OH - MY - GOD!

I really, really feel sorry for the guy!!!

"A High-Quality Crafting Event"!

That's one of the worst cases I've ever seen. Oh dear.

The advertising has been "provided by" a great big blank space. Which is probably for the best.

Wow, the Dunkin' Donuts over to the right aren't doing much better.
America runs on Sprinkled Letters :-\

@nina - thanks for pointing it out. That one's broken, too!! I can't believe it. What paper is this from??

I'm not sure it's the graphic designer's fault. The advertisement was submitted, but for some reason the newspaper didn't have the correct fonts - only demo versions with missing letters. Or there was some kind of corruption of files or data transmissions.

My guess is the Farmingdale Community Advertiser. (Ad says "HDHS Music Department"; Google says they're here, so their local paper is likely to be this...?)

Suspect the file corruption scenario seems more likely than the demo fonts one...

Ouch!

Don't most newspapers request that ads be submitted as PDFs these days, to avoid these kinds of problems?

Don't most newspapers request that ads be submitted as PDFs these days, to avoid these kinds of problems?

Yes, but that's no guarantee that they will always work, particularly when fonts embedded in the PDF are also installed on the newspaper's local system.

> Yes, but that's no guarantee that they will always work,
> particularly when fonts embedded in the PDF are also
> installed on the newspaper's local system.

Don't think I've ever run into that problem, but what's the best way to prevent it? Should all fonts be converted to paths prior to making a PDF?

There was a time when I was submitting print ads to various publications. Some very small ma and pa and some rather large (like one of Meredith's holdings). And I was always amazed at how poorly trained some of those prepress groups were in those organizations.

That said, there certainly are a lot of bad designers submitting files as well. One 'ad spec' that made me laugh was a small newspaper that had to explicitly state "ads may not be submitted as Microsoft Excel files". I felt really bad for that prepress guy.

Don't think I've ever run into that problem, but what's the best way to prevent it? Should all fonts be converted to paths prior to making a PDF?

Converting to paths prevents train wrecks, yes...

I've seen a similar problem when viewing a PDF in an older version of Adobe Reader that was generated by CS4. I don't remember exactly how we prevented it from happening though :( I think using a different PDF/X standard fixed it, not sure which one.

I intentionally cropped out the newspaper name out of pity for the designer. I figure the wrath of the clients and bosses, plus mockery of millions of newspaper subscribers, is punishment enough. It's from a HUGE New England newspaper (I'm visiting relatives.)

Anyway, this is definitely the designer's fault, although I doubt it was done by a designer. My guess is that these ads were both done by the newspaper's advertising sales department and tossed into the layout at the last minute.

I used to work at a fairly large newspaper, and there's no way this would've gotten past layout. It was a constant battle between the sales team and the graphic designers (layout); sales would keep trying to sell spaces that layout had used filler ads for. Layout would put a page to bed, go home for the day, then the sales team would persuade the printer to swap out a filler ad for a paid ad.

I clipped it out to use as a cautionary tale. THIS is one of the many reasons it's worth it to pay a professional designer!

Jens -- to prevent it, outline the fonts! There is no reason not to outline fonts for an ad, especially when submitting it to newspapers - they're notoriously old school.

> Converting to paths [before making PDF] prevents train wrecks, yes...

Sounds like a good idea when it comes to ads, but how about in other situations? Should converting type to paths be a routine step before making any PDF, or are there circumstances where you wouldn't want to do that?

>are there circumstances where you wouldn't want to do that?

If you want your pdf to be indexable (search engines) or accessible (screen readers) you'll need to keep the text as text.

Perhaps the ".notdef" glyph should be rendered in the style of the font, so this sort of thing at least looks pleasant to the eye - in a kind of vintage Raygun manner - even if the text is illegible.

>are there circumstances where you wouldn't want to do that?

If you expect someone might need to correct spelling in the PDF.

If you have a novel. Outlining fonts adds size. Not so bad for an add, but for 250,000 words?

"ads may not be submitted as Microsoft Excel files" ... LOL.

I don't have an awful lot of external/paid ads in our (mostly mono) journals (internal ones are peppered with Pantone greys and unflattened transparencies etc), but those I do get tend to include universities booking a landscape half-page to advertise a teaching post, then supplying a portrait full page PDF of, say, Verdana, output from Word, complete with blue underlined web addresses and double-word-spaced sentence breaks. Meh.

"ads may not be submitted as Microsoft Excel files"

Yikes. And I thought the PowerPoint ads I get sent sometimes were the worst.

If you have a novel. Outlining fonts adds size. Not so bad for an add, but for 250,000 words?

Outlining makes sense with smaller files AND with tighter deadlines. Typically, you do not see a proof of a newspaper ad because of tight deadlines. With (monthly) magazine publishers and commercial print shops, you typically DO see proofs.

And, during my most recent stint in a print shop, we routinely got business cards order designed in PowerPoint...

Isn't this just some sort of joke?

> we routinely got business cards order designed in PowerPoint...

Yikes! And was all the info in bullet points? ;)

Hilarious!

gold!

Apologies if this has already been said:

"I'm not sure it's the graphic designer's fault. The advertisement was submitted, but for some reason the newspaper didn't have the correct fonts - only demo versions with missing letters. Or there was some kind of corruption of files or data transmissions."

The very reason we outline fonts :p

The fact that this happened to TWO ads implies that the RIP at the newspaper is at fault. In my experience it's almost certainly a case of conflicting FontID's.

Don’t blame the designer for this tech error, blame him/her for the terrible design…

Given the Dunkin Donuts ad looks just as bad (scroll to the right) this seems like a problem with the paper's production, not the designer's file.

Seen this personally before and when I was setting a publication for a Print house.

In our case the problem was older RIP software and the PDFx settings, nothing to do with the designer, as would seem the case from the Dunkin donuts ads. I would have though prepress would have caught it though?

I can’t wait until designers start swapping screwy pirate web fonts and I see .notdef in the text of web sites.

nick said raygun!

-bowerbird

Yeah, it's obviously a David Carson homage.

Seriously, in that sense it's brilliant. This ad went from being the typical obscure ad to one that truly stands out and gets noticed.

> Anyway, this is definitely the designer's fault

No, probably not.

> The fact that this happened to TWO ads implies that the RIP
> at the newspaper is at fault. In my experience it's almost
> certainly a case of conflicting FontID's.

Probably not FIDs, as that would imply a caching problem, which this isn't.

No, there are two possible causes:

1. Font not embedded, picks up a subsetted font from some other ad. The fact that at least four different fonts in two adverts are affected makes this rather unlikely.

2. RIP bug – and there are a number of faults that can cause this kind of thing. I'm not going to spell out how I know this. ;-)

I suspect the RIP, but always embed your fonts guys, and if you're altruistic, don't subset them!

Sorry, but, I repeat -- it's totally the designer's fault. One of the first things I learned about submitting artwork was to outline your fonts. Why? Because if you don't, a million things can go wrong at a printer or publisher.

Of course you can't outline fonts for a novel, but you ALWAYS do for ads. The only reason not to is inexperience. This poor designer is experienced now!