Sign Project - Font Issues

Question

Usually, when I use InDesign to create a project, be it a newsletter or brochure or some other page layout, I can simply e-mail it to the printing house as a PDF and it works fine. This project is different.

I am using InDesign CC to create a sign for a charitable project; the sign will be 18 inches by 30 inches. It will have a few logos of major sponsors on top (vectored corporate logos) and a text table with the names of individuals and small businesses along the bottom. I am sending this project as a PDF to the sign maker as I would any page layout project.

I got a call back from the sign maker's shop saying that they could not open the file in Illustrator because their computer did not have the fonts that I used.

I tried saving the ID file as an EPS and sending that, but that did not work, either.

Apparently, the shop is using a much older version of Illustrator.

How do I embed the fonts in the project to send it, so they can open it on the other end?

Any pointers much appreciated.

Dov Isaacs · Accepted Answer

On behalf of Adobe …There are in fact oddball sign making workflows that depend on either Illustrator output via PostScript or limited subsets of PDF. And some actually depend upon CorelDraw files! If given such information up-front, indeed Adobe InDesign is really not the right tool to create such content.In terms of exporting PDF from InDesign and opening same in Illustrator, no matter what hackery you apply to the InDesign file either in content creation or PDF export, the simple truth is that Adobe Illustrator is not, repeat is not, repeat yet again is not a general purpose PDF (or even EPS) file editor. Adobe Illustrator, simply stated, doesn't support the full imaging model of PDF (or EPS). Color spaces may change, content may be lost, character encodings may change, text may be rasterized or outlined.The advice to outline text, although something that we typically abhor, might be one of the few ways you can get a PDF file from InDesign to reasonably open in Illustrator, assuming that all the InDesign content is relatively simple.Note that the hackery suggested in terms of flattening transparency during PDF export from InDesign isn't foolproof. Don't do it there!Export with PDF/X-4 settings and then in Acrobat DC Pro, use the preflight fixup to outline text. That is 100% reliable and doesn't muck up other content.Bottom line, though, is for future projects, if you are dealing with a sign maker (or similar artisan) that absolutely requires Illustrator files, use Illustrator to create the content or alternatively, find a professional with a workflow that can deal directly with PDF files. - Dov

Scott Falkner · Answer

Use a custom flattening preset that outlines fonts and export as Acrobat 4 (Edit > Transparency Flattener Presets). You can select the flattener preset in the Advanced tab of the PDF Export dialogue. Text in the PDF will be converted to outlines. Now you can open the PDF in Illustrator, clean it up, and send as an Illustrator file.

The best way to clean it up would be to make a new file in Illustrator with the same dimensions, then use the Group Select tool to copy groups one at a time and paste them in place in the new document.

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