10 replies to this topic

[frax]

Hi,

I just had a case where the client realized that he forgot to tell me that there was an intricate style guide that the project was supposed to follow (colors, typography etc).

Back to work to revise things (yes, we get compensated for this as well) - I am supposed to use a custom font and it has not been prepared in any italic nor oblique variants.

In the Illy document I select the whole label layer and change the font to the new one -- and here comes the odd thing -- some of the labels that were previously set as Helvetica / Italic, show up in the new font italicized! What is even more strange, I can't seem to change that to non-italic, and I can't see any reference to this as italic.

I know that some software (I think MS word does) can "fake" italic style, when there is none with the font, but what is going on here? I was looking into the character styles that I had set up for this project, but I can't find any references to this thing there either...



(note - I posted this in the Illustrator forum as well, but I haven't gotten any responses there...)

[Martin Gamache]

I'm not sure what is going on with illustrator and maybe you know how to work around it already but but here is how I would correct..

Go back to the fonts are they were before the change. Setup different styles of fonts ( italics etc...) as different color text. Change all text back to one basic font. Remove all style formatting. Now change to the client font and use the colr text to select labels that need to be stylized. This way hopefully you can get around this.

I have had CS2 do weird things with labels. Sometimes I have multiple labels with exactly the same style yet Illufrustrator insists that they are different somehow and does not let me modify their appearance all at once. Usually a cut and paste into and from a new document gets around that problem but it is annoying.


p.s. beware this is the beast post  smiley_4.gif   5.2K   112 downloads

[frax]

It is not really a problem, so I don't really need any workaround -- I thought it was cool that it italicizied the text, and it looks decently ok. It is more a how the heck did I do this? thing, in case I would need to remove that style or redo it later...

[benbakelaar]

I just have a quick question, if fonts are vectors, then why would any font library need to have a separate italics entry? A simple skew function would do it, right?

[Martin Gamache]

I just have a quick question, if fonts are vectors, then why would any font library need to have a separate italics entry? A simple skew function would do it, right?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No. A good font family will have seperate characters for the italics that are specially designed. Same for all weights and styles.

[DaveB]

I just have a quick question, if fonts are vectors, then why would any font library need to have a separate italics entry? A simple skew function would do it, right?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

For many fonts italics are not just a matter of skewing the non-italic characters. The italic "version" of the font family may have flourishes and other differences. It goes back to calligraphy and hand-lettering.

For example, compare the regular and italic styles of P22 Garamont


(looks like Martin beat me to it)

[Matthew Hampton]

I am finding this discussion rather intriguing given its mystery.

I know that Photoshop (v.6 to CS2) has a "Faux Italics" (and a "Faux Bold") as part of the Character Palette. To show the character palette, click the button on the type tool options bar to show it. If you click the (options) arrow in the upper right hand corner of the palette menu, you'll find Faux Bold and Faux Italics.

I wonder if that is de facto in AI?

[Martin Gamache]

Sounds like a good question for the Adobe folks at PCD

[frax]

i seem to have been able to create faux italics, but I have no idea how, and there are no options visible (that I can find) for that...

[Unit Seven]

i seem to have been able to create faux italics, but I have no idea how, and there are no options visible (that I can find) for that...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I've done this same thing recently. No idea how and no idea how to replicate it. I also can't get rid of them even if I change to another font?strange.

Edit: ok mine was a pdf opened and edited. Checked orig. pdf and was created by freehand so poss. faux-italics applied in freehand and somehow these carried over to to Illy through the pdf. Guess some postscript setting on the text object that Illy recognises but doesn't have any way of changing?

Was you text originally set in Illustrator?

[frax]

I think I am a bit closer to the root of the whole thing, the documents I have been working were originally prepared in an older version of freehand back in the olden days (Mac os 9 etc), and probably had some other font originally. I think the faux-italics has happened in a migration stage, either freehand-to-freehand (versions), freehand-to-illy, or between computers (where font have been substituted)...