March 11, 2018
Fonts and Adobe Captivate
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March 11, 2018
Fonts and Adobe Captivate
I've been an eLearning designer and developer since 2005. In 2015 I started my own eLearning design company. I began creating Adobe Captivate video tutorials to help promote my business through my YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/captivateteacher. My intention with my YouTube videos was to attract attention from organizations looking for a skilled Captivate developer. This strategy proved successful as I've worked with clients worldwide, helping them build highly engaging eLearning solutions. In addition, my YouTube channel presented another benefit of attracting aspiring Captivate developers to seek me out as a teacher. I now offer online and onsite training on Adobe Captivate, teaching users the skills to build engaging and interactive learning.
Legend 639 posts
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There have been some questions in the comments of my videos that suggest that some people may not understand Typekit fonts in Adobe Captivate. This article will try to explain it.

There are three different types of fonts on a Windows or Mac computer running Adobe Captivate 2017. These are system fonts, web-safe fonts, and potentially Typekit fonts. The importance of font selection only really applies to responsive designed elearning projects, since non-responsive projects convert your text into pictures, and whichever font you choose will render correctly on any device.

System fonts are the fonts that are installed on your computer. It’s important to know that when you use a unique and exciting font found on your computer, that what you see isn’t what someone else would. For example, if I created a Microsoft Word document that used the BlackHawk font and I sent that Word document to someone who doesn’t have that font installed, they will see an entirely different set of characters than what I intended (it will probably display as Times New Roman).

Web-safe fonts are a subset of system fonts that have such a high percentage of use that they can be considered universal. It’s smart to use web-safe fonts when you design for the web since you don’t know what devices will be used to view your content, and usually an excellent choice for when you develop responsive design eLearning. An example would be the Trebuchet font. Because there are only a handful of web-based fonts, using them may your eLearning seem ordinary.

But what do you do if you want to design a responsive project using something other than the half dozen web-safe fonts available? That’s where web-based fonts like Typekit come into play.

Typekit works like this. If you have an Adobe ID, you will have access to a small selection of these web-based fonts. Once you find a font on Typekit.com that you would like to use in your Captivate project, you would sync that font to your account. Behind the scenes, a system version of that font is downloaded and installed on your computer so when you return to your Captivate project you can select and use that font. Later when you publish that project, you would supply Captivate with the root domain of where your project will reside. For example, if you were an employee at Adobe and were going to make your eLearning project available on Adobe’s website, you would include *.adobe.com as a domain when you publish. When users would run this course, the published project would check Typekit.com and make sure this was authorised to use the font and display the correct font in the eLearning project even if the user doesn’t have that font installed. Here is an overview on how Typekit works in Captivate 2017 Release.

Typekit is only one example of web-based fonts. I’ve also used fonts that can be found on Google fonts. The advantage of Google fonts is that there are no fees or limitations required to use them. Here is a video that explains how you can use Google fonts in your Captivate eLearning project.

8 Comments
2021-07-07 01:11:45
2021-07-07 01:11:45

i keep trying to update a course i made that used to have arial black.  When i try to open it, it says that my pc doesn’t have that font, but it does!  Even when i try to change it to gotham font (whole course is gotham) it changes all of the text to tahoma, even though i select gotham.

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Tina5C65
's comment
2021-07-07 11:54:24
2021-07-07 11:54:24
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Tina5C65
's comment

I would reach out to Adobe for technical support. Email them at captivatehelp@adobe.com

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(1)
2019-03-20 04:51:01
2019-03-20 04:51:01

Hi Paul,

I want to use Helvetica Neue in a project I’m doing. In Captivate (2019) I can only see the condensed version even though I know I have the standard one installed on my mac and can see it in Font Book. I exported the font and put it in Captivate>jvm>jre>lib>fonts and then restarted Captivate and I still can’t see it. Can you advise me?

Thanks!

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Emily Wood
's comment
2019-03-21 20:01:14
2019-03-21 20:01:14
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Emily Wood
's comment

While you can use it for non-responsive projects, there is no guarantee that it will work with responsive design, even though it’s listed as a web safe font. What happens is that your course will look for Helvetica Neue and attempt to render your project with that font. If it cannot find Helvetica Neue it will choose another font. The best option is to use a font from Adobe Fonts (formerly Typekit) and publish it with the correct font for all devices. You could try Neue Haas Grotesk which is very similar to Helvetica Neue.

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Paul Wilson
's comment
2019-03-24 03:32:50
2019-03-24 03:32:50
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Paul Wilson
's comment

Thank you!

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2018-05-15 04:16:01
2018-05-15 04:16:01

Thanks Paul. Google fonts are standard these days, so this is an essential workflow. As our Adobe Edu licensing doesn’t include TypeKit and being able to host your own corporate branded font wiht your site is also essential (& a basic part of web production), do you have a non-complicated way to include a font you own, ie if you provide the correct versions for browser compatibility ie svg, eot and woff? I can’t see myself using Captivate until using fonts you own, not renting through Typekit, is simple. Ta

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2018-03-12 09:00:44
2018-03-12 09:00:44

FYI:
I noticed this:
When I didn’t open my Creative Cloud app *before* I open Captivate, and when I then open a CPTX that uses a TypeKit font (e.g. Open Sans), all such text falls back on the font Trebuchet…

Solution/Tip: Always make sure the Creative Cloud app is started (and logged in) *before* opening Captivate projects that use TypeKit fonts. (Set the Creative Cloud app to auto-start.)

(Windows 7 – CP 2017)

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wimd93656457
's comment
2018-07-04 23:14:21
2018-07-04 23:14:21
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wimd93656457
's comment

My thanks to you and Paul for the help!

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