Adobe ends support for Type 1 fonts this January 2023. Indeed, the end of support is coming up quick.

A PostScript Type 1 font is a font file type created by Adobe in 1984 that became wildly popular because it rendered the same on both printers and computer screens. While that makes Type 1 fonts super old and their recent purchase unlikely, they’re still in your files. Pretty much guaranteed.

Some examples of PostScript Type 1 fonts are Courier, Helvetica, Times New Roman…yup, those ones.

Yes, “PostScript fonts” And “Type 1 fonts” are the same thing:  Nerd out about it here.

Here is an outline of what happens to your files and documents when support for PostScript ends:

• Adobe applications will no longer recognize PostScript Fonts.
• That means you can’t create content using Type 1 fonts after January 2023.
• More importantly, existing Adobe files utilizing Type 1 fonts created before January 2023 will NOT be editable without replacing the font.
  
  When you try, you’ll receive the dreaded “missing font” error, annoying “link” or “re-link” alert, agitating warning triangles, or even blue banners of doom—depending on what program you’re using. Ugh.
• Sure, embedded Type 1 data can be placed for display or printing…but editing will set off alarms that require immediate attention (i.e. interrupt your workflow big time).
• PDFs with embedded Type 1 fonts will display as expected. Non-embedded fonts will be replaced in two ways: (a.) by a font that ships with Acrobat or is your operating system’s default; or (b.) by Acrobat’s font substitution table and the available fonts on your system.
  
  However, when a viewer other than Acrobat is used in a web browser, “Adobe can’t control what will happen. ”

The likelihood your font libraries contain Type 1 fonts is very high. When reviewing our customer font database of over 7 million fonts, we discovered that 25% are PostScript Type 1. And considering the average creative’s font library contains about 4500 fonts…that means you potentially have 1,125 PostScript Type 1 fonts you need to decide how to handle.