Outlining fonts in Illustrator converts text into editable vector shapes, which is crucial for ensuring fonts appear exactly as designed on any computer, especially for printing or sharing, by eliminating font substitution issues, allowing infinite scaling without quality loss, and enabling creative reshaping of letters, though it makes the text uneditable as text. It’s essential for professional printing or sending files to others who might not have the original font.
Be sure to save two copies of your file – one WITH outlined fonts and one WITHOUT, so that future changes can be made if needed (to the file WITHOUT outlined fonts).
You can also provide your fonts to us in a folder when sending us your art file(s) to print. This allows us to download the fonts to ensure the artwork looks the same when printed as it does at your end.
Outlining Fonts in Adobe Illustrator®
- Select Your Text: Use the Selection Tool (V) to select the text object you want to outline.
- Choose a Method:
- Menu: Go to Type > Create Outlines.
- Shortcut: Press Shift + Cmd + O (macOS) or Shift + Ctrl + O (Windows).
- Right-Click: Right-click the selected text and choose Create Outlines.
Your text is now a collection of vector shapes (paths), not editable text.