There are two kinds of technical problems related to naming a font and its family members:
- Font names with non-alphabetic characters
- Inconsistent style names of the various fonts within a family
Font names: Latin letters only, please. Numerals are OK but not as the first character.
Style naming: Check and double-check in various applications. Sometimes users experience the problem where only some of the weights/style show up in the app’s font menu. The reason behind this is inconsistent style naming. Font editors have various fields where style names go, and sometimes the same name ends up in the same field in two different fonts — which disables simultaneous activation.
Menu order: Check and double-check in various applications. In application font menus, do fonts within an individual family appear out of order, or as separate families? Not good! They should appear in a logical order (usually from light to bold) and be united under one family entry.
Style linking: Does it work? If you choose to style-link the family members, please test thoroughly if the result works as intended. For example, in Microsoft Word, if you have a regular weight of a serif typeface and it is not properly style-linked to your true italic weight, the user may see unexpected results. When the user selects the “I” button to italicize the text, it will artificially slant the letters of the regular instead of replacing the regular with your beautifully designed and optimized italic.
Helpful Resources
- Glyphs App - Naming
- Glyphs App - Getting Your Glyph Names Right
- Glyphs App Forum - Font name limitations
- FontLab VI - Font Naming
- FDBP - Font Naming
- We also recommend the tool TransType 4 (you can get a free 7-day trial) which will show any style linking errors in your font family. Simply drag and drop font files and it will show graphically how the fonts are linked together. Red boxes indicate errors where fonts may be linked improperly.