What are fonts?

The design of letters and characters is called a font, and a font can be stored in a file for digital use. In this text, we call these files just fonts.

Standard fonts

When you buy a computer (whether it's a PC or Mac) it comes with a large number of fonts pre-installed with Windows and Mac OS. This allows you to use a variety of fonts without ever having to connect to the internet. Microsoft Office is a widely used software that includes many fonts.

Some fonts, such as Helvetica, are available with Mac OS but not with Windows or Microsoft Office. This means that they are not automatically available to most PC users. For this reason, they are said not to be standard fonts.

Cloud typeface

If you have Microsoft Office365, you subscribe to Microsoft Office and pay monthly or annually. You can also buy Microsoft Office without a subscription and then call that version Office 2019 (for now). With Office 365, you not only get all the latest Office apps, but also a library of over 500 so-called cloud fonts. Cloud fonts are fonts that are hosted in the cloud, which means you can use them through the Office suite or the Online Office suite, as well as on PC, Mac or mobile devices. These fonts are not installed, they are automatically "activated" when used in a document. If you send a document or presentation to someone who doesn't have an Office 365 subscription, one of two things can happen: either they have Office 2019 and will see the correct font, and they can also edit the document using this font. Or they have an older version of Office. In that case, a fallback font that is available in the Office version will be displayed instead.

Cloud font files are not saved under C:\Windows\Fonts

instead, Microsoft Cloud fonts are saved here:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\FontCache\4\CloudFonts

and Adobe Cloud fonts here:

%APPDATA%\Adobe\CoreSync\plugins\livetype

For more information, including a list of cloud fonts, visit Microsoft's Cloud fonts

Specialty fonts

A specialty font is a font that, for various reasons, is not available in Office.If you want to use such a font and you cannot install it through Windows, Mac OS or Office, there are several ways to go about it:

For example, Google offers a large number of free fonts that can be downloaded and used for free.

Adobe also offers fonts, via Adobe Creative Cloud. If you subscribe to this service, you will have access to their font library, where you can choose fonts to activate, or purchase and install.

In addition, there are thousands of independent font designers who allow the purchase of specialty fonts on their websites. Many of these designers can be hired to design a unique font just for you or your business.

What should I consider when using specialty fonts?

Even if you have a specialized font installed, you can never be sure that your recipient has it. In most applications, font files are not included in documents or presentations - they are simply referenced. This means that the computer will be told to use a particular font, but if the font is not available, it will not work. In most cases, the user will not receive an error message. The font selector may still display the name of the custom font, but the font actually displayed in the document/presentation will be a standard font that is available, often Calibri or Arial .

Some programs, such as Adobe Acrobat, often automatically include custom fonts. Other software such as Microsoft PowerPoint or Word allows you to embed fonts in a file to ensure that the correct font is displayed to a recipient without the font being installed. Some programs, such as Microsoft Excel, do not allow you to embed fonts at all.

Which font license do I need?

There are several different font licenses: commercial, web and desktop licenses. When it comes to licenses, the following restrictions apply. If you right-click on a font file and navigate to Properties, you can see which of the license properties listed below this particular font has. We recommend purchasing a Commercial, Installable or Editable license for desktop fonts to ensure ease of use and flexibility.

Installable

Fonts with this setting indicate that they may be embedded and permanently installed on the remote system by a program.

Editable

Fonts that are editable can be embedded in documents, but are only installed temporarily in order to view or edit the document.

Preview and print

Fonts with the Preview and Print license can only be embedded in documents for display purposes.

Limited

Restricted fonts cannot be embedded in documents.

What is the difference between TTF, OTF and WOFF?

FTT

TTF is the acronym for True Type Fonts. True type fonts have been around since the 80s. They work well in Microsoft Office programs, but are large in file size. There is also a Mac-specific version of TTF that can't be used on PCs - so it's important to make sure the TTF font you choose is a Windows TTF font, as it will then work on both PC and Mac OS.

OTF

OTF stands for OpenType Fonts. Open Type Fonts originated in the 1990s and are widely used on both PC and Macintosh computers. They often have smaller file sizes and can be more complex with greater support for other languages.

Although TrueType fonts have been the preferred standard in Microsoft applications in the past, OpenType fonts now work just as well, and because of their flexibility and reduced file size, are now the preferred option in Microsoft Office.

WOFF

WOFF or Web Open Font Format are fonts for use on the web. They work much like compressed Open or True Type Font files, thus ensuring the speed of rendering a website. WOFF cannot be used in Microsoft applications such as Word and PowerPoint.

How do I embed fonts?

It is important that the desktop font license allows embedding the font. If it does, the easiest option is to save the document or presentation as a

PDF.archive > Save as > PDF.

There are then some techniques to ensure that the font has been embedded in the PDF:

1. open the PDF file and compare it with the original document

2. send it to a recipient who does not have the font installed together with a screen shot of the original document.

3. Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat and select Optimize PDF > Advanced Optimization. From the advanced menu you can see which fonts are embedded in the PDF. You can also choose to remove embedded fonts in case default or unwanted fonts have been accidentally embedded in the PDF.

4. Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat and review the properties menu. From there you can see which fonts have been embedded. This menu does not allow you to remove unwanted or default fonts that may have been embedded.If you want to embed the font in an office document/presentation, you can do this via the

File > Options > Save > (Embed fonts in file).

Custom fonts cannot be embedded in Excel workbooks.

Corrupt fonts

Due to conflicts in some transfer protocols (how files are moved), specifically between Mac and PC operating systems, fonts may appear corrupt when copied or moved. If the font file types work on both PC and Mac, the best way for transfer is to zip the font files when copying or moving them.

