That's Adobe Sans, the horrendous substitute font which ATM uses whenever the original fonts are not available on the user's computer system. This allows the user to read and print documents which feature those missing fonts. It's a chameleon-like typeface that uses Multiple Matser technology to match the widths of the missing font in order to take up exactly the same amount of space. It finds those widths in the "ATM font database", a file in your System folder that includes the widths tables of almost every single typeface in the Adobe Type Library. So in fact this could be any typeface.

That would be "Multiple Master" technology. Sorry about the spelling mistake, but I got so worked up by this that I almost tripped over myself writing this post. And Anonymous, don't get me wrong, the following rant is not aimed at you. Don't get caught in the crossfire.

I mean, everywhere I look I keep bumping into Adobe Sans or Adobe Serif: on menus, in magazines and newsletters, on wrappers, on huge friggin' billboards... even on my yoghurt pot at breakfast and on the jars of my favourite brand of rice sauce. Don't all these designers, art directors or whoever they might be have eyes and see that the typefaces they so carefully specified were missing when they output the files and came out all wrong? I kid you not, within the space of a couple of months we received two logos with Adobe Sans converted to outlines. Which is doubly ironic because converting your fonts to outlines is exactly what you do when you want to avoid having your typeface being replaced by ATM! Aaargh, this is driving me NUTS! (wheeze wheeze pant pant)

Okay, okay...

I'm calm now.

This was my little Doctor Jeckyll and Mister Hyde episode.

It won't happen again.

Excuse me for shouting.

I really had to get this off my chest.


P.S. My colleagues often tell me they're happy they're not me, because I keep noticing these kind of things and sometimes get all worked up over them.

> even on my yoghurt pot at breakfast

Aha - there's your problem.
Try having camomille tea instead.

hhp

Okay, now's the time for the truth: is