Why you may not see all the parts on premium fonts (and how to find them)

I freely admit it — I’m a font junkie! I’m trying to do better, but on my last computer I had over 1200 fonts. There are just SO many fun ones!!! I was getting better, then font designers started having the ability to add multiple glyphs or variations. Now I’m back to my addiction. There’s just one problem — sometimes, even with premium fonts you purchase from the Silhouette Design Store, you can’t find all the variations or glyphs. Let me explain why and help you find them all so you can join me in my madness.

Note: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you click the link and purchase something, I receive a small commission. You pay the same price. This helps me to be able to keep my business going and provide more tutorials.

Font name issues

Before we jump into the issues you might run into with premium fonts, let me give you a little heads up on something really annoying that can happen with any font. The name isn’t always the same as it is in the Silhouette Design Store or even in your library.

• Sometimes when the designer assigns a name to the font, they put their initials or company name at the beginning. Lori Whitlock’s fonts typically have LW at the beginning. Hilborn, which is one of my favorites, is called S&S Hilborn in the font list because Spencer is the designer.
• It might be DB for “dingbat.”
• Occasionally, the font name has the initials in the list but not in your Library. One example is Floral Dingbat font by Lebah Studios. That’s the name it has in the Library and Silhouette Design Store. But in the font list, it’s FE Floral.

So you won’t find the font alphabetically in the list. UGH! Sometimes you have no clue what it’s called and don’t want to scroll through your font list searching for it.

Here’s a trick to help you find it. Create a text box and make sure it’s selected. Go into your Library and do a search there for the name of the font. Double click quickly on the font in there. Once you’re back in your Design area, you’ll see that your text box now has that font and you can look in the font list to see what it’s called.

Okay, now onto the problem where you can’t find all the parts of premium fonts that are supposed to be there.

Premium fonts with extra glyphs

Gone are the days when a font designer could only provide 1 option for an uppercase letter and 1 for a lowercase letter, along with numbers, punctuation marks, etc. With the newest font types, they can add many, many more. That means you may get 20 or more options for how to type “d,” or you may get extra flourishes. Each one is called a glyph — the way a particular character looks in a font.

Each character will have a default glyph. That’s what you get when you type on your computer keyboard. To use all those extras in premium fonts, you need a way to find them. We use what’s called a character map. That makes sense. When these types of fonts first came out, the only way to view that character map was as an app on your computer. You open that, scroll through to find the glyph you want, copy it, then paste it into a text box in Silhouette Studio. I covered that in detail, with screenshots and video, in this post.

But keep reading…

Because these types of premium fonts have become so popular, Silhouette Studio now has a way to access them directly in the software. No more copy/past from a character map outside the software. This is a feature in Designer Edition and up. (You can read about what that is here and purchase it here). In an upgraded level of the software, there’s a tab in the Text Style panel with the character map.

You can see all the glyphs in a given font in that tab and select the one you want. You can do it in one of 2 ways–

1. Be in text edit mode in a text box. With this, you click on the glyph in the map and it’s added to the text box right at the point of where your cursor is. You can see a video of that here.
2. With nothing selected on your Design area, open the glyphs tab and click on one. That starts a new text box in the upper left corner of your mat with that glyph in it.
   

This is just another great reason to invest in Designer Edition.

But keep reading…

Premium fonts with style variations (font families)

Some premium fonts have several coordinating styles sold together. It may be a script, block serif and block san serif. Here are some example of that with the font Olive —

The are super-fun because you know they will coordinate with one another. Kinda like “font mixing for dummies” or “bed in a font bag.” With these, the font designer can include literally thousands of options for one price.

Or it could be a layered font — where you stack several text boxes together to get a retro-looking font with shadows, stripes, etc. One of my favorite premium font of this type is Headster.

You have an enormous amount of creative options.

But keep reading…

Ways fonts with variations might install

As I said, premium fonts are some of my favorites. But some are like some pretty girls — HIGH MAINTENANCE! There are 2 ways premium fonts like this might get installed in your software.

As separate fonts in the font list

Okay, this is the pretty girl who is also down-to-earth. With these premium fonts, Silhouette Studio installs them as separate fonts altogether, with a same but similar name (think Samantha & Sammy). You don’t have to do anything else. Here’s one that’s like that — Groovy. You can see in the font list that my text box has Groovy Script Extrude and just above it is Groovy Script.

If your font is like this, you’re home free.

But keep reading…

As 1 font with variations

Here are the high maintenance gals. Some premium fonts have multiple variations, but they don’t install as separate fonts in the list. Instead, they come as options in the drop down menu that’s on the line with Bold/Italic/Underline. I’m going to use Headster as an example again. You can see there are 5 variations.

