Fonts that are standard in MS office and Creative Suite

Kerri:

THE QUICK ANSWER:

You ask a very interesting question. And the advice you’ll receive will very much dependent upon who answers the question.

The reality is that every font can potentially cause problems. My best recommendation is to select typefaces that you like, and then make sure that everyone else handling the working files also has those fonts installed.

Although there are certain fonts like Arial that are quite ubiquitous, different versions of these popular fonts exist. That means text set in Arial may not typeset identically on different systems and devices.

THE MORE DETAILED ANSWER:

When Adobe was founded back in 1982, some of the first typefaces that they digitized became known as the ‘Basic 13 Fonts’:

• Courier (Regular, Oblique, Bold & Bold Oblique)
• Helvetica (Regular, Oblique, Bold & Bold Oblique)
• Times (Roman, Italic, Bold & Bold Italic)
• Symbol

These fonts were included in the hardware on every PostScript laser printer, and on all Macintosh computers that used desktop publishing software like FrameMaker, Illustrator, PageMaker, and QuarkXpress. Microsoft’s response was to include a set of thirteen visually-similar typefaces in Windows:

• Courier New (Regular, Oblique, Bold & Bold Oblique)
• Arial (Regular, Oblique, Bold & Bold Oblique)
• Times New Roman (Roman, Italic, Bold & Bold Italic)
• Symbol

When the World Wide Web took off in the mid-1990s, Microsoft introduced a few new typefaces with Windows 95 and Internet Explorer, which became known as the ‘Core Web Fonts’:

• Andalé Mono
• Arial
• Arial Black
• Comic Sans
• Courier New
• Georgia
• Impact
• Times New Roman
• Trebuchet
• Verdana
• Webdings

Because the Core Web Fonts were issued for both Macintosh and Windows, they became a default for publishing anything on the internet before HTML added support for embedding fonts. A good example: many online memes use black-outlined white text set in all-capitals, using the Impact font.

The Core Web Fonts were also very useful for anyone who needed to use Microsoft Office applications. It allowed people to pass Word and PowerPoint files back and forth, with a good degree of confidence that the files would look roughly the same on each computer.

But we no longer live in the 1990s. The World Wide Web has moved on: you can now embed fonts into your website, much like you can into any printed design. And mobile devices exist too. So there’s no longer any guarantee that all of the people who will be opening and editing your working files will have all of the Core Web Fonts installed.

Historically, the Base 13 and Core Web Fonts had their practical uses. But if you ask any production or prepress professional at printing presses what fonts they’d recommend, they’re likely to strongly recommend against using any of the Base 13 and Core Web Fonts. Especially Helvetica.

The reason: there are many versions and formats of Helvetica. And if you’re using a Macintosh, it’s highly likely that you’ll have multiple versions and formats of Helvetica simultaneously installed. Since each system and application will independently decide which Helvetica takes priority, the same layout may look different on different systems. For printers, this is a disaster: their responsibility is to ensure that what their customers see on their own screens is precisely what ends up on the printing press.

If you ever ask a printer which typefaces to use, it’s likely that they say ‘Just use something unique.’ In other words: avoid the Base 13 and Core Web Fonts altogether, and choose typefaces that you think will best suit your designs.

If you follow that recommendation, be sure that everyone who needs to open and edit your working files also has the exact same font files licensed and installed on their systems. That way, your layouts and artwork will stay reliably consistent across the board.

If there’s one thing to keep in mind today: it’s no longer possible to guarantee that the same version of the same format of the same font is installed on every computer and device today. The concept of a ‘problem-free safe font’ has always been a myth; the closest we ever got was with the original Base 13 Fonts back in the mid-1980s. Today, you can choose from more than a million different digital fonts.

I hope that answers your question. If not, please let me know.

Best regards
Andrew

–30–

If you're saying, what fonts can I use without having to make sure they are installed, the list is short, but it's not what people do. Instead, they install the fonts they want. In particular, Creative Cloud gives you access to over 1000 high quality fonts, to choose from.

Hi @Kerri25489434npet, do you mean to ask which Windows system fonts can be used with Adobe products? I'm assuming you are running Microsoft Office on Windows and not on macOS. Here is a list of system fonts for Windows 10. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/fonts/windows_10_font_list.

All these fonts can be used within Adobe software without additional font licensing for personal and commercial use. However, you are not allowed to copy, redistribute or reverse engineer the Microsoft system font files. Adobe fonts are available only by Creative Cloud subscription, and you must activate each font type in order for them to work. They can not be installed on your local computer. Other fonts beyond these you must download and install on your system from font foundries and make sure they are licensed for your use accordingly. I hope that's helpful.