Font Conversion Use Cases

Web Designers

Most fonts you receive from clients or purchase from foundries come as desktop TTF or OTF files (50-200 KB per weight). These work in design software but aren't optimized for web delivery. Converting to WOFF2 typically cuts file sizes by 60-70% with no visual quality loss; subsetting can push reductions past 90%.

Format Choice in 2026

Use WOFF2 as your only format. With 97%+ browser support, the legacy WOFF fallback is no longer necessary for most projects. Skip TTF/EOT/SVG entirely unless you're explicitly supporting IE11 or very old Safari.

Web Designer Workflow

@font-face {
  font-family: 'Brand Font';
  src: url('/fonts/brand-font.woff2') format('woff2');
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
  unicode-range: U+0000-00FF, U+0131, U+0152-0153;
}

Common Mistakes

App Developers

Apps embed fonts directly into the binary, so file size matters and licensing differs from web work. iOS prefers TTF or OTF (system-supported); Android uses TTF; React Native and Flutter both work with TTF for cross-platform projects. The practical question is usually whether to use system fonts (free, zero size impact, render consistently) or custom fonts (brand identity at the cost of bundle size).

Format by Platform

Reduce Bundle Size

Subset aggressively. For English-only apps, Latin-only subsets reduce font size 70-90%. Remove unused weights, most apps only need Regular, Medium, and Bold. Variable fonts can replace 6-12 static weights with one file. Avoid bundling complete font families "just in case."

Apple's App Store review occasionally rejects apps with improperly licensed fonts. Document your licenses, store proof of purchase, and be prepared to provide it during review. Same applies to Google Play, though enforcement is rarer.

Game Developers

Game engines treat fonts differently from apps or websites. Unity uses TTF directly through TextMesh Pro, Unreal Engine generates UFonts from TTF/OTF sources, and Godot uses TTF/OTF with its own runtime rasterizer. Most modern engines convert source TTFs to SDF (Signed Distance Field) atlases at build time for crisp scaling at any UI size.

Why SDF Fonts Matter

SDF (Signed Distance Field) fonts encode the distance from each pixel to the nearest glyph edge, allowing the GPU to render crisp text at any scale without quality loss. For games where text resizes with UI scaling or camera distance, SDF eliminates the blurry-when-zoomed problem of standard bitmap rendering. Trade-off: SDF atlases are larger than regular textures and require shader support.

Multilingual Games

Localizing into Japanese, Korean, Chinese, or Arabic explodes glyph counts. Strategies: language-specific font packages loaded on demand, fallback chains for missing glyphs, and Noto fonts (Google's "no-tofu" project) for comprehensive Unicode coverage. Avoid shipping the full CJK glyph set in your base download, gate it behind a localization package.

Ebook Publishers

Ebook embedding is a distinct license category. Desktop, web, and app licenses typically don't cover ebook distribution. When purchasing fonts for ebook use, look specifically for "ebook," "digital publishing," or "document distribution" licenses. Open-source fonts are safe; restrictive commercial fonts often explicitly prohibit ebook embedding because of redistribution concerns.

Format by Platform

Subsetting for Manuscripts

A novel typically needs only Latin Basic plus a handful of special characters: smart quotes (' ' " "), em dash, en dash (–), ellipsis (…), and any accented characters used in proper names. Run your manuscript through a subsetter to extract the exact character set, then build a custom subset. CJK ebooks need careful planning, full CJK fonts run 5-20 MB and balloon ebook size.

For design-critical books (cookbooks, art books, academic texts with diagrams) embedding is essential to preserve design intent. For straight novels, consider that many readers override fonts anyway via reader-side preferences, embedded fonts may be ignored. Test on actual devices: rendering varies between Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and standalone EPUB readers.

WordPress Users

WordPress site owners face a recurring choice: load fonts via Google Fonts CDN (default in most themes) or self-host. Since the 2022 German GDPR ruling on Google Fonts CDN usage, self-hosting has become the recommended approach for both performance and EU compliance. See our Google Fonts licensing guide for the full GDPR context.

Adding Custom Fonts (Classic Themes)

1. Convert your fonts to WOFF2 (use our TTF to WOFF2 tool)
2. Upload to your child theme's /fonts folder via SFTP or File Manager
3. Add @font-face declarations to style.css or Customizer → Additional CSS
4. Reference the font in your theme's typography settings or with custom CSS

Block Themes (theme.json)

Modern WordPress block themes (6.0+) define fonts in theme.json under settings.typography.fontFamilies. Add font files to assets/fonts/, register them with fontFaceentries, and they appear in the block editor's typography options automatically. WordPress 6.5+ ships with a Font Library that handles installation through the admin UI without code.

Plugin Recommendations

For performance: combine self-hosted fonts with caching plugins (WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache), preload critical fonts in your <head>, and use font-display: swap. CDN delivery via Cloudflare or BunnyCDN is the final optimization for global sites.

Shopify Stores

Shopify's default font library covers basic needs but limits brand identity options. Self-hosting custom fonts on Shopify is straightforward: upload through Settings → Files, get the CDN URL, and add @font-face declarations in your theme. Shopify's built-in CDN actually outperforms third-party Google Fonts links for most stores because fonts load from the same origin as the rest of your site.

