Live type not embedding in pdfs
Reado15 (6 points) | Fri, 2009-07-03 04:57Hi guys
Hoping someone might be able to shed some light on this.
I have recently done some advertising and when i received a copy of the publication found that live type in a logo had defaulted to a default font and added in random spaces inbetween letters. Subsequently being printed in the publication with the logo looking like s**t. I found this weird as i provided a high res pdf for that exact reason so before I go back to the publication and tell them we are not paying for the ad I want to make sure that I am squeaky clean first! Now the font is a postscript type 1 ITC Avant Garde.
Now I am not 100% sure that the particular fonts in the logo were activated in suitcase when i placed the logo into the indesign file. However i have tested this with the fonts deactivated, created a high res pdfs, preflighted and packaged the indesign files and not one error message came up. I have even gone to the stage of printing the exact pdf sent to the publication on various printers inhouse to try and replicate the issue. To no avail it always prints fine.
The only thing that i can find that possibly could be an issue is that in the fonts dialoge box when packaging the .indd doc under the "protected" column it says "no".
However i would have thought that at the printers end they would ahve got an error message about fonts not being embedded if they didnt have a particular font?
Can anyone help as i have never struck this problem before.
Cheers
Dylan
I'd recommend outlining that font in illustrator before you send it. Since it's in your logo, and please tell me your logo is a vector illustrator graphic, this shouldn't be a problem.
Depending on how you sent your pdf you may not have actually embedded that font in your file correctly. If you export to PDF/X-1a this will definitely help.
The fact your printer didn't proof this ad for you means they are either too busy or too cheap to do so. Either way it's not good for you. Can you use a different printer or request proofs on all jobs? I'd recommend either of those so this doesn't happen again.
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The Salon Design Tech
Thanks Natobasso for replying.
Haha yeah its an illustrator logo. Couldn't agree with you more regarding the proof from the publication. I will mention that to them as had they done so I would have picked that up straight away.
Also regarding converting to outlines, i knew that would solve the problem, but i wanted to understand why this happened, so i can make sure that it wont happen again rather than just get around it another way. It is interesting that i have never struck this before, even though i have been sending this particular logo to various publications for weeks. Will look into the PDF X/1-a, cheers for that.
Will definitely request proofs from now on!
I've run into this problem myself. Quick and easy way is to go ahead and outline the font in Indesign, turning it from a font into an image pretty much.
with the text selected
On windows - hold down alt as you choose Type-Create Outlines
On Mac - hold down option as you choose Type-Create Outlines or shift-apple-O
The Publication should have noticed something and forewarned you. Lot of the time when I get ads like that, where there is a font issue I have to Raster them in Photoshop which doesn't always turn out that great. So I suggest outlining the text. IMO
Technically the outlined font is not an image, per se, it's still a vector graphic.
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The Salon Design Tech
Wow, where are the comments? I'm invisible!!