Participant

Question

InDesign fonts for commerical use

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
March 1, 2023
3 replies
1353 views

Hi, I am racking my brain against a wall on this one.

I have the arial font on my mac which I have used to create a book and an ebook with. I'd like to print my paperback and hardback versions with this font as the headings, body text etc and also embedd the font in my epub file for my ebook.

Do I need a separate license to use this family of fonts if they either came with my mac or InDesign as built in fonts?

I need to known whether I need to replace all of the text with a new font or whether I will have to buy a license. I'd like to keep using arial if possible.

This topic has been closed for replies.

rayek.elfin

Legend

I was about to mention that Arial is not an Adobe font, but @Peter Spier beat me to it!

Arial is part of the fonts that ship with MacOS X and Windows.

@jakew82440645the license that typically accompanies OS fonts is a desktop license.

Here is the MacOs EULA:

E. Fonts. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, you may use the fonts included with the Apple Software to display and print content while running the Apple Software; however, you may only embed fonts in content if that is permitted by the embedding restrictions accompanying the font in question. These embedding restrictions can be found in the Font Book/Preview/Show Font Info panel.

Source: https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOSCatalina.pdf

Check if the Arial font is allowed to be embedded in software/epubs via the Font Info panel.

To avoid all licensing issues, consider using the free open source alternative for Arial: Liberation Sans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts

In that case

Remember, a FONT is software, and that is the licensed part. The typeface forms themselves (often) are not (as far as I am aware), and anyone can print those forms, create their own font version from scratch (tracing), rename it, and release it under their own license.

Liberation Sans is similar, has the same metrics, and most users are not going to notice the (mostly) slight form differences. My opinion is that Liberation Sans is a prettier and more elegant version of Arial! And it avoids all potential legal complications.

Get the Liberation fonts here:

https://github.com/liberationfonts

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Keep in mind that Arial is NOT an Adobe supplied font, and you probably don't want to use any system fonts for publication as a general rule.

Stefsue

Participating Frequently

Can you tell me the reason behind not using system fonts and tell me how I can tell which ones they are? I suspect this is the issue causing my text to squish on my Fixed-Layout ePub file. I have checked that all are OTF but it is still happening.

BobLevine

Community Expert

Fixed layout epub is a crapshoot and highly dependent on the reader application.

Derek Cross

Community Expert

You can use all of the Adobe fonts that come with your InDesign subscription for print and for digital publications.

Note, the term eBook is a generic name for all the digital formats, which includes PDF, FXL ePub, Reflowable ePub and InDesign's Publish Online.

J

jakew82440645Author

Participant

Thanks for your comment. Does this include the embedding of these fonts too? I have read that a separate license is required for this but others say you dont need one.

Derek Cross

Community Expert

Details here: https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/fonts/using/font-licensing.html

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