Why this font is everywhere

[Winston]

 

[stealth6]

I'm a bit of a font-junkie. It's kind of a condition. OK, fine it's in fact a weird obsession of mine....I'll admit it. I actually worked in graphic design for many years (and still do some freelance work here and there), and I've always had a bit of a thing about fonts and logos.

This was a pretty cool video, thanks for posting.

This video....

... is one of my all time favorites from SNL. I doubt many people would find it anywhere near as funny as I do, but it hits pretty close to home for me.

s6

 

[Funkworks]

I would not have understood the SNL video without you saying graphic designers like it. Now I get it. But if graphic designers are expected to create new fonts on a regular basis, that’s impressive.

 

[stealth6]

Yeah, it goes even a bit deeper.

The actual font in question..."Papyrus" .....is WAY overused, and folks like me who actually pay attention to such things generally roll our eyes every time we see it. And even more so, it's unbelievably lazy for a designer to simply use a font and call it a logo. It's NOT a logo, it's just a font.

And there's a little (absolutely hilarious to me) added joke right in the end of the video. It ends with the word "papyrus" flashed on the screen. The joke is that the font used there is one called "Comic Sans", which is pretty much THE most over(and inappropriately) used font of a certain era.

On the off chance that anyone besides me finds any of this even remotely interesting, I can recommend a pretty cool book called "Stop Stealing Sheep (and find out how type really works)" by Spiekermann & Ginger. Fun for font geeks!

s6

 

[neil_w]

I remember being amazed at how incredibly geeky and narrow-focused that SNL be was. I loved it. I don't know if I noticed that Papyrus text was shown in Comic Sans there at the end. That is just... *chef's kiss*

 

[stealth6]

I remember being amazed at how incredibly geeky and narrow-focused that SNL be was.

Exactly my own reaction. In my case, it honestly felt like they did a skit especially for me, it was weird. I found it just completely hilarious, but yet couldn't think of anyone I knew who would probably feel the same, or even "get it".

s6

 

[Cape Byron]

I remember being amazed at how incredibly geeky and narrow-focused that SNL be was. I loved it. I don't know if I noticed that Papyrus text was shown in Comic Sans there at the end. That is just... *chef's kiss*

At one stage I taught a group of writing students who had to submit assignments as Word files each week. They were told they had to be double spaced Times New Roman OR Arial. Combinations of both were not acceptable. Anything written in Comic Sans was declared a 'non-submission'. Only one person ever tested my resolve on that...

BTW, 'Comic Sans' is Latin for 'I have no brain'.

 

[NateB]

Of course, there is a relevant XKCD.

 

[KC3KNM]

This is the Papyrus I'm most familiar with, oddly enough they didn't use the Papyrus font on the cover art.

 

[Rktman]

I'm a bit of a font-junkie. It's kind of a condition. OK, fine it's in fact a weird obsession of mine....I'll admit it. I actually worked in graphic design for many years (and still do some freelance work here and there), and I've always had a bit of a thing about fonts and logos.

This was a pretty cool video, thanks for posting.

This video....

... is one of my all time favorites from SNL. I doubt many people would find it anywhere near as funny as I do, but it hits pretty close to home for me.

s6

I can totally relate, hilarious!

As the former graphic designer for a university research organization, my PhD bosses would always "strongly suggest" I use it in the publications it was my job to produce, ostensibly because they thought "it fits our image". It can be exhausting trying to "educate" non-designer educated folks who wanted to art direct.

 

[Blast it Tom!]

BTW, 'Comic Sans' is Latin for 'I have no brain'.

We-e-e-e-lllllllll...
Discovery of the Higgs Boson annnounced with Comic Sans....

The first tweet in the article is the font's designer responding!

 

[hcmbanjo]

Great Video and a good history lesson.
I spent a few years in a print shop as the primary operator (and maintenance) of a VGC Photo-Typositor.
Those screen shots brought back a lot of memories.

Here's another type style that got a lot of use - The Brush Font
Only good for a few large words. Too many customers wanted to
use it set small in body copy.

 

[Antares JS]

We-e-e-e-lllllllll...
Discovery of the Higgs Boson annnounced with Comic Sans....

The first tweet in the article is the font's designer responding!

Slight derailment but that guy who disparaged doing physics in Imperial units reminds me of being in school for aerospace engineering, and most of my professors making a point to make sure we could do both Imperial and metric units because the American aerospace industry uses so much Imperial. A lot of people stumbled on 1 lbf = 1 slug-ft / sec^2 for some reason but I never had a problem with it. To this day when calculations need doing in Imperial units, my response is CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

Edit: I also remember now a time in my Thermodynamics class when a guy asked if they would lose any points for converting a problem into metric and then converting their answer back to Imperial. The professor responded "That's fine, but we will mock you." I couldn't help but think the mockery would be especially intense if they got the wrong answer from messing up a conversion.

 

[Blast it Tom!]

