Illustrator crashes when choosing font

[Joel321071414lbk]

I work in a team of designers and the company has chosen a new font.

Ever since we started using the font it causes Illustrator to freeze and then crash. Anyone else have this issue and maybe a solution??

Everyone is on version 28.3

Cheers,

Joel

[Ton Frederiks]

What is the name of that font? Who made it?

[Joel321071414lbk]

Hi Ton, 

Thanks for answering! The name of the font is Figtree, and it's a Google font

[Ton Frederiks]

I installed it and it does behave a little weird.

I cannot select it from the control panel. I can select the font name, but the font goes back to what was already there.

Choosing the font from the Character or the Properties panel works.

Illustrator does not crash in 28.3 on Mac Ventura

[Bobby Henderson]

Which version of Figtree are you using, the static version or the variable version?

I've seen weird issues with Google Fonts from time to time, but nothing that causes an application like Illustrator to crash. Usually the technical problems involve some (or many) styles failing to load in the font menu. I've seen Google fonts behave strangely in other graphics applications where the fonts just don't load at all; when selected the type just turned into default Arial or is rendered looking like Arial in the font menu previews. Google does post bug fix updates to fonts though. The latest builds of some popular faces, such as Montserrat, seem to be behaving better than they have in the past.

A small number of Google Fonts typefaces are available to sync via Adobe Fonts. Sometimes that can be a decent work-around. The version at Adobe Fonts might be more stable than the downloadable version at Google Fonts' website. In the case of Figtree, it's only available at Google Fonts.

[Anubhav M]

Hello @Joel321071414lbk,

We understand that encountering technical issues can be frustrating. Would you mind confirming if you've acquired this font from the Google Fonts website (https://adobe.ly/4a50jS2) or Adobe Fonts (https://adobe.ly/3TMMIZL)?

If it's the latter, could you check if Illustrator behaves this way with all files? Also, kindly share details about the exact OS version, details about your workflow, and a screen recording of the problem so that we can investigate this further.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Did you already analyze the font?

Are you using font management? Is it OK?

Of course it could also be caused by conflicts or something in the font databases. But in case this is happening on all computers involved, then most probably it's the font.

[Joel321071414lbk]

Even with a Google font? 

We thought it might be because the font is in English in the viewer, and our system is in Dutch. So after we re-installed Illustrtor in English it workd for a while and then started crashing again

[Monika Gause]

Above all with a Google font. Not all of them are the best quality. There might also be different versions of them. Try if you can get that font from other sources.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

I downloaded the same fonts (the TTF OpenType versions that Google offers) and, yeah, I'm having issues with it as well.

I poked at the outlines in FontForge and each one of the files had an error in it about a bad style table. That might be causing your issue.

However, being an open sourced font, I checked the creator's latest verion on GitHub and that version does not have that error in it, and he has corrected issues with the outlines (removed errant overlaps) and added more glyphs, so maybe try download those and give them a try. He has also made OTF (CFF) versions if you prefer to work with Postscript outlines. instead of the TT OTF.

https://github.com/erikdkennedy/figtree/tree/master/fonts

[Bobby Henderson]

Did you try both the static and variable versions? I wonder if both are effected by the error you mentioned. Hopefully Google will have the corrected font files available for download soon.

[porni53]

I'm having the same problem using Roboto Flex Variable font from google fonts. Did someone found a solution?

[Monika Gause]

Did ou try if there's an update for the font?

 Or download it from Adobe Fonts?

[Bobby Henderson]

Roboto Flex isn't available at Adobe Fonts (at least not yet). I've had technical issues with Roboto Flex in the past, but the last version of it I downloaded from the Google Fonts web site has been working properly.

When I encounter a Google Fonts type family whose font files are acting strangely in one or more applications I'll go back to the web site weeks or months later and download another copy. Very often that new copy will work better. In the meantime I'll check and see if the type family is available from other sources. Adobe Fonts carries 384 of the 1643 type families from Google Fonts (some of those Google typefaces at Adobe Fonts are limited selections rather than the complete families). Font Squirrel is a decent legal free fonts web site and carries some of the same type families as Google Fonts. Sometimes a copy downloaded via Font Squirrel or synced via Adobe Fonts will work better than the version downloaded from Google Fonts. In the case of Roboto Flex, I think that one is available only at Google Fonts' web site.