Adding Custom Fonts

1. Convert fonts to WOFF2 (single format is fine for Shopify's modern browser support)
2. Upload to Settings → Files; copy each WOFF2 URL
3. In theme.liquid (or a dedicated CSS file), add @font-face declarations using the Shopify CDN URLs
4. Apply via theme settings or custom CSS using font-family

{% comment %} In theme.liquid <head> {% endcomment %}
<style>
  @font-face {
    font-family: 'Brand Sans';
    src: url('{{ "brand-sans.woff2" | asset_url }}') format('woff2');
    font-weight: 400;
    font-display: swap;
  }
</style>

Performance & Conversion

E-commerce LCP and FID directly affect conversion rates. Each 100ms of additional font load time correlates with measurable conversion drop. Tactics that compound: WOFF2 only, 2-3 font families maximum, preload the body font, swap font-display so text appears instantly, and use variable fonts where available to replace multiple weight files with one.

Email Designers

Email is the most font-restrictive medium in modern design. Custom web fonts work in roughly 30% of email opens, primarily Apple Mail, iOS Mail, and Outlook for Mac. Gmail, Outlook for Windows, Yahoo Mail, and most other web-based clients ignore them entirely. Design with fallbacks first; treat custom fonts as progressive enhancement.

Email Client Support Matrix

Fallback Stack Strategy

Build a fallback chain that visually approximates your custom font in each tier. For a modern sans-serif: font-family: 'Inter', -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, sans-serif; , custom font for clients that support it, system UI fonts (modern, well-rendered) for everyone else. Avoid Times New Roman fallbacks unless you specifically want a serif look.

Test font rendering with Litmus or Email on Acid before sending campaigns. Pay particular attention to line-height differences, custom and fallback fonts often have different metrics, causing layout shifts between email previews and actual delivery. Don't rely on custom fonts for critical information (CTA copy, pricing, dates).

Print Designers

Print workflows live in OTF and TTF. WOFF2 is irrelevant, design software (InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress) doesn't recognize web font formats. OTF is preferred over TTF for advanced typographic features: ligatures, swashes, small caps, old-style figures, and alternate stylistic sets are typically only available in OpenType CFF fonts (.otf), not TrueType.

Pre-Press Workflow

1. Verify the font supports embedding, check the fsType bits via our license checker. "Print and preview" or "Editable" permits PDF embedding; "Restricted" means you may need foundry permission.
2. Convert at the source if needed, if you have WOFF/WOFF2 from a web project but need print-ready files, get the original TTF/OTF from the foundry. Web licenses typically don't cover print, so you may need a separate desktop license.
3. Embed all fonts in the PDF, InDesign and Acrobat handle this automatically with default settings, but verify with File → Properties → Fonts showing "Embedded" or "Embedded Subset" for every font.
4. Outline if necessary, for fonts that prohibit embedding or for absolute compatibility with the print shop's workflow, convert text to outlines. This eliminates font dependencies entirely. Outline only the final version, outlined text is no longer editable.

Sharing Files with Printers

Two safe options: package the project (InDesign "Package for Print" or Illustrator "Package") which collects fonts into a deliverable folder, only legal if your license permits passing fonts to a printer; or send a print-ready PDF with all fonts embedded as subsets. The PDF route is cleaner because the embedded subsets are typically license-compliant under most foundry EULAs.

Logo Designers

Logos use fonts during design but should never depend on fonts for delivery. Final logos are vectors. Convert all text to outlines before delivering to clients, this eliminates font dependencies entirely, prevents accidental rendering errors when clients open files on systems without the original font, and avoids the licensing question of whether you can pass the font itself to the client.

Format During Design

Use OTF or TTF source fonts in Illustrator, Affinity Designer, or Glyphs. OTF is preferred for full OpenType feature access, alternate glyphs, ligatures, contextual alternates, swashes, all useful when fine-tuning a logotype. Keep editable working files (.ai or .afdesign) with live text on a hidden layer for future revisions.

Final Delivery Format

Never deliver font files alongside a logo unless the license explicitly permits it , passing commercial font files to a client who lacks their own license is unauthorized redistribution. After outlining, the logo no longer needs the font. If the client wants additional brand applications using the same typeface, they purchase their own desktop license. See our font modification rights guide for the full picture on what counts as acceptable modification.

Video Editors

Video editing software (Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve) reads fonts the same way as design apps: through your operating system's font installation. Install TTF or OTF source fonts via Font Book (macOS) or Settings → Fonts (Windows). Motion graphics applications (After Effects, Motion) inherit the same system fonts.

Broadcast & Streaming Licenses

Handling Missing Fonts

When opening a project that references a font you don't have, the editor substitutes a fallback (usually Arial or Helvetica). Three solutions:

• Install the original font, get it from the project owner's license, or purchase your own. Note: just having access to a font file isn't the same as having a license to use it.
• Use font management software, Suitcase Fusion, FontExplorer X, or RightFont let you activate fonts per-project, avoiding clutter in your system font list.
• Replace with available alternatives, substitute with a similar font you have rights to. Document the change so the project owner knows.

Best Fonts for Video

Sans-serif typefaces are most readable on video, Helvetica, Inter, Roboto, and Source Sans all hold up well at typical viewing distances and codec compression levels. Avoid thin and hairline weights for titles and lower-thirds: video codecs (especially H.264 at typical bitrates) can lose thin strokes during compression, causing visible shimmer or breakup. For subtitles, use medium weights with subtle outlines or shadows for legibility against variable backgrounds.

Sharing Projects

When collaborating, document fonts used (name, weight, foundry, license) but don't transfer font files unless your license explicitly allows it. Each collaborator typically needs their own license. For long-term projects with many editors, consider standardizing on system fonts or open-source fonts (Roboto, Inter, Open Sans) that everyone can install freely. See client font licensing for the file-handoff rules that apply to agency video work.