The problem with free fonts

Posted by Marco on Aug 25, 2010 in OTF

Everyone loves free fonts. There is one major problem with free fonts though. Suppose you’ve created a nice looking design using a free font like say, the Adorable. Nice font right? But after your client approved the design he sends you the actual text and suddenly you know why the font was free…


The fontdesigner didn’t bother to design all of the letters! Sure all of the normal ones are present but not things like ü, é, ø and more. Of course your clients now needs a German text in your design also. And guess what? Germans love the ü! It’s everywhere. The letter is not in the font, so InDesign can’t show it and just shows nothing at all. Now you have to search through a German text for a missing letter. Great.



After that lovely exercise you’re not out of the woods yet. Your client wants the headings to be bold. But there isn’t a bold in this font family! Now you need to result in faking the bold by adding a thin line around the type. This looks butt-ugly as the font was never designed to be bold. Thank God your client didn’t request an Italic!

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Comments

  1. Jasper | August 28, 2010 | 20:37 CET

    That seems to be more a problem of bad preperation imo.
    You need to know your font before you present it to your client.
    You’ve got to try different things with it, see how flexible it is et cetera.

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