The release of James Cameron’s special effects extravaganza Avatar has the graphic design community in an uproar. Typophiles everywhere have their collective knickers in a twist because the films marketing team couldn’t find any money in their 150 million dollar budget to spend on a custom typeface.  Google “Avatar Papyrus” and you’ll see what I’m talking about. That’s right, the Avatar movie posters, trailers, and other promotions elected to use Papyrus as their typeface.

There are two typefaces that are almost universally despised among designers: Comic Sans, and Papyrus. Most people won’t even blink when they see either of these fonts being used. Designers, however, are prone to violent hysteria at the site of something like the Avatar movie poster.

So what’s wrong with Papyrus? Why all the hatred of a typeface? Let’s look at the most common criticisms that have arisen since the release of Avatar, and why most of them are irrational:

Papyrus is overused

This may be true, but I don’t think it justifies the ubiquitous hatred. Helvetica is the most used typeface in the world and, while it has its detractors, you don’t see a massive outpouring of criticism every time it finds its way into a movie poster. Papyrus is overused for 2 reasons: it comes free with most computers and because it works (more on this later).

Papyrus is used improperly

There is simply no defense for using something like Papyrus for body copy. This is no reason to hate the typeface, however. Any typeface can be used poorly. It’s hard to argue that the Avatar logo would have looked better set in, say, Times New Roman:

Or maybe Franklin Gothic:

Either of these would have been poor choices. Papyrus may not have been the best option, but I don’t know that you can really say it was “misused”. At least it approaches an appropriate “feel” for the design.

The subtitles, on the other hand… If the outrage over Avatar’s use of Papyrus has any real merit, it is this. The film apparently uses Papyrus for its subtitles, which is just as bad as using it for body copy. Papyrus is a display face, and should only be used for headlines, or similar reasons. Set at smaller sizes or in larger strings of text, it puts a lot of unneeded strain on the eyes.

Using Papyrus is lazy

One of the reasons Papyrus is used so much is because it is “easy”. Need something that is vaguely Egyptian, Asian, sort of ethereal, or maybe even Western? Just use Papyrus, and you’re done. As I said earlier, one reason Papyrus is used so much is because it works. It has a generic exotic quality that makes it versatile. Plus it is easy to read.

The laziness accusation comes from the fact that a designer should be able to find a different font that is more specifically tailored to the design. This argument holds more water than most of the other criticisms of Papyrus. The designers behind the Avatar promotions should have enjoyed a large enough budget to purchase any typeface they wanted, or even commission something unique. From a marketing standpoint, it would be better to have a unique, or at least more obscure, font that people will come to associate with your product.

Then again, countless big budget movies use Trajan Pro in their promotions as well. No doubt any one of them could come up with a couple hundred dollars to use something different.

Papyrus is ugly

This is the type of circular argument that drives me nuts. “Papyrus sucks because it’s ugly.” That’s like saying “it sucks because it sucks.” It’s fine to say you think it’s not aesthetically pleasing, but that is your opinion. I think most of Picasso’s art is ugly as dingleberries, but that’s just my opinion, nothing more. It doesn’t mean that no one else should enjoy his work.

You may think Papyrus is ugly, but there are many people who find it visually pleasing. What makes you right and them wrong? Your education? Your experience? Those things only give you different lens through which to view the world. If you can’t give a reasonable explanation as to why you find something ugly, then you just sound pompous.

Conclusion

In the end, I think what graphic designers really don’t like about Papyrus is that it is often used by amateurs or non-designers. It’s not so much that the font itself is so bad, but that by virtue of its reputation no “real” designer would use it, especially not for a high profile project. When an average person sees Papyrus they think nothing of it. When a designer sees Papyrus, they think, “that must have been designed by someone’s brother, or cousin, or someone else completely unqualified to be a designer. Whoever paid for that should have hired me instead.”

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Topics: Design, Movie Posters, typography

This assignment called for a design addressing an “issue” of our choice. I choose the issue of the ever increasing control large corporations have over, well, everything.

My original idea for this project was to place a tightly spaced list of corporations in the background with the world “unelected officials” on top as a semitransparent overlay in another color. The list of corporations I compiled was about half the length it needed to be for the effect I wanted.

I decided to change my approach and go with a Constructivist style. In the end, I think this is a better fit, due to the political nature of the project. I selected Futura because it fits with the look of Constructivist design, but is also a rather corporate looking typeface and it has many different weights to choose from.

