Stroke is outline the entire part of the letter, help?

[Katie24222578syyt]

I opened Illustrator to work in today and when I went to add a stroke to my text, I noticed that the stroke is now outline all parts of the letters. At first I thought it might be my front, but it turns out it's doing it for several fonts. (See image) The one pictured is Montserrat from Google. It didn't do this earlier in the week, and nothing has changed that I know if. Did I accidentaly toggle a setting I can't find?

All help would be appreiciated.

[Ton Frederiks]

That happens with some variable fonts.

You can try to remove the fill and stroke and add new ones in the Appearance panel and drag the stroke there below the fill.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

It's because of how the font outline was constructed. Not sure if this is laziness or a missed step on the designer's part, but this has come up a few times, especially with fonts from independent font designers on Google, and sometimes it depends on the VERSION you have downloaded. In fact, in the case of Montserrat, if you download the same fonts from: (https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/montserrat), the font is properly constructed and will work fine.

As illustrated below, the font outline at left is from the version available from Google right now (v8.000) which uses overlapping shapes and the one on the right is from fontsquirrel's website (v7.200) which does not have the issue.

 As I said, I'm not sure if this was just a "missed step" when they created the final outlines in v8.000, but it's what's causing your issue. I can see how creating shapes this ways works for variable fonts, but it shouldn't be that way in static versions.

[Kurt Gold]

I think Brad is right and I'm rather sure that this is indeed some kind of laziness or sloppiness due to some unknown reasons. Perhaps an insidious midge interrupted the font maker while fine-tuning the characters. Who knows.

It's definitely a carelessness that should not happen at all. Specifically, in case it is  a commercial font.

[Monika Gause]

Variable fonts need to be designed that way in order to be variable.

But I'm pretty sure there is a setting when exporting them that prevents these things from happening. Although tehre are also a couple of bugs associated with systems and certain versions of Illustrator: https://glyphsapp.com/learn/creating-a-variable-font

[Ton Frederiks]

I don't think they need to be designed that way. The Myriad Variable Concept does not have that problem, but other fonts that are part of the Illustrator installation like Source Code Variable and Source Sans Variable have it.

[Monika Gause]

At least that is how all the glyphs in all the screenshots in the linked article are set up.

I assume there is a setting when generating the font that prevents the issues from happening.

[Ton Frederiks]

I see, maybe someone from Adobe Type knows the answer. 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"I don't think they need to be designed that way. "

No they don't. In fact, Font Forge (which is the one I'm using these days) talks about how it's easier to work with separate shapes when designing a font but warns that they shoud be simplified on final output (FF has a "Remove Overlap" function). My guess is the designer forgot to do this on their v8 which Google is offering, since it was very definitely done on the v7.2.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

 

[Ton Frederiks]

Thanks, Remove Overlap sounds what's needed.

[Kurt Gold]

Some further experiments seem to indicate that it might even be a weird Illustrator bug.

At least Illustrator obviously interprets some variable concept fonts in a different way than InDesign does.

For example, if you create a type object in InDesign and choose Source Code Variable, Source Sans Variable or Source Serif Variable and apply a stroke to that type object, you won't see the issues you are facing in Illustrator. BUT, if you then convert the live type object to paths in InDesign, the issue will appear as well.

If you copy the live type object in InDesign and paste it into an Illustrator document, the type object will be converted to paths, but this time the issue will not appear.

Pretty strange.

[Ton Frederiks]

Strange but not pretty.

[Kurt Gold]

Yes, Ton.

And perhaps Monika is at least partially right and it might be that "some" variable concept fonts indeed have to be built that way, for whatever reason.

Honestly, it's rather hard to imagine that notable vendors like Adobe (Source Code Variable, Source Sans Variable, Source Serif Variable), Microsoft (Bahnschrift), Google (Roboto Flex) and some others are really that lazy to create and deliver such a mess.

But who knows.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

I agree. Most of these problem fonts seem to from smaller "boutique" designers, and I don't think the vetting process is as good as it should be before Google/Adobe/whoever starts serving them out.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

No, not an Illustrator bug. If you outline one of these static fonts in InDesign, it will show there as well. I've checked with a few font creation apps over the last couple of days and have found, (thanks to FontLabs for clueing me in)  that Variable fonts are "converted" to outlines on the fly by the System and Applications that support them, and overlap removal is part of that process. Hence, outlining a variable font in Illustrator looks fine. Static fonts, however, are rendered at the output stage (by a Printer RIP, etc), so the overlaps are NOT removed and when outlined the overlaps show, as it's showing what the printer wil do with it.

