Inconsistent output of Google fonts from Illustrator PDF

Question

Had a curious printing glitch occur recently, with an advertiser using a Google font (‘Anybody’, specifically) in their advertisement. The process was as follows:

Client supplied PDF, but not the right size for the publication, so it was opened in Illustrator to adjust the size and make a couple of other amendments they requested.
Output as a new PDF to our printers’ preferred spec.
PDF placed on final page in InDesign, output to the printers’ preferred spec (I know refrying isn’t ideal, but it’s common enough in this sort of context)
Publication goes to press, and some of the text set in ‘Anybody’ has gone adrift, most importantly, the client’s URL is missing most of the second arch of the ‘m’ of its .com

The PDF looks OK, the PDF prints OK in-house. Probably would have helped if I’d outlined all the text before final output, but wasn’t expecting any problems - the client had supplied artwork they’d used elsewhere, with no issues.

‘Anybody’ is some form of Multiple Master - a font type that I’m not especially keen on - so I wondered if the final press output somehow misinterpreted it and made the text wider within its bounding box, but that doesn’t appear to be the case: comparing the width of the text in the printed publication with a printout made in the office shows that it has simply missed off the end of the text.

Curiously, outlining the font reveals that the ‘m’ is made up of three separate objects: the initial vertical followed by two intersecting arches:

Left to right: original text in Anybody font, result of converting to curves showing its strange construction, final printed result (from the font). NB. most of the distortion on the last is due to it being on newsprint that’s been around the office a few times already.

Some of the other text in the same font (a discount offer, added in a roundel) has become distorted, but in a completely different way - its weight isn’t consistent across the width of each character, starts Bold, ends either Roman or Light.

Anyone else experienced something like this? Is it a problem with the Google font, the PDF, or the final output for press? Can we be reasonably confident that turning all the text to curves will fix it for next time? The Printers didn’t alert us to any issues, but may not have seen it themselves.

Bobby Henderson · Answer

Anybody is a OpenType Variable font. It has two variable axes, weight and width. Variable fonts are a lot like Multiple Master fonts from the 1990's. But they have a big advantage in that they can carry much larger character sets. Type 1 MM fonts were limited to no more than 256 glyphs, didn't support Unicode and weren't cross platform compatible.

Unfortunately variable fonts are still not natively supported in the current PDF standard. Type objects styled using variable fonts may be converted to outlines when saved in PDF files unless certain work-arounds are used. If you download the Anybody type family from Google Fonts you'll get two variable fonts in the root folder and a sub-folder containing 144 standard "static" true type fonts. You may get more predictable results in printing by using the static fonts.

The overlaps you see in some characters (such as the "m" in the image you posted) can be common with variable fonts. The overlaps shouldn't cause any problems with printing unless the device outputting the job disregards the non-zero winding attributes of the letters and reverts to the even-odd rule, turning any overlap into a negative hole. The overlaps in letters are a problem if the graphics are output on any kind of device that cuts or routs material (vinyl cutters, routing tables, etc.). The type objects have to be converted to outlines and the overlaps must be removed using Pathfinder operations, such as Unite.

Here is another bad thing about letters that have overlapping shapes: they're not just in variable fonts. They can be present in standard static TTF and OTF fonts too. For instance that's the case with the Anybody type family. A number of different type families from Google Fonts have letters with overlapping shapes in both the variable fonts and static fonts.

I wish Adobe Illustrator had a setting for Outline View that would display live type objects in outlines rather than render them as solid black objects. I can't see the overlapping shapes in letters unless I convert the type object to outlines.

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