Using fonts from illustrator in a logo

[milllanedrummer]

Are you free to use fonts from illustrator/photoshop in business logo's?

[Jacob Bugge]

milllane,

Are you free to use fonts from illustrator/photoshop in business logo's?

You are, if you avoid any use that requires your sending the actual font to someone else, which will violate the terms of use of the font unless it is unrestricted (freeware or similar).

You may create the logo using live Type and sending it to whomever in a PDF (where the font is embedded and thereby inaccessible for other uses), or creating outlines and sending it as non vector paths in an AI document, but you may not send it as live Type in an AI document and supply the font in addition, so it would be ponitless to send it as live Type unless the receiver also has the font (without the font, the receiver will have a substituted font upon opening the document).

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

Not one hundred precent true you can copy and send the fonts for a reproduction house for the sole purpose of reproducing that particular piece or job.

If the reproduction firm wishes to use the font in the future they have to buy it. And as far as my experience has one any house that decides that they would like this or that font sent to them simply will go out an buy it.

[Jacob Bugge]

Obviously, there may be differences in EULAs (end user licence agreements), but at least generally there is no permission to supply the font to anyone.

Here are a few links to information about the matter:

http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/info/embedding.html

http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/crossmedia/advice/fonts-basic-guide-to-font-licensing

[Dov Isaacs]

On behalf of Adobe Systems Incorporated ...

This (that “you can copy and send the fonts for a reproduction house for the sole purpose of reproducing that particular piece or job”) is absolutely not true! In fact it is not true for any of Adobe's fonts!

What is true is that your ability to send, share, or even embed fonts is dependent upon the EULA (End User License Agreement) for each and every font you use in your content. And, by the way, any restrictions in the EULA legally override any embedding permissions that might be set in the font itself for TrueType and OpenType fonts!

Other than for fonts that are explicitly labeled as public domain or freeware, it is exceptionally uncommon for any font foundry – and that includes Adobe and Monotype (Monotype now includes Linotype, ITC, and Bitstream) – to permit licensees to simply package and send fonts along with the base document (Illustrator .AI, InDesign .INDD, etc.) and other digital assets to a print service provider with one exception. That exception – and that exception is not universal but does apply to fonts licensed from Adobe – is that such fonts may be sent to a print service provider as long as the print service provider is also licensed for those fonts. Well, what good is that you may ask? The reason for this is that there are subtle differences between versions of fonts released over time including improvements and corrections. Adobe does allow users to make local modifications of fonts as well while maintaining actually ownership of the fonts. To deal with both these cases, Adobe does allow fonts to be sent with original source files to print service providers if and only if the print service provider also has a license for such fonts. The need for such a license is exactly why Adobe markets its Font Folio product to print service providers; it fulfills the licensing requirement for their customers sending original documents with fonts to them either for reproduction and/or editing.

One of the reasons why Adobe has been so much behind PDF workflows is that for many fonts (including all those licensed from Adobe), you may embed the fonts in the PDF files you create from you content, send the resultant PDF file to your print service provider for reproduction or to a publication for embedding in their content (such as for advertisements) and neither you nor the recipient needs to pay any further licensing fee.

However, you should note one further restriction. Some font foundries (including all the font brands of Monotype) allow for fonts to be embedded in PDF files, but except for private distribution of such PDF files (including to print service providers and publishers), requirement additional royalty payments for distribution of PDF files in which their fonts are embedded! Note that Adobe has no such restrictions on any fonts the fonts it licenses!

I know that the above information may conflict with both what many in the industry practice and believe is true, but those licenses are indeed legally enforceable. We are in fact aware of font foundries that run webbots looking for PDF files with their fonts embedded for which royalties have not been paid. The fact that many content providers and print service providers have blatantly ignored the font licenses in the past does not provide a tenable legal excuse for ignoring font licenses now.

          - Dov

PS:     To address the original question in this thread, you may use the fonts provided with any Adobe software in your content such as logos (even if they are created with non-Adobe software while you are licensed for the Adobe software) and you may distribute such artwork to others with the fonts as long as that is distributed in the form of either PDF files or EPS files with the fonts embedded. (Adobe most strongly recommends PDF over EPS for modern, reliable workflows!)

