What's wrong with Papyrus?

[Anonymous]

Last week's SNL had a hilarious send-up on the use of the Papyrus font for the title of the movie Avatar. I know I cringe everytime I see it and Comic Sans in an ad or on a website.

https://youtu.be/jVhlJNJopOQ

What font raises your hackles each time you see it? How do you decide which fonts are part of your brand? Who has ever come accros a client using the totally worng font, and had to fight a battle to change it?  

[roisinkirby]

Hey @Anonymous - love this question! For me it's Comic Sans MS, anoter one of Windows' basic fonts first introduced in 1994. This font reminds me of some of my printed school projects! 

I did a bit of research and found that Comic Sans was designed by Vincent Connare as a child-oriented font. Its inspiration was mainly gotten from comic books in Connare’s office (they were Watchmen lettered by Dave Gibbons and The Dark Knight Returns lettered by John Costanza). According to him, he originally designed the font to be used with speech bubbles and not for general use. But since then a lot of people have fallen in love with this font and it became a cliché.

I am not a designer, but I look to brands to be original in their use of font style and color. Biased comment alert - I think HubSpot does this really well.

@EricSalvi, @Jsum, @Ty, @kherbst. @Phil_Vallender what are your thoughts r.e. the above?

[Anonymous]

Great insight @roisinkirby  Not a huge comic book fan but now that you mention it, I do remeber seeing that font in my youth.  

These days its not just a particular font that I can't stand, its a whole style that burns my eyes. I loathe any Serif font with the heat of a laser beam. Those little lines at the bottom of the letters that are supposed to move your eyes forward, are just annoying and clutter up any page they are printed on. Plus, it is such a dated look to me; I often feel like I'm reading a newspaper from the 60's.

So I'll pass on Times, Georgia, Book Antiqua, and many others. Give me a page full of Arial, Helvetica or Verdana accented by lots of white space any day.