Slight derailment but that guy who disparaged doing physics in Imperial units reminds me of being in school for aerospace engineering, and most of my professors making a point to make sure we could do both Imperial and metric units because the American aerospace industry uses so much Imperial. A lot of people stumbled on 1 lbf = 1 slug-ft / sec^2 for some reason but I never had a problem with it. To this day when calculations need doing in Imperial units, my response is CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

Edit: I also remember now a time in my Thermodynamics class when a guy asked if they would lose any points for converting a problem into metric and then converting their answer back to Imperial. The professor responded "That's fine, but we will mock you." I couldn't help but think the mockery would be especially intense if they got the wrong answer from messing up a conversion.

On down the derailment siding, yes I agree. My college emphasized metric, but out here it's been whatever, mostly Imperial, straight along. And when I started at the company I'll soon retire from, long years ago, the favorite heat transfer unit was watts/inch-°C. Kept you from using exponents as much.

Mathcad's been a wonderful asset there. Keeps things consistent and understandable.

 

[NateB]

make sure we could do both Imperial and metric units because the American aerospace industry uses so much Imperial.

While we are derailed: Just this weekend the automated weather reporting in our aircraft radio gave us the temperature as 12°C at 3000 ft while our GPS gives us nautical miles and billing needs statute miles. Not to mention our patient minute ventilation is figured by estimating ideal body weight in kg based off the patients height in inches.

 

[Woody's Workshop]

When on occasion I have to type a formal letter, I like looking for hand written type fonts. I think it's a nice break from the basic Times New Roman everyone seams to use in letters these days out of Word.

 

[icyclops]

I'm a bit of a font-junkie. It's kind of a condition. OK, fine it's in fact a weird obsession of mine....I'll admit it. I actually worked in graphic design for many years (and still do some freelance work here and there), and I've always had a bit of a thing about fonts and logos.

This was a pretty cool video, thanks for posting.

This video....

... is one of my all time favorites from SNL. I doubt many people would find it anywhere near as funny as I do, but it hits pretty close to home for me.

s6

Great skit....yes, that font is a bit overused...HA

 

[boatgeek]

When I was running for school board, I was an absolute fanatic about readability for my printed pieces, particualrly contrast between the text and the background. Other candidates ... not so much. There was one guy in another race who decided to print his text in a small font in a light dove gray on a white background. I saw it from about 10 feet away and wondered why he was wasting all that space with a gray wash instead of text. Up close, I could just barely read it, and I have good near vision.

[edit] FWIW, my main logo was in a Gill variant, and most of my text was in a boring sans serif font (Calibri? Arial? Can't remember).

 

[Cape Byron]

[edit] FWIW, my main logo was in a Gill variant, and most of my text was in a boring sans serif font (Calibri? Arial? Can't remember).

Gill Sans? Isn't that the London Underground font?

 

[boatgeek]

Gill Sans? Isn't that the London Underground font?

That’s the one, though it was a slight variant that doesn’t come in the standard Windows library. After the campaign, I saw a description of it in a book “an inherently trustworthy font, never fussy, consistently practical.” (Just My Type by Simon Garfield). Not a bad message for a school board candidate, though it didn’t carry me across the finish line.

 

[Marc_G]

I love a good font discussion.

Here's one of my favorites.

 

[alexzogh]

If you are a hard core type designer, or font aficionado. I present the ultimate quiz....

Cheese or Font?

you have five minutes to classify 50 names as either a type of cheese, or a font.
Those living in Wisconsin have a head start. I love cheese and fonts, yet would have only received a B on this test. Luckily they don’t have Gloucester, which is both a cheese and a font.

 

[Mike Haberer]

I remember being amazed at how incredibly geeky and narrow-focused that SNL be was. I loved it. I don't know if I noticed that Papyrus text was shown in Comic Sans there at the end. That is just... *chef's kiss*

I like to be contrarian. I use Comic Sans MS exclusively, mostly because it drives a lot of people nuts. And I do like it.

Then again, I spend money on rockets, stick pyrotechnics in their a$$-end and light them. Sometimes they blow up - and we kinda, sorta hate it/like it when that happens in a very schadenfreude way. How weird is that?

 

[Mike Haberer]

I love a good font discussion.

Here's one of my favorites.

Font discussions are just a glue thread in disguise....

 

[Mike Haberer]

Slight derailment but that guy who disparaged doing physics in Imperial units reminds me of being in school for aerospace engineering, and most of my professors making a point to make sure we could do both Imperial and metric units because the American aerospace industry uses so much Imperial. A lot of people stumbled on 1 lbf = 1 slug-ft / sec^2 for some reason but I never had a problem with it. To this day when calculations need doing in Imperial units, my response is CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

Edit: I also remember now a time in my Thermodynamics class when a guy asked if they would lose any points for converting a problem into metric and then converting their answer back to Imperial. The professor responded "That's fine, but we will mock you." I couldn't help but think the mockery would be especially intense if they got the wrong answer from messing up a conversion.

The thing that still bends my brain in metric is that Newtons can be both a force measurement and a mass measurement. Foot-pounds is more intuitive. Converting newton-secs to get thrust-to-weight ratios is a bloody PITA.