Exporting as PDF & Maintaining Font Styles

[eastcoaster99]

Hi everyone, I'm really struggling with exporting my designs as PDFs and maintaining the style of the text. If I select Text as Curves, I lose the ability to select and copy the text, which I need in my PDFs. If I don't select Text as Curves, the font styles change and the design looks different. 

Any recommendations? Thanks in advance. 

[Hangman]

Do you have Embed Fonts set to All Fonts as well as the Subset Fonts box checked under More in the PDF Export dialogue window?

[kenmcd]

2 hours ago, eastcoaster99 said:

If I don't select Text as Curves, the font styles change and the design looks different. 

This may be because of an issue with the PostScript Name field inside the fonts.
When this is configured incorrectly, wrong fonts may get embedded (which changes the look).
You can confirm the wrong fonts by looking at the PDF embedded fonts.
Can you attach the PDF and/or the document?
What fonts are you using?

[eastcoaster99]

3 hours ago, Hangman said:

Do you have Embed Fonts set to All Fonts as well as the Subset Fonts box checked under More in the PDF Export dialogue window?

Hangman, thank you for your reply. Yes I have Subset fonts checked. I've attached the exact Export settings I'm using in case that's helpful. 

[eastcoaster99]

3 hours ago, LibreTraining said:

This may be because of an issue with the PostScript Name field inside the fonts.
When this is configured incorrectly, wrong fonts may get embedded (which changes the look).
You can confirm the wrong fonts by looking at the PDF embedded fonts.
Can you attach the PDF and/or the document?
What fonts are you using?

Thanks LibreTraining. Here's one example of a document that loses the font style. In this example, I'm using Josefin Sans Bold and it gets exported as Thin. I've attached both the Affinity file and the PDF.  It happens with other fonts as well - today was Roboto that changed after export. 

I'd be grateful if you can let me know anything I can do here to help solve this! Thanks so much. 

Checklist PDF.afpub Checklist PDF.pdf

[kenmcd]

Was this document created by importing a PDF?
Because none of the text has a Font Style assigned.
The Font Name field is selected, but the Font Style field is blank.
You need to assign the Font Style to each piece of text.
I did this for the front page by assigning Bold, and the PDF then showed the correct font.

You should probably use some text styles, which would make this easier.

[eastcoaster99]

7 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

Was this document created by importing a PDF?
Because none of the text has a Font Style assigned.
The Font Name field is selected, but the Font Style field is blank.
You need to assign the Font Style to each piece of text.
I did this for the front page by assigning Bold, and the PDF then showed the correct font.

You should probably use some text styles, which would make this easier.

Thanks LibreTraining. No, I created this document from scratch using Affinity Publisher. On my end, the text does have a Font Style. I checked everywhere and it shows a font style for each piece of text. I've attached a screenshot.

[kenmcd]

Hmmmm ... I see nothing ... wonder if that is a font replacement issue at my end.
I have Josefin Sans installed, but my Avenir Next is a different version (LT Pro).

Another idea - do you have the variable font also installed?
Because when an application does not support variable TTF fonts,
the default master is what appears for every weight.
And the default master in that variable font is Thin.
So that would appear for every weight.
Like you have in your PDF.

I assume you got the fonts from Google Fonts.
Google Fonts insists that the variable font family name and the named instances are the same as the static font names (so the statics will work as a fallback).
This causes name conflicts when both the variable and statics are installed.
So you cannot have both installed at the same time.
Is that the case?

 

[eastcoaster99]

2 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

Hmmmm ... I see nothing ... wonder if that is a font replacement issue at my end.
I have Josefin Sans installed, but my Avenir Next is a different version (LT Pro).

Another idea - do you have the variable font also installed?
Because when an application does not support variable TTF fonts,
the default master is what appears for every weight.
And the default master in that variable font is Thin.
So that would appear for every weight.
Like you have in your PDF.

I assume you got the fonts from Google Fonts.
Google Fonts insists that the variable font family name and the named instances are the same as the static font names (so the statics will work as a fallback).
This causes name conflicts when both the variable and statics are installed.
So you cannot have both installed at the same time.
Is that the case?

 

Thanks for thinking of all that could be going on right now! Yes, I get most of my fonts from Google Fonts. And actually had an issue with Roboto today that I just downloaded (same exact issue but it happened on Affinity Designer - not Publisher). When I look up Josefin Sans in my fonts - the title of it says JosefinSans-VariableFonts-wght.ttf. Is there anything else I should be looking at? I'm not quite sure how I would go about solving this. I'm using a Mac if that's helpful. 

I truly appreciate your help! 

[kenmcd]

 

25 minutes ago, eastcoaster99 said:

When I look up Josefin Sans in my fonts - the title of it says JosefinSans-VariableFonts-wght.ttf. Is there anything else I should be looking at? I'm not quite sure how I would go about solving this. I'm using a Mac if that's helpful. 

Ahhh ... that's the problem.
You have the variable font installed (JosefinSans-VariableFonts-wght.ttf).
Affinity apps do not yet support variable fonts.
The Mac font manager fools you by displaying the variable instances as if they will work,
but there is no variable font support yet.
So what you actually get is the default master in the variable font - which is Thin.

Un-install the variable font(s), and install the static fonts.
Then it should work.

 

[eastcoaster99]

3 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

 

Ahhh ... that's the problem.
You have the variable font installed (JosefinSans-VariableFonts-wght.ttf).
Affinity apps do not yet support variable fonts.
The Mac font manager fools you by displaying the variable instances as if they will work,
but there is no variable font support yet.
So what you actually get is the default master in the font - which is Thin.

Un-install the variable font, and install the static fonts.
Then it should work.

 

Thank you so much!! I will do that. 

 

[gstout]

This solution was amazing insightful and helpful. Thank you kenmcd!

[EspressoBuns]

thank you! I had the same problem with the exact same font and removing it and re-installing static solved it!