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

I am not sure you nderstood what I wrote but I do not know of a service bereau that does not purchase the fonts once they come across them on a project if they do not own them already.

Also I have never heard of a service or printed doing anything like this statement indicates.

I know that the above information may conflict with both what many in the industry practice and believe is true, but those licenses are indeed legally enforceable. We are in fact aware of font foundries that run webbots looking for PDF files with their fonts embedded for which royalties have not been paid. The fact that many content providers and print service providers have blatantly ignored the font licenses in the past does not provide a tenable legal excuse for ignoring font licenses now.

I have sent fonts to printers and have been told they did not have license for the font so they just purchase the font. That is because the cost of the font is minimal compared to what they will make even on a small print job.

And I believe it has been stted here tht you can send your project with your fonts to a print shop and not as a pdf or eps as you stae but as an ai file or any other file you wish and if you are speaking officially as an Adobe representative, staff or not straff, then Adobe is blatantly misrepresentinbg the use of their products when they sell them to the public.

If I can't use these products and freely send the files to who ever I wish then thyey are no use to me or anyobne else and there nothing that I have yet to see that says I cannot do so.

[Dov Isaacs]

Wade,

I have the sense that you have taken my response to you as a personal attack. It was not meant as such and I am very sorry if the tone of the response made you think it was and/or you perceived it as such.

Regardless of your relationship with print service providers, we continually hear from members of the trade including everyone from designers to print buyers through print service providers who in fact are not aware of the terms of font EULAs and blatantly ignore the requirements for print service providers (or publishers who receive content in source form with fonts) to have licenses for those fonts. I am glad to hear from your report that your print service providers do comply with licensing requirements.

My posting is as an official representative of Adobe. So that there is no misunderstanding, I am attaching the EULA for Adobe's Type products to this response (for those receiving this response via e-mail, please go to the forums on-line to access this attachment). See §14.7 for licensing information specific to type products. (The Font Folio has a similar license but provides for more simultaneous users.) 

I did not say that you cannot send your .AI file and the fonts to a print service provider, but rather, that the print service provider must have a license to use such fonts, whether or not they do any edits to your .AI file or not. That is at least what Adobe allows. I do not speak for other font vendors. They may or may not allow for this.

I don't understand how you claim that “Adobe is blatantly misrepresenting the use of their products when they sell them to the public.” These particular license terms have been in effect over twenty years (less the PDF embedding permissions). I'd be very interested in knowing where, when, and who on behalf of Adobe communicated anything different to you with regards to use of Adobe type software and how font files licensed from Adobe may or may not be transferred to and used by others under what conditions.

For what it is worth, Adobe's font licensing terms are amongst the most liberal in the industry. I invite you to compare the EULA for Adobe's products with those from Monotype, House Industries, and other font foundries.

          - Dov

[Jacob Bugge]

Dov,

Thank you very much for sharing your vast knowledge here. I believe it is essential to this forum.

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

Well the answer to the OP's question is yes you can use the fonts that come with your adobe software no problem that is what they are for you will be usig them as they were intended to be used.

Fear not!

You are good to go.

Adobe has even included a script in in Illustrator to collect the fonts and a new feature in the CS 6 Cloud version to collect for output.

If hope you are successful with eorking with Illustrator and the you produce great woirk and make some profit at it as well.

That is exactly what it is for.

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

To the Op the hell with that nonsense use the fonts and outline it once you designed your logo and not think twice about the silliness just posted.

[Dov Isaacs]

Wade_Zimmerman wrote:

To the Op the hell with that nonsense use the fonts and outline it once you designed your logo and not think twice about the silliness just posted.

I don't know what “silliness just posted” you are referring to, but a few additional points:

(1)     As I indicated in my previous posting, licensees of Adobe products are free to use Adobe fonts bundled with the products (such as Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop) in their designs and logos. The same is true for any additional fonts licensed from Adobe. The restriction is that in making that artwork available to others, to include the fonts you should export preferably as PDF (or EPS if absolutely necessary) or if you want or need to send source files (.AI, .INDD, .PSD), that the recipient is also licensed for the fonts. If you are using fonts bundled with the products and they are using those same products, the recipients are obviously “good to go” in terms of licensing.