I've now looked at Font Forge, FontLabs and Glyphs and all these apps recommend removing overlaps on static fonts, and most font creators do this automatically when generating final instances. Not all do. So, again, I suspect that a step was missed when generating the v8.000 versions of Montserrat that Google is serving. The version that Adobe Fonts is serving (v7.2000) is fine.

[Kurt Gold]

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[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

I've reached out to the person who designed the font. I will let you know if I hear anything back.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

I've heard back from the designer. She sends the masters to Google and they create the instances, so it's Google that may have missed the Remove Overlap step on the v8.000 static outlines; It was definitely not her intention to keep overlaps, except for the purpose of creating the variable instance. She suggested the OP get in touch with Google if they wanted to persue it further.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

@Katie24222578syyt 

If you've been reading all of this back and forth, the answer for you right now is to ditch the Google versions you have and use the version of Montserrat that's on Adobe Fonts, or download the family from fontsquirrel.com.

Good luck!

[Kurt Gold]

That's remarkable, Brad. Thank you.

I still think some weird things are actually happening. I hope I made clear that it was just an assumption that it might also be some Illustrator bug, but some experiments in InDesign finally proved me wrong.

BUT, at least one thing that is a bit mysterious is that if you have (for example) a Source Serif Variable type object with a stroked applied in Illustrator, you can immediately see the mess. If you then convert it to paths, the mess is still there (as far as I understand, by saying "outlining a variable font in Illustrator looks fine", you think it will be cured then, but it actually doesn't). Therefore some pathfinder is required to solve it. Or, and that may be a suitable workaround in the meantime, you could apply the Live Pathfinder effect "Add" to the live type object.

What I think is pretty astounding is that if you have the same live type object in InDesign, it looks good as long as it is a live type object, but bad if you convert it to paths. But if you copy that Source Serif Variable type object and paste it into an Illustrator document, it will then be properly converted to paths without the snippets that you get when outlining that type object in Illustrator.

Furthermore, I'd like to ask another question: Although you may think that the problem fonts were made by some "boutique" designers, do you really think that the Source font families from Adobe or Bahnschrift from Microsoft are constructed that sloppily? I somehow cannot believe it, though I can of course also not believe that there are still so many things that cannot straightforwardly be incorporated into actions in Illustrator.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"What I think is pretty astounding is that if you have the same live type object in InDesign, it looks good as long as it is a live type object"

Yes and No. Depends on where your stroke is located.

InDesign's default is to add a stroke to live type on the outside of the stroke. It does this by actually creating a stroke double the desired thickness and placing it behind the fill in the stacking order when it goes to print. On screen this looks like evrything is fine because the fill blocks out the fact the stroke behind it is f**ked up.

However, if you change the stroke on the live text to center, ID creates a stroke of the desired width but brings it in FRONT of the fill in the stacking order, hence you see the messed up stroke.

In my example, I have text with a red outline of 1 point, centered on the top one, and outside on the bottom. Once you split them apart (I opened this in Illustrator from a PDF), you can see that the bottom one has a 2 point stroke with the fill element on top of it, and you can see that the stroke is also messed up.

 

[Kurt Gold]

I've tested some more variable fonts and it turned out that a good portion of them have the same "issues" as the fonts that have already been mentioned.

Frankly speaking, it's pretty improbable that all of those font makers missed to do the "Remove Overlaps" step.

Hopefully, I'm wrong, but I assume there might be some reasons why some variable fonts are built that way.

One pattern I can see is that variable fonts that provide more than just the font weight variable are built in fragmented ways more often than rather simple variable fonts. Not sure if that may be just a fallacy.

I think it would be helpful and interesting if someone with profound technical background knowledge could chime in.

[Kurt Gold]

I can see it, Brad. Thank you.

However, it doesn't explain the curiosities I described above.

And I'm still wondering why obviously so many variable fonts are affected by the issue. All of them just missed the "Remove Overlaps" step while creating the font? I still think that this is rather improbable.

Some other reasons perhaps? I don't know.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"And I'm still wondering why obviously so many variable fonts are affected by the issue. "

Apparently, it's actually a good way to make variable fonts; It's less necessary for the glyphs to be perfect (e.g. winding directions, etc) when interpolating instances inbetween extremes if the pieces are separate. I saw a demonstration video on how this benefits design of variable fonts and it totally makes sense. It's just not necessary nor desirable in static fonts, and all fontcreator apps recommend removing overlaps in final instance export.

Personally, I'm not a fan of variable fonts. As someone who lived through the Multiple Master era, it was never handled well, and it seems Variable Fonts are still at that stage too.

To each their own, though. It just would be nice if all the font servers were on the same page!