Hi, when I use certain font (Helvetica Neue LT Std in my example) the text is not vertically centered and I can’t find any way of adjusting the ascender/descender values (like mentioned in this article: Fix Vertical Position Issue of Custom iOS Fonts | TO THE NEW Blog). How can I fix this in Figma? There are ways I can hack it, for instance changing the height of the text box and the text alignment but then I will sacrifice how other features work, e.g. Auto Layout.
Thanks
I have exactly the same problem with the Helvetica Neue LT Std. It’s our design system’s main font and I would be required to build up all our components with it. Why is Figma not able to display it properly?
Hey Simon,
After checking internally, it does look like Helvetica Neue LT Pro uses a different baseline than Helvetica Neue. As a workaround, I’d recommend setting the text bounding frame from auto-height to fixed size and then using vertical trim with the text centered on the Helvetica Neue LT Pro font.
Here an example before (original Helvetica Neue LT Pro) / after the setting:
Before:
Hope this helps!
Vertical trim doesn’t solve the issue in a sustainable way, at least in terms of design developer collaboration.
I’m having the same issue with Helvetica Neue LT Pro. It’s hellish… sure, I can set the Trim on, but then it’s rather annoying trying to select the text often times, because it’s so tiny.
For those who want to see what Helvetica Neue LT Std is doing with regards to the bounding box in Figma vs. Helvetic Neue and Helvetica I’ve attached this gif animation.
I can just give an update and tell you that we had to go with a custom font solution together with Linotype. It was something with that the Helvetica font didn’t support the font metrics used by Figma, which made the font slightly corrupt when used in Figma. They said that Helvetica is such an old font made in a time where the need was
We had to pay for the customised font, which I didn’t want to. I argued that a) the app license for Helvetica is already really expensive and b) if they sell an app license for Helvetica, they should make sure it is updated to today’s standards and functions properly with tools that app designers are using today, e.g. Figma. We did indeed pay but we got a heavy discount, and I felt that they kind of understood my point of view.
Today it works great and it was well worth it. That is to say, we could afford it; it would have been impossible if we were a small start-up with low resources.
I’d really encourage you that have the same issue to reach out to Linotype and make them aware of that this is an issue. If there are many people reaching out, hopefully they’d consider to fix the font so that not all of us have to pay for a custom font. If they learned a thing or two making “our” Helvetica compatible with Figma, I’d be happy if they could apply those learnings for the rest of the community too.
