Out, Damned Font! Out, I Say!
Molly, you beat me to it. I was going to blog about this, but didn't want to have two consecutive posts on a single Sunday. I can't say I subscribe to Comic-Con RSS feeds or watch old movie versions of Shakespeare plays or read any Harry Potter, but, nevertheless, I admit I'm a geek when it comes to fonts, typography, graphic design and layout.
Other fonts I think should be retired from all concert posters, flyers, ads, billboards or pretty much anywhere you find amateur attempts at this esoteric thing called "graphic design":
Papyrus. I hate this font so much I refuse to see events that use this font; refuse to eat food packaged with this font; refuse to even read this illegible font.
Speaking of which ... note the subtext in the image above, that font is my next choice ...
Curlz. There's no reason to use this font unless you want to send coded messages to enemy combatants.
Impact. OK for use by professionals; overused by imbeciles; and generally too blocky for adequate readability ... read the NYT story from Molly's post below to get a better idea on why "blocky" is bad.
Sand. Overused in iMovie-made home video titles.
Rosewood. While this is a decent font that I hold dear to my heart, it has been extremely overused and abused in the past two years. It's time to retire it for at least 10 years, or until cowboy-couture comes back en vogue.
Amen to that.
http://geekcritic.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/lynching-papyrus/
All caught using this font shall now be hanged.
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Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 02/03/2008 - 22:35.like many available and expressive fonts, there is always the tendency to get totally misused...
a good friend of mine used it for his wedding invitation - b a n g!
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Submitted by ultimate nutrition (not verified) on Tue, 06/17/2008 - 17:05.Love it or hate it, Papyrus is everywhere and will be with us for as long as there are personal computers. I have seen some tasteful treatments of the font that have been executed by talented graphic designers, but I have probably seen even more not-so-very-nice applications (to be polite).
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Submitted by fake college degree (not verified) on Wed, 07/23/2008 - 03:03.i agree PAPYRUS seems to be the automatic font* for
people, organizations or churches who want to be organic.
go to http://www.dafont.com to find new fonts that are better.
or have a local, master typographer draw up something for you.
his name is RICK BENISH.
my name is
mark jaquette @
illustrationISM &
BAMMgraphics !
* OTHER OVERUSED FONTS: lithos, hellvetica, times, fruitiger,
snell, monaco, kitty piercy bold, garamond, .. .. ..
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Submitted by BAMmGRAPHICS (not verified) on Wed, 08/27/2008 - 11:56.Haha, Kitty Piercy Bold! Agreed on that. But Helvetica, overused? Yes. But I'm not complaining.
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Submitted by Chuck Adams on Wed, 08/27/2008 - 14:04.That isn't Curlz in the sub in the img: it's Harrington.
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Submitted by Anonymous Coward Teehee (not verified) on Tue, 02/14/2012 - 17:51.Post new comment