Rant: Idiot employees who convert all text into outlines

[TimToad]

If I had a nickel for every hour spent recreating a sign that some former employee never saved a text editable version of, I'd be retired by now. Unless you are outsourcing the printing you really never have to convert text to outlines.

At some point, every sign company on earth gets calls from customers seeking to edit or change text on one of their signs. Why anyone would convert all the text on the one and only file saved for a job is beyond comprehension to me.

I know when you're just an employee and have no skin in the game about caring how your replacement or the company itself struggles with an issue like this, just give a damn while employed and always save at least one editable version of every file. We could pay people more if we didn't have to go back and regularly do all this time consuming remediation work.

It can't be over hard drive space concerns because I just bought a 5 TERRABYTE external hard drive for $135. I recently upgraded the internal hard drive on one of our workstations to 2 terrabytes for $69.

Well, I feel better now. Hope everyone has a safe and relaxing holiday.

 

[fresh]

we had one employee who did that all the time. had

 

[Solventinkjet]

Not to mention, most RIPs can process any font even if it's not installed on the computer. It's only when you open the file to edit that it wants to verify the fonts are installed.

 

[TimToad]

we had one employee who did that all the time. had

Us too. Unfortunately, he learned it from the former owner. Former.

 

[PRS Bryan]

It is well known whoever worked on the file before you is an idiot.

Unfortunately this means anyone working on your files is convinced you are an idiot.

 

[Andy D]

Actually... I do have issues with fonts in designs that come from our design department,
They are always adding new fonts, usually when a customer is already using an off the wall font.

What we do is when the art is approved they save a new file with the same name except they add
"PRODUCTION" to the front of it. All of the fonts are converted & any images in the design that were sized down
for proofing are replaced with the best resolution image we have available.

But I agree, you never want to convert fonts in the original art, that's stupid.

 

[Andy D]

Also, CorelDraw version 13 or 14 used to have the option to embed the font into the CDR file,
what ever happened to that?

 

[Starter]

It's like a steering wheel in my pants.......AND IT'S DRIVING ME NUTS!

 

[James Burke]

Been there...done that. It's only a problem when you can't find the font for some reason.

I can't remember for sure, but I thought Omega allowed you to roll back to true text in some cases. Doubly unsure if you can do that when you open the file again.


JB

 

[shoresigns]

Actually... I do have issues with fonts in designs that come from our design department,
They are always adding new fonts, usually when a customer is already using an off the wall font.

What we do is when the art is approved they save a new file with the same name except they add
"PRODUCTION" to the front of it. All of the fonts are converted & any images in the design that were sized down
for proofing are replaced with the best resolution image we have available.

But I agree, you never want to convert fonts in the original art, that's stupid.

This is exactly what we do. We don't have fonts synced from design to production so when designs are approved, the designer outlines the fonts and saves it in a new PRODUCTION folder, preserving the original file with editable text.

 

[JJGraphics]

We just duplicate the layers within the file and group them together then convert that group to outlines and lock and hide the originals. That way we never lose the original text nor do we have to keep 2 files.

 

[ExecuPrintGS]

we have an editable and non for every sign we do. Unfortunatly every computer we have has a different version of AI and not everyone has the same fonts. So when we are done we have XYZSign_Final and XYZSign_Final_O for everything. If someone calls and wants business cards based off of the old sign atleast anyone can open it and see it with outlined fonts godforbid they are missing the font. It is tedious and takes up space, but we had to do it....

 

[OldPaint]

the only time i CONVERT TO CURVES for text in corel is when i send a file to another production place. THEY WANT IT THAT WAY...... cause they may not have the fonts........and that FILE is saved as a xxxxxcc.cdr

 

[particleman]

Keeping the original editable design is a good practice, but font rendering can vary between rip engines, operating systems, pdf engines, etc. If you want to be sure all of your fonts look the same always then convert to outlines and then proof/print.

 

[Andy D]

Keeping the original editable design is a good practice, but font rendering can vary between rip engines, operating systems, pdf engines, etc. If you want to be sure all of your fonts look the same always then convert to outlines and then proof/print.

That's true, it's never been an issue for me because I setup and export my prints from the same computer I rip from,
but if I were to try and rip a file from another computer and I was missing some fonts, Onyx would change the font.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

I save my .cdr files as editable and save my production files as .pdf with fonts converted to curves. I still do on very rare occasions accidentally convert fonts to curves on a particular file. For me, it's not such a big dilemma as I have tens of thousands of fonts saved for easy access if I ever need to reinstall something that's no longer installed on my system. I also have Find My Font software which is an absolute lifesaver in sooo many situations. That software pretty much paid for itself the first month we owned it.

 

[TimToad]

Been there...done that. It's only a problem when you can't find the font for some reason.

I can't remember for sure, but I thought Omega allowed you to roll back to true text in some cases. Doubly unsure if you can do that when you open the file again.


JB

If I have to search through all the old files for the editable file that might have gotten saved, then search for the fonts, load the fonts onto my computer and retype an entire sign with tons of copy, instead of just doing a little editing of the existing text, THAT'S A PROBLEM.

Especially, if I was paying someone between $15-20 per hour plus perks to know what any designer or signmaker worth their salt should know.

 

[Gino]

Guess all the money you lost doing this..... makes buying this business a year ago..... not a good business decision.

Really, we all do it and it happens. However, why are you spending so much time converting so many old signs. If they're just changing a word on a repeated order, they'll be paying you anyway. It's called work. Hire some kid to do it and pay them $12 an hour instead of your wages.

Aw shucks..... I just couldn't resist. :Big Laugh​

 

[Baz]

I think it's more an annoyance than a problem.

Doesn't take that long to find a font in a layout that was created on your system.

 

[oksigns]

Having been through GD school, it was taught to us all the time. In real world practices; however, I've learned it's quite the opposite and there is a time and place to expand/outline text- outsourcing the printing.