Before you attempt automation, you need to ensure you have cleaned up your files and have practices in place to allow automated workflows to succeed. As you upgrade and maintain your hardware and software, you should also include your fonts.
Workstations have fonts stored in many locations – the Quark folder, InDesign folder, library, user library, Mac Font Book – and opened in a font manager. Often when creating files, the fonts appear in the list and work on your machine, but you do not always know where they came from.
Different types of fonts – OpenType (OTF), TrueType (TT), PostScript (PS), dFont – find their way into our font libraries. It’s important for the success of automation that these be found and organized for use.
You can create an InDesign file using only PostScript fonts. You can open that same InDesign file and if OpenType fonts are available instead, InDesign will swap the OTF. Save this file and it will save the fonts as OpenType. The problem is, InDesign will not swap back to the original fonts, which means you’ll have missing OpenType fonts when you have already packaged PostScript fonts.
To compound this problem, PostScript fonts contain all screen fonts in one suitcase package. If the OpenType font was, for example, Condensed Light and was swapped when you collect the fonts in a package for automation, InDesign will place the fonts in its fonts folder and only use the PostScript font. It cannot use Condensed Light (OTF) as it is already in the PostScript suitcase. Now, your font is missing and automation fails.
The font clean up has to start at the creation of a document. Everyone will save time and money by managing their fonts. Font management software can cause trouble by allowing OpenType and PostScript fonts to be open at the same time. Document creators must understand that reopening a file could cause this OpenType swap to occur and thus, create problems we want to be rid of – font reflow, font substitution, and tracking and kerning problems. If prepress departments can’t make the fonts work, they will send the files back to the creator, or worse, substitute them all over again and charge the creator company for the extra work.
Here is a strategy for efficient font management across all levels.
1. Document creators, create a list of the fonts you are using in a job as well as the type. Consult this list, and check your font management system before opening and saving your InDesign files. Whenever possible, stick to one type of font only, either OpenType or PostScript. Don’t have them both open at the same time.
2. IT and management, don’t allow font management packages to “group font families.” This will allow OpenType fonts and PostScript fonts to merge together in the font client. Let the users see that there is an “O” or and “A” version of the font.
3. Prepress departments, you are all probably aware of the OpenType swap issue; try to work with your customer to get proper packages. The more time you save by not messing with fonts, the more work gets done for your department.
4. For those working with automation tools, accomplishing the three tasks will increase the percentage of work that you can automate, saving time and money for everyone.
This is my lecture for this issue, so clean up your fonts! Wasting time and money because of software glitches affects us all, and we can get information out there to reduce our waste.
By the way, I didn’t mention Quark in this article because it always swaps the fonts without notification; however, it will always swap them back.