identity.

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