Adobe Are Making Big Changes

Part 1 - Have Adobe discontinued your font?

ARTWORK WARNING – if you’ve got artwork and you use fonts this affects you.

Adobe have made changes. Big ones. And they affect designers, the world over.

The first one kicks in at the end of this year.

From Jan 2023, Adobe will no longer support certain fonts. Namely Type 1 and Postscript.?

It means that older versions of certain fonts will no longer be available, popular fonts like Helvetica Neue, and certain versions of Arial, Gill Sans, Futura etc.

If you rely on these fonts for your artwork, you’ll find when you open the files a Font Missing notification will pop up and you won’t be able to make the artwork changes you need, because the fonts are no longer supported by the Adobe Creative Cloud. Type1 fonts will not appear in the Fonts menu and there would be no way to use previously installed Type1 fonts.

The change potentially affects anyone with a logo or ‘open’ artwork incorporating any of the discontinued fonts.?It could be in your brochures, sales literature, fact sheets, leaflets, documents, presentations, exhibition stands, ads, point of sale … the list goes on.

It’s why I’ve spent the last few weeks scouring hundreds and hundreds of design jobs, doing “font reviews” of my client’s artwork.?Contacting clients to make them aware and suggesting we carry out a thorough font review of all their artwork to find out where fonts are no longer supported and sifting through Adobe to find matching alternatives which are.

In the main I’ve been able to find an alternative, but in some cases, I’ve had to buy some new fonts. For example, you can’t get Helvetica Neue for free, so I’ve had to buy that one.

To ensure I’m only using supported fonts for my clients, I’ve deleted unsupported fonts from my mac; about 680!!

If your logo is outlined and your artwork properly embedded, you should be OK.?Until you need to amend it.

?I strongly recommend you review all the artwork you have, so that when you come to change it or update it you’ve got a suitable replacement font ready and waiting.

You will NOT be able to amend it unless you’ve got the updated font.

NOTE: these changes are specifically happening within Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop.?No changes are being made to Acrobat. Acrobat will continue handling PDFs in the same manner it has been for more than 20 years. PDF embedded fonts still display in print. But if it’s not been embedded properly (potentially created via Word, Powerpoint or a 3rd Party pdf creator program), it will just default to another font. Then you run the risk that your artwork won’t be in line with your corporate ID or look like all your other marketing collateral.

If your fonts are no longer supported, you may be able to find alternative fonts (either new versions or versions that look identical) in Adobe, via Google fonts or elsewhere online. It just takes a bit of time to search through and find them.?Some may have to be purchased.

It helps to know your fonts. It certainly cuts down on search time!!

If you’d like to book in for an Absolute Graphics artwork review or need advice or help finding a matching font, call 07789 866242 or email [email protected]

Next blog in the New Year: Part 2 – Adobe discontinue more than just fonts!

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