Typekit fonts not rendering properly on PC browsers

[Tim Andrews]

I am using Acumin Pro for a website. The font appears correctly on Mac browsers but does not on PC browsers. I have reviewed the community and searched Google but to no avail.

Moved to Adobe Fonts community. This is not a general Type & Typography issue!

[Dov Isaacs]

What browsers on each platform? And since your examples are rather low resolution and fuzzy-wuzzy, can you please be specific as to the differences you see? Thanks!

[Tim Andrews]

If you click on the image in the message, it should enlarge to higher resolution. If that doesn't work for you, I can attached another version.

On PC browsers the font is not appearing as it should. The outlines are chunky and pixelated at all font sizes - points to a rendering issue. Thanks.

[Tim Andrews]

Following up on this support post on Acumin Pro not rendering properly on PC browsers.

[Nancy OShea]

Honestly, I don't see any discernible differences in fonts from your screenshot.  Sorry.

• Which browsers are you comparing? 
• What is the pixel density and screen resolution on your PC monitor vs your Mac monitor?
• How do the fonts render on iPad, iPhone and Android devices?
• Are you using browser-prefixed font-smoothing in your CSS code?
  https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-smooth

[Tim Andrews]

Thanks for the reply Nancy. Perhaps the screen shot doesn't do the issue justice at the preview size but it is event in the browser. To be clear this is an issue on all PC browsers. No issue on all Mac browsers, OS or Android devices . This has been tested on a full browser stack. And yes, font-smooting is used in the CSS.

I have included a closer look at the difference. Mac on the right. PC on the left.

[Tim Andrews]

Correction. Mac on left. PC on right.

[Nancy OShea]

I'm sorry.  I just don't see any extraordinary differences between the two. This looks perfectly normal to me.  Rendering on Mac and PC will never be identical. 

[Tim Andrews]

I'm suprised you cannot see any difference between them – it's quite apparent. I have moved to another platform and the fonts are rendering identical on both Mac and PC.

[Brendan5CAA]

My team has noticed the same issues with Acumin Pro on Windows browsers. The issues are most noticeable when using smaller (<= 20px), bold text.

Here is an example that has especially poor legibility on Windows. This text is using Acumin Pro 14px bold (Firefox browser):

Here is the same example on MacOS (Firefox):

Note: On Windows, the numbers 5 and 6, and letter "s" lose whitespace within the character.

[Tim Andrews]

See responses above - as a designer I see big differences but as with most Adobe support responses you are either a) wrong or b) they can't see an issue... saves them from addressing it.

[Nancy OShea]

Have a look at these links:

• https://szafranek.net/blog/2009/02/22/font-smoothing-explained/
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/text-rendering
• https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/07/css-techniques-legibility/

[Brendan5CAA]

Thank you for providing these links. Unfortunately, I have tried using the techniques found in these references, such as the CSS "text-rendering" property. I have also tried using different font file formats (svg, ttf, woff, woff2) and adjusting the ClearType settings in Windows. The CSS "font-smooth" property is only supported by MacOS and has no effect on Windows. Adjusting font-size or font-weight is the only way I have found to avoid the issue. And to tell a designer to avoid 12-14px bold text of a font entirely is not an appropriate solution. Not all other fonts (system or non-system) suffer this issue – which makes me wonder whether it is due to how the Acumin Pro font has been designed. I understand that a font will never render exactly the same across browsers and operating systems, but this issue, in my opinion, goes beyond minor rendering differences and affects the legibility of the font using common styles on an entire operating system.

Here is another example of the issue (latest Chrome on Windows 10), this time showing the differences in a bold heading from 19px to 22px. Whereas the 19px bold heading has all character shapes intact and appears ok, the 20px heading characters have a significant degradation of legibility.

[Nancy OShea]

As a web developer, I don't sweat the small stuff.  99% of Internet users don't notice slight irregularities in font rendering unless it makes the text unreadable. In that case, I would try another font or variant from the same or a comparable font-family.   Acumin is a sans-serif, neo-grotesque similar to Neue Haas Unica, Aktiv Grotesk, Google's Roboto and Noto Sans.

For testing, all browsers' zoom levels should be 100% or normal and text-only magnification should be disabled in your browser's config file.  Likewise, add-ons should be turned off.