Bold Text

Feb 03, 2015

Hi There,

I am having a problem with text staying bold. It appears to be bold on the screen, but when I preview the slide, the text isn't bold anymore.

Just wondering if anyone knows why it is doing it, and how to stop it!

 

Cheers,

Megan 

14 Replies
Brett Rockwood

Hi Megan,

What font are you using? I have similar issues with some fonts but not others. It seems to me that fonts that only have 4 style, regular, bold, italic, and bold italic work fine. However fonts that have more styles, e.g., regular, medium, bold, italic, medium italic, and bold italic are unpredictable.

Other fonts like Univers, Frutiger, Helevetic Neue don't use the standard regular, bold, italic, etc. convention but have numbers denoting their weight and style. For example Univers 47 Light Condensed, Univers 55 Roman, Univers 57 Condensed, Univers 65 Bold, Univers 67 Bold Condensed, Univers 75 Black. I find SL gets very confused with these if you apply styles to them like bold or italic. (In a program like InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop all of the Univers fonts appear under a main font menu with all the numbered stylings selectable from a sub-font menu.)

Here is an example: If I take Univers 57 Condensed and apply bold styling to it it looks fine onscreen but when previewed or published the bold is not applied. However, if I take Univers 47 Light Condensed and apply bold styling to it it published and previews with what looks like an artificial, computer generated bolding rather than swapping out the actual light version (47) for the proper bold version (67).

I get the same issue with one of the Hoefler Foundry fonts, Chronicle Text G1. It comes is three weights, Roman, Semi-bold, and Bold. If you apply bold from the SL font menu to Chronicle Text G1 it appears bold on screen but doesn't preview or publish as bold. To get the bolded version you have to select Semi-bold or Bold from the font menu. (Note that these are not some free downloaded fonts made but someone in their bedroom; they are from topline font houses and cost a considerable amount of money to purchase/license.)

As big of an improvement as SL2's text handling capabilities is to SL1 (and the improvement is huge) I still find an awful lot of quirks that you just have to work around.

 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Megan,

As Anun shared, if you're able to share a copy of the .story file with us - we're happy to take a look and see how it behaves, and depending on the font your using we may also need to font file. Also depending on the font, and different weights as Brett mentioned - Storyline may not handle them as well as InDesign or Photoshop does or at all - if the variations work in Word/Powerpoint than it should work in Storyline. 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Megan, 

Thanks for sharing your project file. I took a look at it in preview and publish - and I saw the text stay bolded. Some of the spacing is likely a bit off based on how you set up things such as Story size, player, etc. but you can see my published output here - and that very first slide with the "Topic aim:" shows the bolded and unbolded text as expected. 

When you're testing the published output are you viewing within the local published output or placing in the intended environment as described here. 

Brett Rockwood

Adobe Garamond Pro displays correctly for me in design view but applying bold does not preview or publish as bold. There is a separate Adobe Garamond Pro Bold that displays the proper bold version. A keen eye will notice that when you apply bold to the regular version in design view it isn't actually using the bold version but some sort of computer-generated approximation of the actual bold design. Have a look at my screen shots, one is in design mode where the computer-generated (though technically incorrect) bolding looks like it is correct. The second shot shows the preview where this generated bolding is ignored and just the basic roman version appears (which is what I think was what Megan was originally describing in her question.)

Megan Colbert

Hi Everyone,

There seems to be some confusion around the ­­­font that I am using.

Please find attached two images:

1. ‘Editing’ this is what the slide looks like when editing. See how in the text alternative box in the bottom left corner “Hotel Manager: Dana” is bold.

2. ‘Preview’ this is what the slide looks like when I preview it. See how “Hotel Manager: Dana” is unbold.

This is my dilemma.

 

Cheers,
Megan

Robert Mann

Megan,

I have experienced the same thing in my projects. In my case, I am using the (OpenType) Avenir LT Std family of fonts. It ranges in thickness from...

Avenir LT Std 35 Light 
Avenir LT Std 45 Book (Semi-Light)
Avenir LT Std 55 Roman 
Avenir LT Std 65 Medium 

Even though these font variants were produced by the same author, my choice of either 35 Light or 45 Book would yield the same negative results you reported. Choosing 55 Roman or 65 Medium would provide the more positive results, where the published/previewed recognized the bold style.

In my testing, I thought this was possibly attributed to the font type (OpenType vs TrueType); however, further tests of other OpenType fonts provided more positive results.

Digging into the properties of the 2 fonts, 35 Light, 45 Book... their fonts styles are explicitly light or semi-light - meaning that when it is time to preview or publish, Storyline does not have a reference within the chosen font to actually change the text as bold.

In this case, I am not sure what is at fault. Is it Storyline for falsely rending bold text  while editing, or is it the limitation of the font itself.

As to your chosen font Adobe Garamond Pro, I have tested your project and I have a more positive outcome. In my "font style" properties it lists bold and semi-bold. This suggests that your version of Adobe Garamond Pro may not have those attributes. 

 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Megan,

I'm glad you're able to utilize the "Adobe Garamond Pro Bold" as a replacement to allow you to have the bold settings you need. Since it doesn't seem that I have the correct version of this font - I'm unable to replicate the issue, but I do know that some font variants (light, bold, i.e. differences in weights, etc.) don't work in Storyline as they would in a tool such as Photoshop or InDesign.  I found a similiar issue early on in Storyline 1 in terms of how those fonts rendered and it was also in connection to a Windows update as described here.

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.