July 24, 2007

Fonts That I Hate and the Very Real Reasons Why I Hate Each

1. Eras Bold - A little too bold with its hands, if you catch my drift.

2. Broadway - Always singing loudly for no good reason.

3. Algerian - Number one state sponsor of terrorism against my ancestral French fonts.

4. Bauhaus 93 - If this font had a nose, you wouldn't be able to see anywhere but up it. A touch too pretentious for my tastes.

5. Mistral - Killed my mom.

6. Jokerman - Reason to suspect this font may actually be more of a Jokerwoman. This ruse doesn't strike me as funny.

7. Cooper Black - Drinks too much.

8. Gill Sans Ultra Bold Condensed - Jesus! Make up your mind! Does one font need this many special features? I've heard it has a hot tub in some iterations.

9. Old English Text MC - Rhymes are too Shakespearean compared to most other contemporary rap artists.

10. Showcard Gothic - Too dark and brooding in a very self-centered, whiny way.

11. Wingdings - Only speaks in gibberish; seems unconcerned with communicating on a meaningful level.

12. Lucida Sans Typewriter - Inability to adapt to changing technology makes this the doddering, senile, shouting grandparent of fonts. Always reminding other fonts about how it was done "back in my day!"

3 comments:

Jim H. said...

Helvetica: the generic sans serif font. In fact, I believe Helvetica was used as the one and only font on the original generic products -- the ones with the absolute minimum on the label. A yellow bag with the words "paper plates" spelled out in Helvetica. A font of the people. It was designed by some Dutch fellow named Haas.

Arial is a cheap digital knockoff of Helvetica. Not my type, so to speak.

Deeb said...

Shruti: Too fruti.

Times New Roman: Not enough improvement over Times Old Roman to warrant a re-release.

Also, your post reminded me of this.

Brendon Etter said...

Waffleboy,

Yeah, that comic strip is funny, especially considering this list was inspired by a rant I put on Northfield.org against comic sans.

It was against the Northfield library's use of the hated font in a display. Here's what I wrote, complete with fake science and everything. You can't argue with fake science!

"While maybe not the same degree of severity can be applied to this issue as, say, a heroin problem among community youth, I'm going to stand with Mr. Gurno and demand a full comic sans retraction from all library displays and publications. Hate, hate, HATE that font!

It's not even a good font for a comedian to use. Maybe a very bad comedian.

Comic sans has been found to decrease the humor value of writing by nearly 45%!

Amazingly, when you publicly read humorous writing off a page, and that humorous writing is in comic sans font, your audience will laugh 31% less, EVEN THOUGH they don't know the writing's font!

This effect pervades even if you're simply reciting the same humorous passage from memory: the fact that you memorized it from text written in the comic sans font drags the comedic value down by nearly 17%!

[All findings from the American Institute of Font-Comedy Relations' 1996 report: "Sans Comic Sans: One Font's Threat to Funniness"]"