(2)     Outlining texthas nasty downsides of (a) degrading rendering quality, especially at smaller magnifications (low resolution and lower point size) with decorative styles and (b) increasing the size of object, especially if much text is involved since each character is defined as one or more unique scalable polygons.

(3)     Adobe's type EULA has absolutely no restrictions against outlining text but that is not true of other font foundries. There are some font foundries that in their EULAs specifically prohibit either outlining text or rasterizing text as a means of getting around the EULAs' restrictions against embedding or sending fonts along with artwork. It is the licensees' responsibility to read the EULAs of the fonts they license, preferably before they either license them and especially before they commit to their use in a design.

          - Dov

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

3)     Adobe's type EULA has absolutely no restrictions against outlining text but that is not true of other font foundries. There are some font foundries that in their EULAs specifically prohibit either outlining text or rasterizing text as a means of getting around the EULAs' restrictions against embedding or sending fonts along with artwork. It is the licensees' responsibility to read the EULAs of the fonts they license, preferably before they either license them and especially before they commit to their use in a design.

I take offense to this  approach you have taken in response to the use of Fonts. The OP asked if they can use the fonts they received from Adobe along with the products.

The use of third parties requirements, which you in no way have the authorization to express, is out of line what other foundaries say their policy is for themt o say and not you.

[Post edited to keep the forums a friendly place] The use of your speculation about other foundries has nothing to do with the license the user has with their products thsat they purchased from Adobe and nor was it asked here on the forum in this thread.

The use of logo art as vector art is as common as dringking water and the idea that there might be problems at different sizes is true of type logos as well as another other form of logo an is not an issue here that is something that the user will learn with experience.

[Post edited to keep the forums a friendly place]And I have no ibntention to participate in this forum again and that is because of your silliness.

[Post edited to keep the forums a friendly place]

Message was edited by: Terri Stone

[Dov Isaacs]

Mr. Zimmerman,

It is most unfortunate that you are now resorting to name calling because you don't like what I am saying.

The reason I got involved with this thread at all was because other participants privately contacted me and expressed concerns about the varacity of the responses you were providing and that either the OP or others following the thread could be readily mislead by your responses. For example, you stated:

Not one hundred precent true you can copy and send the fonts for a reproduction house for the sole purpose of reproducing that particular piece or job.

In fact this is absolutely not true for the fonts provided with Adobe Illustrator. They must have those fonts licensed even if only for the purpose of reproducing the job. That is why I brought up the issue of the EULAs.

In fact, when you package a project in the latest version of Illustrator, you get the following legal warning:

It clearly states that the provider may use the font(s) to process your file, provided the provider has informed you that it has the right to use the particular software. That “right to use the particular software” means that the provider has a license for the fonts and has informed you explicitly that they are so-licensed.

A similar message appears when you package an InDesign project.

Why do you say that I have no “authorization” to discuss third party EULAs or third party font vendor terms on this forum? Just because the OP didn't explicitly ask about such fonts and licensing terms, the thread moved into a territory that made such a discussion very relevant lest the OP or another casual reader of this thread extrapolate comments associated with the fonts bundled with Adobe's applications or any font licensed from Adobe with font licensing and license requirements in general. And I am not “speculating” about the licensing terms and conditions spelled out in other font foundries' EULAs. Such EULAs are publicly posted on any responsible software vendors' websites and are not proprietary information of any type. I have read a large number of these EULAs, have you?

Part of the mission of these forums is to provide information and education and often it means that we need to go well beyond the simplest response to the original question and posting to give a full and fair view of a particular topic and avoid anyone misconstruing the overall situation! It is in our mutual best interest that we actively and publicly disclose information that we know associated with legal use of digital assets, both those licensed by Adobe and by third parties to proactively avoid problems as opposed to having to deal with lawyers and serious legal expenses later.

If you wish to further debate these issues or the reason or veracity of my responses, please feel free to contact me directly off-forum! Given the language of responses now being encountered, this thread itself is now closed.

          - Dov

[Jacob Bugge]

milllanedrummer,

In the first post I forgot to mention that the appearance of the font is changed/deteriorated when you create outlines, and it can be quite noticeable at small font sizes. Therefore using live Type may give (sometimes distinctly) better artwork.