What’s to Become of My Typeface Library?

February 14, 2021

So I just found out that Type 1 fonts will no longer be supported by Adobe as of January, 2023. That’s less than two years before a large part of my rather extensive collection of fonts won’t be usable in my InDesign work.

Type 1 fonts was the font format in use for Postscript printing when I got my first Macintosh and laser printer, back in 1989. Other font types have come out since then—notably TrueType, Apple’s attempt at competing and overtaking Postscript. But Type 1, amazingly, has survived and its fonts continue to work perfectly for those who still use fonts of that type.

So what does this mean, “no longer supported”?

Best as I can tell, new versions of Adobe software—InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop—will no longer allow their use. That’s a bit of a kick in the ass to those of us who invested in them. Of course, by now the alternatives far outnumber Type 1. There’s the already mentioned TrueType, though they’re fairly long in the tooth now, so one has to wonder at what point support for TrueTyoe fonts will end.

More importantly, however, what can be done for those of us who do have a large number of Type 1 fonts that they continue to use? Well, perhaps easiest—at least for Adobe Type 1 fonts–if one subscribes to Adobe Creative Cloud is to see whether there are Open Type (OTF) versions of those Type 1 fonts available within Adobe CC.

Another possibility is to convert Type 1 fornts to OTF. I don’t know the how-to yet, but I’ve found the names of tools that facilitate such conversion. I don’t know what works with what versions of what OS. But some of the possible tools to investigate are Font Forge, TransType, or Adobe’s own Font Development Kit. When I’m not quite so busy I’ll see about investigating and report back on this.

In the meantime, however, I’m motivated to shy away from my knee jerk font choices—the Type 1 choice, anyway—and find some new favorites from among the Open Type choices I already own, as well as those offered as part of Adobe CC.

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