Bold vs Regular fonts

[martinkjaersgaard]

Hi,

I seem to have a problem with the installation of the different font types when using them in Microsoft Office. The issue could be related to the fact, that both the Bold-type and the Regular-type are named "Space Grotesk" in the files, whereas the Light-type and the Medium-type are named "Space Grotesk Light" and "Space Grotesk Medium" respectively. Thus, it seems like it is not able to distinguish between the fonts, when they have the same name in the file. As can be seen here, when downloading the fonts, it only includes the Bold-type - probably because it is overwriting the Regular one.

[maximilian1001]

After hours of searching for reasons for the weird behaviour of MS Word, I finally found this! Word seems to handle the bold version of the font just right — until you export as a PDF. Then the fonts get mixed up, and all the bold parts get exported in regular font. I edited SpaceGrotesk-Bold.ttf with FontForge so that it has its own unique font family name. Now "Space Grotesk Bold" shows up as a separate font in Word, and the export works just fine. I see that many fonts have exactly this problem, and I'm not sure if this is a fault of the font-creators or of the software mixing up the fonts and styles.

[RandomMaerks]

As far as I know, the same name thing is intentional behaviour.

The Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic fonts are combined into one, named after the family name. There usually isn't a weight name assigned to them. Most many word processing software (namely MS Word) offer the 'Bold' and 'Italic' features, so you can press Ctrl+B to switch to bold type, Ctrl+I to switch to italic type, or both to switch to bold italic type. If there is an italic version, other weights like Light or Black, along with their respective Italic companion, will also be combined. For example, '[FamilyName] Light' and '[FamilyName] Light Italic' are usually merged into '[FamilyName] Light' only, and the Italic can be enabled with Ctrl+I. Of course, not all typefaces do this, but I think this is a common practice so that the user can switch between relative styles a little faster, and that the font menu is less crowded.

However, regarding the issue where only the Bold type is showing instead of the default Regular, it's either the word processing software's fault, a mistake in style naming, or an installation error.