It is worth noting that Mac TrueType fonts only work on Mac operating systems and cannot be installed on PC. However, Windows True Type fonts work on both Mac and Windows. PostScript fonts work on Macs but Windows operating systems may require additional software to enable storage of the fonts.

The result of transferring a PostScript or Mac True Type font to Windows is often a font that does not open, with a file size of 0 kb. This is because Windows has no way of storing this type of data, and instead never transfers anything even though it may appear to do so by showing the file and file name as transferred.

What is fallback font

We sometimes use the term fallback font. What we mean is this:

An example of when fallback fonts are relevant is when Office tries to render a font that is not available. The software automatically replaces the missing font with one that is available.

Often Arial, Calibri or Verdana are used as substitutes. This can have a big impact on your document. For example, if the letters or characters in the replacement font are slightly wider than your original font, your document can double in size. PowerPoint, which unlike Word does not flow text from one side to the other but instead often increases the size of the text placeholder, can have text overflow onto the page and not be visible in a presentation. Our recommendation is to choose a fallback font that has the same characteristics as your primary font. If the fonts are similar in size and design, you minimize problems when switching between them.

Another time when fallback fonts come into play is when a custom font has been chosen to communicate your brand, and a fallback font is selected in case the custom font cannot be used. When working with branding in different formats, you will quickly discover what limitations fonts can have. For that reason, it's always a good idea to list a second standard font that is widely available in your brand identity.

Why is my text not correct?

Letters or characters used in font files usually have different widths. The width of the letter I does not have to be the same as the width of the letter W. These different widths can create the illusion that your text is not evenly aligned. This becomes clear, for example, when you create a fillable form where the user has to type each letter of their name in individual boxes: it will be impossible to achieve evenly spaced text with variable-width fonts.

Why is the font in my PDF of such poor quality?

If the font in your document/presentation does not allow embedding or if there are problems with embedding, the result is often that it does not embed at all but instead turns the font into images. This is due to a default setting in the save options in Microsoft Office called "Bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded". If this option is checked, the text will be converted to images, which are often of poor quality, pixelated and sometimes difficult to read.

You can disable the bit mapping of text via:

File > Save As > PDF > Options and then uncheck "Bitmap text when fonts are not embedded".

Why does my font look extra thick when I save as a PDF?

This effect is called faux bold and is often undesirable. The thickness or "weight" of a font is often indicated in its name: Arial Regular, Arial Bold or Arial Black.Unfortunately, settings made in Microsoft Office can sometimes confuse Adobe Acrobat. If you use a Black font (Black means that it is the thickest version of the font and not its color) in Office, and then make it bold via the Bold button, your text will remain unchanged. This is because Microsoft Office understands that the font is already bolded. But then, in the export to PDF, this information can be lost. The result is that Adobe Acrobat takes in the information about the text, the font and the information that it should be bolded, but not the bolded version of the font itself. Adobe Acrobat therefore adds an additional outline around each letter to obtain a bolder version of the font, and this is called faux bold.

To remove the faux bold, you need to either install the bolded version of the font so that it is embedded and Adobe receives the correct instructions on how to display it, or uncheck the bold feature in Office and save the PDF again.

Why do I get an error message for a font that is not in my presentation?

When you create a presentation, you use text, objects and images. While everything is presented visually via PowerPoint, most of the file you have created is saved in various snippets of code. If you were to create a special shape, customize it, and then delete it, some of the code that was used to store that creation may remain. In most cases this is to help you, but when it comes to fonts this can create a problem called "Phantom fonts". When you use special fonts in some versions of PowerPoint, and then change to a standard font, references to the special font may remain in the code behind. If you then send the presentation to a user who does not have the special font (which no longer appears in the presentation) installed, they may receive an error message. The error message usually says that the presentation requires that font. While this doesn't stop anyone from opening the presentation, it's not good to get error messages when opening a file.

In PowerPoint, you can navigate to Home > Replace > Replace Font and try to find the incorrect font and replace it with a standard font. In the event that it doesn't work, the code snippets will need to be cleaned from the font, which is a bit more complicated.

Are specialty fonts available on iPads or mobile phones?

As PDF files, yes! As editable Office Documents, unfortunately not. With an Office365 subscription, you can use Cloud Fonts, which give you more than 500 fonts to choose from. Cloud fonts are rendered correctly via the mobile version of Word and PowerPoint. For more information on cloud fonts see above.

Specialty fonts in vector images

A photo or image in .jpg or .png format is called a raster image. A raster image simply means that it consists of colored pixels (dots or squares). When such an image is enlarged, the pixels are also enlarged and the result may be perceived as poor quality. It is always a good rule of thumb to refrain from using text in .jpg or .png files to ensure that the text is legible.

Images such as logos or shapes containing text can be saved as vector images instead. Some examples of vector file formats are SVG, EMF, WMF and EPS. Vector image files do not contain any pixels, instead they contain code sections with coordinates almost like instructions. When a vector image is enlarged, the distance between the coordinates increases and the result should always be sharp. However, if text is used in a vector image before the text is converted to objects/lines, problems arise. If the vector image is inserted into, for example, PowerPoint, the text in the image is read as text in a font - and if the font in question is not installed, PowerPoint, as mentioned earlier, switches to a fallback font. To avoid your text in vectorized images and objects changing fonts, you need to prepare it in Illustrator so that it becomes paths. The result is that the code will render the text as an object/shape rather than text.

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