An SVG names fonts. It does not contain them.
Your type looks right on your machine because the font is installed on your machine.
Text in an SVG is a reference, and the reference resolves on the viewer's machine
A `<text>` element stores the characters and the font name — not the typeface itself. When someone else opens the file, their software looks for that name locally, fails to find it, and substitutes whatever it considers closest. The characters survive; the shapes, the metrics and the line breaks do not, which is why a carefully-set logo arrives at the printer in a default sans-serif with different spacing. You never see it happen because you have the font installed, and the file behaves perfectly for exactly one person on earth. Converting text to paths ends the dependency by turning letters into geometry.
How to confirm it
- Open in a text editor
- A `<text>` or `<tspan>` element means live type. Only `<path>` is safe to send.
- Test on another machine
- Or a browser profile without your fonts. Substitution shows up immediately.
- Selection test
- If you can click into the text and edit characters, it is still live type.
- Cutting machines
- Most cutters ignore `<text>` entirely — it imports as nothing rather than wrong.
- Not the cause
- Embedding the font file. SVG can reference webfonts, but no offline tool honours it reliably.
The fix
Keep one master with live type for future changes; the file you send should be outlined.
Illustrator: Type → Create Outlines. Inkscape: Path → Object to Path. Figma: Flatten selection.
Search the exported file for `<text`. Finding nothing means the type is now geometry and cannot substitute.
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FAQ
Technically yes, via `@font-face` with a base64 payload, and in practice it is not worth relying on. Browsers mostly honour it; Illustrator, cutting software and print RIPs mostly do not, and embedding a licensed typeface is often a licence breach. Outlining sidesteps all of it.
No. The letterforms become the same curves the font would have drawn, at any size. What you lose is editability — you can no longer retype the words or change the typeface, which is why keeping a live-type master is the usual practice.
Most cutters do not implement the SVG text element at all. It is not substituted with a wrong font, it simply does not exist in the imported file. Outlining converts it to shapes the machine can follow.
That confirms live type in the file. The printer's RIP is reporting exactly what it found: a reference to a typeface it does not have. Outlined text produces no such warning because there is nothing left to resolve.