New to Affinity...a couple questions

[Landis]

Affinity Experts,

I'm using Franklin Gothic Book and Copperplate Gothic Light fonts and cannot format these fonts in bold nor can I define a style in bold as this isn't listed as a "trait" for these fonts. Can anyone tell me why? I can bold the lettering of these fonts in other applications like Word, PowerPoint, etc. 

Secondly, is there a way to format text frame outlines to make them less visible? Right now the default is a rather thick blue line. I would prefer something thin, semi-transparent, or maybe a light dashed line to minimize the visual clutter. I've watched several tutorials on text frames but none address this problem.    

Thanks in advance.

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, Landis said:

I'm using Franklin Gothic Book and Copperplate Gothic Light fonts and cannot format these fonts in bold nor can I define a style in bold as this isn't listed as a "trait" for these fonts. Can anyone tell me why? I can bold the lettering of these fonts in other applications like Word, PowerPoint, etc

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Some applications will provide faux ("made-up") Bold or Italic formatting even for fonts that do not provide it themselves. The Affinity applications do not do this.

I am not familiar with the characteristics of your fonts, but perhaps this explains what you're seeing.

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, Landis said:

Secondly, is there a way to format text frame outlines to make them less visible? Right now the default is a rather thick blue line. I would prefer something thin, semi-transparent, or maybe a light dashed line to minimize the visual clutter. I've watched several tutorials on text frames but none address this problem.    

No. 

You can limit the outline to just the active Text Frame, and not the others on the page, by having View > Show Text Flow disabled. But the frame will be shown for the active object.

[Alfred]

6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I am not familiar with the characteristics of your fonts, but perhaps this explains what you're seeing.

That does indeed explain it. ‘Book’ and ‘Light’ are font weights (both lighter/thinner than ‘Bold’).

[Alfred]

32 minutes ago, Landis said:

I'm using Franklin Gothic Book and Copperplate Gothic Light fonts

I have Franklin Gothic Book and Franklin Gothic Book Italic here, but no other weights or styles. However, Libre Franklin is available in Bold, ExtraBold, and Black weights. Copperplate Gothic Bold also exists as a font in its own right.

[Landis]

Thank you all for the speedy replies. I've no experience as a typesetter so the nature of fonts and their "traits" is new to me. However, there are options like Franklin Gothic Demi, among others, that appear as bold text or Libre Franklin as Alfred suggested.  Fake bold formatting may also explain why Franklin Gothic 'bold' text is rendered slightly blurry when printing to pdf format. I could never figure out why. 

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome.

[Gripsholm Lion]

Some lighter typefaces can be made bolder to an acceptable standard by converting to curves and adding a stroke. Note that my quick example uses an outside stroke. If using this method in production, I would certainly take steps to hide the aliasing issue which can be seen when zoomed in closely; as well as tweaking the kerning, etc.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, GripsholmLion said:

Some lighter typefaces can be made bolder to an acceptable standard by converting to curves and adding a stroke.

You can simply add a stroke without converting to curves first, which keeps the text editable. Please note, however, that this method is really only suitable for sans serif and slab serif typefaces, since serifs that taper to a point will become unattractively thick.

[Landis]

Yikes, digital typography is more complicated than I ever thought! Don't think I need to go to that extreme but thanks for the education!

[Gripsholm Lion]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

You can simply add a stroke without converting to curves first

True, but I almost always convert text to curves as the next step, so it's muscle memory.

1 hour ago, Landis said:

extreme

Huh?

[walt.farrell]

49 minutes ago, GripsholmLion said:

but I almost always convert text to curves as the next step

Why?

[Gripsholm Lion]

Because I usually need curves, fairly obviously...

[walt.farrell]

28 minutes ago, GripsholmLion said:

Because I usually need curves, fairly obviously...

I guess the question was more a curiosity one of "why do you need curves, usually". I usually don't, for example, and if I need curves in an exported PDF I do it during Export, so my text stays editable in the source file.