Topic moved to Support. Please don’t post support topics in the Tutorials forum.
Hey everyone,
I’m super new to font creation and just getting started with FontCreator, so apologies in advance if I’m missing something obvious!
I’m currently trying to build a custom font for our company, starting with Source Sans 3 and adding a few product logos as colored glyphs (each using 2–3 colors). So far, everything looks great in Word – the glyphs show up in full color just like I designed them.
But when I export the document to PDF from Word, the glyphs turn completely black. Same thing happens when I print the document directly from Word – no colors, just black shapes. Also, when I use the font in Adobe apps like InDesign, the colored glyphs don’t show properly either – again, just black.
Here’s what I’ve tried:
- Created the glyphs from .svg files instead of .ai (I read that Adobe supports OpenType SVG better).
- Started with the OpenType COLR format for the colored glyphs.
- Tried switching to Color SVG in FontCreator, but the editor window stayed blank and I wasn’t sure how to actually create colored SVG glyphs in there.
- Used the “Convert COLR to SVG” option, and both versions (COLR and SVG) appeared in the overview.
- Selected “SVG with color palettes” in the export settings.
Unfortunately, none of that worked – once I export or print, the colors are gone.
Has anyone run into this before or knows what I might be doing wrong? What’s the right way to make sure colored glyphs show up properly in PDFs and in Adobe apps?
Thanks so much in advance for any tips!
Best regards,
Julia
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I wish you had attached some images of the print settings. I don’t know if they’re the same or not.
In my work at a printing press, I have to change the color settings in the print options.
Note: OTF is better at supporting advanced print features than TTF.
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Thank you very much for your reply! I’m happy to share a screenshot of the color settings from the print dialog. However, the only options I have there are “Auto [Color/B&W]”, “Color”, or “Black and White”.
Unfortunately, changing this doesn’t seem to solve the issue we’re having: the color is already lost in the PDF, and in InDesign the colored glyphs don’t show up at all. We use InDesign primarily to create our documents, so that’s a major limitation. Maybe you—or someone else here—has an idea or suggestion on what could be causing this?
Just to add: I’ve also tried exporting the font as OTF. With TTF, the colored glyphs didn’t work at all.
Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions!
Hello, forget about InDesign for a moment.
Your first priority should be to identify the source of the problem.
From FontCreator, print the font file to a PDF using Microsoft Print to PDF.
Like the image below of a professional font you purchased online.
If you don’t get the same result, you have an error in the font design.
If you get the same result, try something else.
From InDesign, choose Export to PDF instead of Print.
The idea is that you have:
- Design the font in FontCreator
- Design in InDesign
- Print and export.
Find out where the error occurred first and take screenshots to help you.
