Font Use

[O. Chevetaigne]

I’m just loving Affinity Designer like you wouldn’t believe - and now Affinity Photo in beta!

 

You guys are fantastic!

 

I’m just getting started with design work and was wondering about fonts.

 

If I design a logo, poster or label, etc. I’m thinking I would need fonts that are cleared for “commercial use”.

 

I’ve noticed there are some fonts available for purchase on Apple’s App store - and elsewhere that are “licensed for commercial use” and “royalty free”. 

 

What should one look for when purchasing fonts for use with AD?  (Both business-wise and technical-wise) 

 

What sort of pitfalls should one avoid?  

 

I’d like to keep things as simple as possible - (Guess I’m simple minded).

 

Anyway, any experience and expertise anyone would like to share would be greatly appreciated.

 

And thanks again, Serif Team, for such wonderful and affordable software!  All your hard work is greatly appreciated.

 

[ronnyb]

Any standard Mac font will work with Affinity products. How you obtain those fonts, what rights are associated (or not) with them, and what you choose to do with the fonts is up to you. Affinity only cares about standard fonts, there are no licensing issues as far as AD is concerned.

[eyelight]

Just downloaded Designer. System fonts appear in the character panel but don't seem to render.

 

Like many commercial studios we use suitcase font management. Is it compatible with Designer?

 

BTW. I've been using Adobe products for decades and Affinity could be the biggest and most welcome news in years. (say no more).

[MEB]

Hi eyelight,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Which fonts aren't rendering properly? Raster, true type? Can you give us more details?

Regarding Suitcase Fusion, it doesn't support Affinity directly, meaning there's no automatic font activation nor the ability to manually activate a font and have it available ready to use. Currently you have to restart Affinity to make the fonts appear in the Font list. I'm not sure if we can improve things here.

[O. Chevetaigne]

Thanks, ronnyb

 

Yes, I understand that Affinity isn’t concerned with how I use the fonts.

 

I was wondering though if any designers, or the folks at Serif, had any recommendations based on their experience concerning what to look for when purchasing fonts that could be used for commercial use.

 

I’ve been recommending Affinity Designer to all my friends - Maybe someone has found a quality source for fonts as well - (if it is OK to do such recommendations in this forum).

 

Again, trying to keep things as simple as possible.

[eyelight]

Mu apologies about the question regarding Suitcase and Affinity. I forgot to restart after the install. All good now.

[eyelight]

I have purchased Affinity Designer. And as a newborn piece of software it shows promise.

But…

 

I am unable to see any fonts that are available to all other applications!! (Creative Suite, Word, Text Wrangler, Pages (even MYOB!).

I use Suitcase for my font management not the generic apple font management which is just not robust enough for professional use.

 

Do you have any suggestions on how to get fonts to load into AF?

Cheers

Peter

[ronnyb]

I use FontExplorer X Pro, and all my non-system fonts show up fine in AD/AP...

[tinymill]

Just want to put in my two cents here. If fonts are activated via any Font Activation program (like Font Explorer) then if you launch Designer or Photo the fonts are there. However, if you open a file that has say five fonts that are not already activated, the auto-activation features do not work. As a result, we have to then---

1.) Quit photo or designer

2.) Manually find and activate all necessary fonts for the file. 

3.) Relaunch (or now reset fonts). 

 

The fonts are then there. Unfortunately, if you’re managing multiple clients with hundreds of different fonts, this really isn’t a good workflow. 

 

I’m hoping Affinity is working on implementation of auto-font-activation with software like Font Explorer, Suitcase Fusion, and Font Agent Pro. For us, that implementation would be a nail in Adobe’s coffin for sure. . .