Jan 9, 2010
Papyrus is to good typography as . . .
A lot of people have been giving designers a hard time for complaining about the use of papyrus in an otherwise visually stunning beauty of a movie called Avatar. They just don’t get it. And while it is slightly beyond explanation (its just something you learn, like not touching a hot stovetop) I figured some metaphors would help them understand our disdain for the face.
I encourage you to add your own.
Papyrus is to good typography as water is to the Wicked Witch
Papyrus is to good typography as Lee Harvey Oswald is to JFK
Papyrus is to good typography as sex is to virginity
Papyrus is to good typography as China is to Tibet
Papyrus is to good typography as reality TV is to good television
Papyrus is to good typography as Paris Hilton is to celibacy
Papyrus is to good typography as video is to the radio star
Papyrus is to good typography as George W. is to the office of the President.
Papyrus is to good typography as Wal-mart is to small towns.
Papyrus is to good typography as Creed is to good music.
Thats all I’ve got for now. Add some for me!
Why is it bad? Because it’s cool for designers to say so?
Isn’t this a fairly arbitrary opinion?
When you see someone say they are a “Social Media Expert” when they’re new to twitter, you can see they have a complete lack of knowledge on the subject right?
Its the same for Papyrus. Its not an arbitrary opinion.
This same argument could be had for Comic Sans, Curlz MT, Impact, Hobo, Herculanum, Bank Gothic, Arial, Marker Felt, Chalkboard, etc.
A quote: “The best way to describe this to a person that doesn’t understand typography is to say you just created this amazing painting. It looks beautiful, the shading is done to the best you have ever seen and then your buddy comes a long that just had taco bell with food poisoning in it and sets ur painting on the floor and takes a huge nasty shit all over it. I’m talking diarrhea paint splatters all over. It just disrespectful. Out of all the other places he could have taken a shit, he still did it right on your painting.”
Tyler, one of the main reasons of Papyrus being a bad font is because it was designed to be a Drop Cap font. Basically, it was meant to only be used as the first letter of an article in a publication.
Then, some douches decided that ANYTHING asian, middle eastern, new age, health spa, my aunts emails NEEDED Papyrus. The font is not kerned correctly, the size proportions are absolutely terrible, and well, it’s the same as comic-sans, it’s ugly, unoriginal, and a poor choice of a font.
In regards to Avatar, I do admit the design community is overreacting a little, but that’s mainly because of the fact that a movie that cost 500 million couldn’t take the time to come up with a custom typeface/wordmark, and instead went for the “oh the movie has a bunch of spear-chuckers in it, so we should use that font that is mystical, asian, new agey to represent them” instead of creating something original.
Will the common movie goer notice this font choice? Probably not. This is just something for the designers to rage about.
You could have made your case better with some sort of poor grammar argument, but I get your point.
That being said, Papyrus does look tribal.
Yes, Papyrus could be viewed as a bad font, arbitrarily. However, part of what makes a font a bad font is the over usage by entry level designers. Fonts have trends just like jeans and cars. Individuals like Mark and I will spot them quicker and be more critical than the random folk who stumble upon it.
The key to solid design is to leverage style and grace versus trends, assuming it’s the right medium.
Avatar could have done something more than they did so Mark and I can rest easy with our popcorn instead of puking.
Cheers
There should be a typography contest for a better Avatar font.
I can understand why designers hate papyrus. The real question is why do people like it so much? If the design community hates it, the only reason I can think that it still shows up on so much stuff is because the people paying for design actually prefer it over other choices.
The real question then becomes how come no one in the design world has come up with an alternative that doesn’t suck that the public will embrace? Why are designers seemingly unable to convince the paying customer to use something different?
In my world the equivalent to papyrus is flash or light boxes. Both are abused and generally make an experience far worse. However, the public loves them and asks for them. It takes monumental effort to get them to avoid them in most cases.
I’d say most people who use papyrus aren’t paying designers. They’re either doing it themselves or having a photoshop user put something together.
And, you’re just not using the right flash developers
This was published in 2010?
The Papyrus font is so far behind the curve that complaining about the Papyrus font is behind the curve.
Complaining about Papyrus is like complaining about how Urkel is the worst thing on Family Matters.
Compalining about Papyrus is like saying how Limp Bizkit is a bunch of no talent hacks and how much MTV sucks for playing them all day.
Complaining about Papyrus is like trying to come up with a new Monica Lewinsky joke.
Complaining about Papyrus is like comparing the investment potential of Pokemon game cards against Beanie Babies.
That’s all I got for now. Add some for me.
Any designer moaning about Papyrus is not paying attention to more recent font gluts and stylistic overusage. They’ll see every other mediocre designer whose hopped on the recent trends and just call it “modern” as they snicker amongst eachother about Papyrus or Helvetica, unaware that the style they love so much today is the Papyrus of 2013.
I acknowledge the irony of hitting this topic months after it was posted but I’m not a regular watcher. I’m just doing a study of hated fonts. So far I’m seeing 10% solid technical complaints, 10% well reasoned aesthetic arguement and 80% hipster wangst from graphic designers trying to elevate themselves over the unwashed masses who don’t realize how 5-minutes-ago their ubiquitous fonts have become.
Well, I’d say you missed the point of the article then. I was just trying to help people create metaphors for why people dislike papyrus, beyond it being a subjective thing. I’d say that its relevant as a conversation point because it demands designers have a reason for their dissatisfaction with the typeface.
But, maybe I’m just complaining about how Tonia Harding should be in jail for what she did to poor Nancy.