Participant

Question

[Text]-Missing Fonts at clients end and unable to do Offline Prototyping in XD.

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
March 26, 2020
2 replies
2156 views

Hi, i am having issues at the moment with inviting and sharing my work prototype.. As offline exports of the prototype ain't a functional thing.. or is it now? 😄 Is there a way to share the prototype and have the fonts embed in the XD file?

The browser preformance is quite sluggish...so it dosent really present the product well at all.

At this point my clients are loading the prototype but as i am using an adobe font that is only available to me as theyre using the free account, i am getting issues with text misaligning, font size issues on their end.

Has anyone got a solution for this? Or a better process in sharing prototypes with clients remotely?

Thanks in advance 🙂

This topic has been closed for replies.

Peter Villevoye

Community Expert

It's technically not a very difficult option at all to let fonts be embedded in a file. But there's a very big technical and legal issue with using that option on the receiver's end !! Fonts are licensed items, like any work of art. So it's not allowed to simply spread your fonts, or use some one else's fonts. Even if the fonts are free, or under some "Open Font" license, then it still would be illegal if you would distribute the font (as the sender), or use it (as the receiver) without having obtained it through the proper channels. And in some situations, Adobe could even be held liable for letting you do so...

And there's a security issue: fonts need to be activated on system level, and since they can can carry code, they might be a vulnerability or even pose a serious threat to the system. So that's why developers of systems and applications are reluctant in letting documents carry fonts along with them. As far as I know, only PDF documents are capable of embedding fonts. But font foundries and IT professionals are all aware of this, and allow the technology of the PDF and its viewing tools to do so.

Applications like Adobe InDesign and Illustrator help users by collecting fonts in a Package folder (with an official disclaimer), and also by activating fonts from that folder automatically. But this is a very exclusive feature, and I don't expect this feature to be brought over anymore to other tools. Adobe prefers and stimulates the use of their own Adobe CC cloud-based fonts and open fonts (like the ones distributed by Google), especially in this digital domain.

If you rightfully own a license to a font, you could search on Google for "install custom fonts on mobile" and check out some techniques which will let you do so for previewing purposes. But it will never get easier than that, I can assure you ! Fonts are a big and severely protected business. So also be sure to let your client consider the cost of using custom fonts on a website, in an app, or even in a digital add.

Fancy that Filia ? Just check out its prices...

J

jose.luis

Participant

Hi Peter,

What about PDF's? Don't they also have all those issues with fonts?

Adobe should find a way to make prototypes like a PDF. It's ridiculous that my clients are getting missing fonts on their end.

What is Adobe trying to accomplish with this? That everybody subscribes Adobe services? That won't happen.

HARSHIKA_VERMA

Community Manager

Hi there,

Sorry to hear you are facing issues while sharing the design with others. For embeding the fonts in the XD file, we have seen a similar request has been raised here: https://adobexd.uservoice.com/forums/353007-adobe-xd-feature-requests/suggestions/20610463-embed-used-fonts-in-xd-file We would request you to please submit your feedback and upvote the request to add your voice.

In addition to the font which are not visible at clients end is because as you mentioned that they are using free account so they will only be able to see the fonts that they have activated from Adobe Fonts or installed in their machine.

If you are using any non Adobe Font in XD, then you need to make sure that they have the same font installed in their machine.

Please let me know if misunderstood any of your question. I will be happy to answer.

Thanks,

Harshika

spyre

Known Participant

In my XD file the fonts all work fine in the preview, when I share it and view in the browser it all goes wrong! Randomly there are what looks like Thai letters for the hover state – exactly the same font, size etc as the Default-state just a different colour.

Frustrating and have wasted hours already now.

Peter. I spend a considerable amount of budget on custom fonts. Totally agree that they are subject to copyright and you have to own them, I never 'share' them with clients. However, there's no point in having any creatively designed fonts if the entire world has to purchase them to view your website, brochure etc. The point of embedding them is so that the finished product looks professional, using the fonts we (ie. the designer) bought and paid for. The end-user can't do anything with them from our embedded documents so how does that affect Copywrite? Expecting clients to buy and install fonts just to view and approve my design work isn't an option.

Peter Villevoye

Community Expert

Kudos for being fair and respectful towards owning and using fonts ! 🙂

They are functional art, just like your design work: useful and appealing.

Concerning those strangely behaving fonts, I'd need more information.

Maybe it's another glitch in the Adobe Fonts, maybe it's something else.

About the desired ease-of-use with fonts for previewing:

the root of the difficulty lies in the required mass distribution of the font.

"The entire world" doesn't need to license fonts to view the end result. That's a relief ! Fonts are not embedded but distributed to them with encryption (by using cloud-based font servers) or unencrypted (based on trust and sending along the actual font files).

However, the design stage is still a delicate matter. We don't want or can't be the licensed party (the owner of the website or app needs to be the licensee*), and we're sometimes even urged to work off-line (so we discretely need the actual vectors and font files to work with). That's why Adobe acquired Typekit, the first commercially available and technically stable solution to do so, offering a vast array of fonts from dozens of renowned foundries for the web-wide distribution. Adobe implemented features in their Creative Cloud applications to use these Typekit fonts (nowadays called Adobe Fonts) to facilitate the design stage.

Other designers or team members using Adobe CC can simply activate any custom Adobe Font (in fact, it's activated for them automatically). So any Illustrator or XD file doesn't need to physically embed or piggyback a font (like in a Package).

Team members who don't work with Adobe CC or designs using non Adobe Fonts are at risk. How such fonts will be carried over in a design stage is a concern !

Like I said in another discussion about fonts:

Fonts are ALWAYS an issue, in ANY media industry.

It starts with technical problems, and ends with legal ones... 😉

* Yes, you read it correctly: the client has to be the licensee, unless an agency is entitled to act on behalf of them. Very often a domain registry is required to let a cloud-based or directly distributed font work with a website, in order to prevent abuse.

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