Fonts in InDesign

What are fonts?

In typography, a font is a complete set of characters—letters, numbers, and symbols—that share a common weight, width, and style. For example, 10-pt Adobe Garamond Bold is a font.

A typeface (also called a type family or font family) is a collection of fonts that share an overall appearance and are designed to work together, such as Adobe Garamond. Within a font family, each font represents a different type style—a variant, such as regular, bold, semibold, italic, or bold italic. The Roman or Plain member (the name varies by family) typically serves as the base font.

This structure allows you to maintain typographic consistency while applying emphasis and hierarchy throughout your document.

Supported font formats

InDesign supports several font technologies, each indicated by an icon in the font menus throughout the application:

• OpenType: Cross-platform fonts that use a single file for both Windows and macOS, eliminating font substitution issues when moving files between platforms
• OpenType SVG: Fonts that support multiple colors and gradients within individual glyphs, commonly used for emoji and decorative elements
• Variable fonts: OpenType fonts with adjustable attributes like weight, width, and optical size controlled through slider interfaces
• TrueType: Scalable fonts that work on both platforms but use separate files for each
• Adobe Fonts: Cloud-based fonts accessible through your Creative Cloud subscription
• Multiple Master: Legacy Adobe technology for interpolating font variations (limited support)
• Composite: Fonts that combine characters from multiple font files, typically for Asian language typesetting

You can view font samples in the font family and font style menus in the Character panel.

Font installation and availability

InDesign accesses fonts from two locations:

System-level fonts: Installed through your operating system or font management software and become available to all applications. Installation procedures vary by system. Consult your OS documentation or font manager.

Application-level fonts: Available in the Fonts folder inside your InDesign application folder. Fonts placed here are available only in InDesign and not in other applications. This approach is useful for project-specific fonts or when you lack system-level installation permissions.

If multiple fonts share the same family name but have different PostScript names, InDesign lists them with abbreviated font technology indicators in parentheses: (TT) for TrueType, (T1) for Type 1, and (OTF) for OpenType. If two fonts have identical PostScript names, and one includes "dfont" in its name, InDesign uses the other font.