When Text Is not Text
Fonts are both the joy and the bane of graphic designers. Typography is one of the things that makes design fun, but font output problems can turn the most delightful design job into a stressful situation. No one is happy when things don’t work right.
The problems stem from the fact that there are so many different types of fonts and computer systems. You can get free fonts, weird fonts and high-end fonts in a multitude of flavors: Postscript, True Type, Open Type and even more obscure varieties. Some run well on certain systems or output devices, and some don’t. It’s no wonder that fonts can cause trouble at output time.
You can avoid some font problems by simply removing them from your vector artwork. The trick is to turn the fonts to outlines. That way when your file is output, your text is treated like just another graphic. No font files can end up corrupting, conflicting or missing because your text doesn’t need it anymore; it’s a graphic.
The bad news is that once you have converted your text to outlines, it’s no longer editable text. Before you go nuts converting text, save a copy of your file. Changes are inevitable, and later you’ll be glad you have a copy of the file where you can still quickly modify the text.
After you have saved a copy of your file somewhere safe, you are ready to convert text. The process of turning text into a graphic has different names in different software.
In Corel Draw, you select all the text and choose Convert to Curves from the Arrange menu. In Macromedia Freehand, you select the text and choose Convert to Paths from the Text menu. In Adobe Illustrator, you select the text and choose Create Outlines from the Type menu.
Whether your software calls it “curves,” “paths” or “outlines,” the net result is the same. Your text is treated like a graphic, and font battles are a thing of the past.