This is the hard one. Here’s precisely what happens.

• You purchase the font while you have Silhouette Studio open or you bought it earlier and your Library syncs.
• The font is available in the font list and you see all the variations in the drop down menu.
• You close Silhouette Studio and your computer asks permission to install fonts. You give permission and get the message that the fonts installed. BUT THEY DIDN’T REALLY!!!!!!
  Because of the way these fonts are used with that drop down menu, your computer isn’t sure what to do. So it can’t really install all the variations.
• You open the software again and this time there are only 3 of the 5 variations.
• You close the software and again give permission.
• The next time you open the software, there are only 2 variations.
• This keeps happening and you never see all the variations again.

But keep reading…

The difficulties with the drop down list

So what do you do when you aren’t seeing all the variations? You have to install them individually outside of Silhouette Studio.

Yes, this isn’t what you’re supposed to have to do. But it’s what you have to do currently. You have to open and install each font variation individually outside of the software. I’m going to show you how with a font called Watermelon Family.

Here’s how–

• Close Silhouette Studio.
• Find the font in the Silhouette Design Store. You can do that in 2 different ways–

1. In your orders

• • • If you just purchased it, you’ll find it on the page where it says “Thanks for your order.” Click the direct download.
      
    • If it’s one you bought previously, sign in and go to Account Settings>Orders. Find the order that has the font and click on it. You’ll see all the items you purchased in that order and can download the font. You can click the icon at the right to download the font.
      
      If you have several fonts on the order, you can check the boxes at the left of the font name to select multiple fonts and then use “Download Selected.” This time, I didn’t need to do both because the Insta Story Duo installed as separate fonts.
      

2. By searching the name of the font

• • • When you find the font, click on it to go to the page with the design details. You’ll see an option to download the font directly.
      
• This will download a zipped folder to your computer. Zipping is a way of condensing files so they download more quickly.
• Go to your downloads folder of your computer and find the folder. Notice the word “zip” at the end of my file name.
  
•  Click on the folder, then on “Extract All.”
  
  This unzips the files so they are at full size again. Your computer will ask you if the location it wants to put them is okay. Agree by clicking “Extract” at the bottom of the dialog box.
  
• The file folder still has “zip” at the end, but the extract options aren’t there.
  
• Open the folder (you’ll see extract options again but can ignore those now) and you’ll see all the font variations. For this one, there are 6. There’s usually a TTF (true type font) and OTF (open type font) for each variation. You only need to install 1, and I usually recommend the OTF.
  
• Click on the first one in the list. In that dialog box, click “Install.”
  
  Your computer works for a moment, then the “Install” option is grayed out to indicate it’s finished. Close that box with the “x” in the upper right.
• Repeat these steps for each font variation.
• Open Silhouette Studio and check the drop down menu again. They should all be there.
  
• When you close Silhouette Studio, it will tell you it’s installing your fonts and this time it really is. Give permissions.

You now have access to all variations.

But keep reading…

Current issues with the drop down menu

There are currently issues with using all the variations and glyphs in premium fonts that install with the variations in the drop down menu.

You may not see the correct variations

When you first click on the drop down menu, you may see only the word “default.” Or, if you were working on a different font for which were accessing the variations in the drop down list, those variations may be the ones listed. In other words, say I’m working Watermelon with those 6 variations. Then I decide to change to the font Olive instead. I may still see the variations for Watermelon in the drop down menu instead of those for Olive.

THE FIX: This is pretty easy to fix. You just need to click on a different font — any font — and then back to the one you want to use. Then you’ll see the correct variations in the drop down list.

It automatically selects the default variation

As soon as you click on the arrow to drop down the list of variations, it automatically changes your selected text box to the default variation. (I’ve found it’s not always the first one in the list).

THE FIX: You just have to choose the variation you want. It’s kind of a pain, but not horrible.

You can’t see all the available glyphs

The biggest problem is in accessing glyphs. Because the software has really only installed the font variations as just a single font, when you go to the second tab to select glyphs the only ones there are for the default variation of that font. Let me say that again. If I’m working on the font Olive and select the variation called Dingbats, then open the glyphs tab to select a dingbat, the glyphs in there are for the default variation called Brush. I can’t see in that glyphs tab what dingbats I have available.

THE FIX: Currently, the only thing you can do is use the Character Map to copy and paste. It will initially still be in that default font. But since you can mix 2 fonts in a single text box, you just highlight the character and choose the font variation you need.

I can assure you that all of these are things the Silhouette Studio software developers are aware of and working on. The wide variety of creative looks you can get with these premium fonts make it completely worth the extra steps you might need to take to use them.