InDesign Baseline shift

#1

I’m trying to replace an existing font in a long document in InDesign with my own similar custom font. I have two issues with it not matching size/spacing correctly. I’ve successfully created my font in illustrator, spent hours refining the spacing and kerning pairs, and used guidelines to set my ascender, capHeight, xHeight, Baseline, and Descender identically to the font I’m replacing.

Issue #1
The new font does not place the first baseline origin the same distance from the top of the inDesign text box as the original font I’m attempting to replace, shifting all the text down slightly (about 2.5 points) in the text box. I can’t figure out what is causing this. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue when creating a document from scratch, but since I’m trying to create a similar font to replace one in an existing long document, it’s causing a lot of problems.

Issue #2
I want the cap height on my custom font to be the same as the font I’m replacing, which in Illustrator it is. When I load the font and compare it in InDesign next to identical text in the original font, the height is very slightly different. Both are the same point size and leading. This is less of an issue than Issue #1, but I wonder if there’s some way to fine tune that.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

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#2

Hi,

First, well done for creating your own font.

That’s an amazing thing to do - FontSelf has opened up a fantastic new creative tool for us designers.

Second, to address your issues 1, 2 and 3:

Your new FontSelf font will never exactly replace the font in your document. Even another similar commercial font would never match.

Why is this?
Unless you are using a monospaced font you will always experience a change in how your text is rendered within any given space.

Every commercial font has a unique and comprehensive table (meta data) that describes its kerning, baseline, pairing, base glyph height and much more.

FontSelf and your AI font artwork are not at fault at all.

Don’t be downhearted - I think your expectations are at odds with the hidden complexities of font design and that’s OK. We’ve all been there :slight_smile:

Solution?
Take this experience on board and make your ID layout work with your new font and not the other way round. :+1:

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#3
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