Adobe Illustrator has many already installed fonts to choose from, but you may be looking for something more your style or something that matches your design more.
Although there are many fonts available in Adobe Illustrator, many of them are not particularly artistic. For me, at least, finding new fonts to utilize in my artwork is a frequent necessity.
Adding new typefaces won’t be challenging because Illustrator is a straightforward program. These are the steps you must follow in order to add a new font to Adobe Illustrator.
My name is Aly, I have been using Adobe Illustrator for many years as a graphic designer and in this tutorial, I will be showing you how to add new fonts to Illustrator.
Contents
How to Import New Fonts in Illustrator
An important note before getting into the step:
A typeface must meet a number of compatibility requirements before being added to Illustrator. The program won’t accept fonts that are missing some kind of character or style, or that are otherwise incomplete.
Therefore, you are unable to add a collection if it lacks italic, bold, uppercase, and lowercase letters.
You need to find reliable sites that you can download the fonts of your choosing from. Personally, I have found that Adobe Fonts and Dafont are the safest and most reliable.
Now, follow the steps below to learn how you can import new fonts into Adobe Illustrator.
Method 1: Add Adobe Fonts to Illustrator
Step 1: First, select a typeface using Adobe Fonts. You can search for fonts using various tags, categories, and characteristics by going to All Fonts.
Step 2: Once you have decided on a font, go ahead and click View Family underneath the font.
You may notice some fonts have various versions so you will need to decide which one you want to use. From the same font family, you can activate different font styles (bold, thin, medium, etc.).
Step 3: You will see to the right of the fonts there is an option to Activate Font click that button and Adobe will ask you to log in to your account. After you log in a window will appear that tells you that the font is now active.
Step 4: Go back to Adobe Illustrator, and you can now find the font you have activated in your Character panel where fonts are stored.
Method 2: Download Fonts from Other Sites
If you won’t be using Adobe Fonts and want to download a font from a different site, follow these steps.
Step 1: Find your preferred site to download fonts off of. As I mentioned I prefer Dafont because of its reliability. You can also find sites with fonts that you can purchase if that’s more your style. One of my favorites is Creative Market.
Step 2: For my example today, I will be using Dafont. Most sites are similar in the process you need to download but usually, they will tell you how if you are unsure.
When using any site to download fonts other than Adobe Fonts, you should always check to make sure the font is usable for the intended use.
In the image below you can see how the font I want to download is only for “Personal Use” so I cannot use this font for any sort of profit or commercial use.
To download the font, simply click the big Download button to the right of the font.
Step 3: After clicking download, your downloads folder should receive a zip file automatically you will want to open that zip file. You should see a font format file after doing a double click to unzip the file (either .otf or .ttf). It is a.ttf in this instance.
Step 4: Double-click the .ttf file and click Install Font.
Step 5: You should be able to use it now. Add or select any text in Adobe Illustrator and choose the font from the Character panel to see what it looks like.
Final Thoughts
Utilizing new fonts is a fun way to express your creativity in Illustrator. I know in all the years I’ve used Adobe programs I have downloaded hundreds of new fonts to use.
Just make sure you are reading carefully if using fonts not provided by Adobe themselves. You could run into the issue of not using the font properly and that can cause trouble, so just read the font’s description before anything. Remember to unzip the downloaded file or else your font will not be downloaded yet.
Any questions about adding new fonts in Adobe Illustrator? Leave a comment and let me know.
