How could I overlook this?
I think we all feel the same about Papyrus and CS
The font’s that shall not be named … there are a few and those two definitely qualify
Vivaldi also comes to mind.
In all honesty, CS appears tame compared with some that shall not be named named here.
To the list I must add Zapf Chancery.
I’m watching an online presentation, and they had papyrus on one of their slides lol
There are a few typefaces I never use because I have no need for them and also because they’re so common and misused. I’d put Comic Sans, Papyrus, Zapf Chancery, Impact, Brush Script, etc., into this category. Otherwise, they likely wouldn’t make my dislike list. Instead, it’s the awfulness of their ubiquity that makes them so terrible.
There are other typefaces I won’t use for the simple reason they conjure up images of decades past. I’d place Korinna, Souvenir, Eras, Eurostyle/Microgramma, Cooper Black and Avant Garde into this category.
Several other typefaces, like Helvetica and Times Roman have been cursed due to them being the default faces of every clunky website and homemade printed flyer ever made. They’re great typefaces, but their reputations have been irreversibly sullied.
There are still other typefaces that I just dislike because I don’t like how they look, but I’ve already mentioned them.
You’ve been reading my mind.
There are times in the work I do where typefaces that conjure up decades past is very very appropriate. For instance doing an educational exhibit about an early 1800’s textile mill or the Civil War makes Copperplate totally acceptable.
I don’t particularly think any typeface is “ugly.” Sure I really dislike skinny stick faces, but only if used in logos and only if you want something other than a printed sign on a board. Just yesterday someone sent me an RFQ for a bunch of words they wanted as halo lit can letters on a wall. The face wasn’t ugly, and the photoshop mockup they made for the client looked totally beautiful, but because the serifs and crossbars were too narrow to fit LED tape into, the halo-lit result would have been pretty darn ugly.
Not if you ever came across some hideosity named “Slug”, or 90% of any free fonts.
We have everything from gomping big-lensed LEDs to skinny LightWire (EL Wire)
What it has to do is throw enough light against a wall to read as a halo in an already lit room. A lot of times being dimmable needs to be an option too. The tape we usually use is around 8mm.
Ugly is not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of free fonts are missing major parts of the glyph set, but hey. What I really object to are fonts with bad kerning. Stand up Arial, Futura, even Garamond Italic. There are many more.
Bad kerning we can put under our control if we have to. Can’t fix ugly though.
Some fonts are not good looking. This I can tolerate. But I am talking godawful ugly. Not fascinating ugly like Alien, just ugly ugly.
Yep. I’d add Algerian to that list.
I just came across three different, separate Madeleine fonts. Amazingly enough, they’re all ugly.
I am starting a new logo project, and one of my first thoughts was, “Trajan might work for this.” Yikes. The funny thing is that it would be a good choice – if it weren’t one of the most overused fonts in the history of fonts.
Quite agree. On its own it is a handsome typeface. I wouldn’t let “overused” cloud my decision.
Same here. If it works, it works. Plus, “overused” is the perception among designers, not necessarily your target audience. It’s possible they wouldn’t know Trajan from Bank Gothic.
Trust me … the audience, unless it’s designers of some sort… won’t have a clue what font you used. They will just know it looks good. Never let any critical view of a font prevent you from using it when it works. As much as some won’t want to hear it … Comic Sans even has a place even though we all tend to poke fun at it
I don’t remember ever using Trajan. It’s not that I wouldn’t use it, it’s just that there are so many other similar serif faces that don’t have the limitation of not having lowercase.
Since Eriskay pointed back to this thread…
We use Trajan a lot. It’s the go-to font for all the dedication plaques in a lot of the old schools around here (not little trophies, big wood wall plaques that are inset into the raised wood paneling of the hallways and study halls.) And it’s wonderfully clean to engrave with a CNC.