Outlined
Here's a term that's thrown around a lot that may be confusing to some of you, so I thought I'd offer a quick explanation. Outlined is a term used in graphics production that commonly refers to fonts and the need for outlining them, or turning them into graphics, which means they aren't fonts anymore (even if they look like it). Most people don't have the tools to do this. If you want to, you'll need graphics applications like InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop or if you have it, Quark might work. So what's the point of doing this? Fonts have been known to change to a font that is other than the one it was intended to be. Sometimes this isn't a big deal, but many times it is. In the case where IT IS A BIG DEAL, the solution that always works is to outline the font. Yes, there are other solutions, like buying the font so that you can have it on your machine, or having the file rewritten so that the fonts are embedded successfully in it. Yes these other solutions will often work too, but outlining will always work.
If you're taking files provided by your graphic designer and having trouble outputting them because the fonts are changing, you should ask them to provide a file with outlined fonts, and they should do this for free. I'm not trying to take away income from designers here, as it's my belief that designers should provide files to their clients that work regardless if it takes another step. That's called customer service and it should be included with every project.