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Topics: Corporate Greed, School, typography

My fifth Typography project this semester was to design a 4×16 inch (meant to be folded into 4 sections) typographic poster representing a song. I chose a song called TV Set by The Cramps.

This project is set primarily in American Typewriter along with a few words in Franklin Gothic and a decorative font named Feast of Flesh. The name of the band is in Feast of Flesh as well and the Title of the song is in Banco LT Regular. I choose American Typewriter because I think it is reminiscent of something you might see in a ransom note. It is impersonal without being devoid of “flavor.” I choose Franklin Gothic as a second type family because it is a sans serif and provides a nice contrast in select places.

The composition loosely progresses from left to right in the same order as the lyrics, growing slightly more jumbled and chaotic toward the end, just as the song does.

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Topics: School, The Cramps, typography

The fourth project for my Typography class was to design an informative poster about either a typeface or a type designer. I decided to do a poster about my favorite personality in the design world:  the incorrigible typomaniac, Erik Spiekermann.

Erik Spiekermann’s designs tend to be very clean and well organized so I started this project with a few very simple sketches of basic grid layouts. Since Spiekermann is such a typomanic, and because this was a typography project, I knew I wanted to focus primarily on the type. 26 letters along with 10 numbers splits up nicely into a 9×4 grid. This seemed a good place to start from.

Once I had the basic layout of the type, I collected a few Spiekermann quotes and started looking for ways to incorporate them into the overall grid of type. I soon realized that spreading a quote out over the whole grid of letters was not only impractical, but would lead to a cluttered design. Instead, I only incorporated the name and phrase “typomaniac”.

The poster is set in Spiekermann’s typeface, ITC Officina, in a combination of Serif and Sans Serif. The text for the bio is directly from Spiekermann’s own website.

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Topics: Erik Spiekermann, School, typography

Project 2 for Typography was all about choosing the right typeface for the situation. The challenge was to create logos and business cards for 4 different companies that all fall under one umbrella corporation called Proteus. The companies were as follows:

A nationwide chain of funeral homes

My first sketches were for the funeral home. I figured this would be the most sober (I.E. least fun) of all the logos. I wanted to do something that played on a phrase Stephen King has used to describe death: “going to the clearing at the end of the path.” I did some initial sketches exploring how that might be expressed in a form simple enough for a logo. The end result will probably look like a tree to most people but I think it still works.

I considered using a script typeface for the funeral home logo, but decided it would be better to go with something easier to read. I chose Stempel Garamond Roman for the typeface because it’s simple and elegant without being too ornate for a logo. I did use a script, called Freebooter Script, on the business card to display a company motto. The rest of the card uses Stempel Garamond Roman and Bold to emphasize the name and street address.

A theme resaurant chain, designed to appeal to the same market as The Hard Rock Cafe and House of Blues chains

While sketching for the book store and toy store, I realized that I had 3 out of 4 concepts involving a large upper case P represented by some object with the ascender hanging down to “hold” the secondary word. I decided to take a similar approach in the restaurant logo so each company would have a unique identity, but still be connected by this one common trait.

The bar and grill logo uses a typeface called A Charming Font, which I’m assuming is based on the television Charmed. Though the typeface is originally meant to have a witchcraft/Halloween feel, I think it also works well to evoke the feelings associated with hard rock or heavy metal. To solidify the musical theme of the restaurant, I added extra shapes to the end of the ascender of the P to turn it into an abstracted guitar, and substituted a stylized treble clef for the ampersand.

A chain of video/book stores catering soley to rare, unusual, cult and hard-to-find films

I selected Eurostile medium for the book/movie store logo. I considered Trajan Pro, for its popular usage in movie posters, but decided Eurostile was easier to read and still has a cinematic quality. I was never quite satisfied with the end result however, as I just don’t think the film real “reads” as a P the way I would like. Out of all 4 logos, this was my least favorite.

A chain of retail outlets for children’s clothing, products and toys

For the toy store logo I used 2 display faces, JellyBelly and Lockergnome. Both are suitably playful for a toy store, and they are nicely contrasted. My original sketches had the P formed out of a normal looking balloon, but it suffered from the same problem as the book store logo. Instead I just stretched out the ascender of the JellyBelly P and made it look balloon-like. For the text of the business card I selected Cooper Black. It’s rounded enough to fit with the “fun” of the logo, but still easy to read.

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Topics: Design, Logos, School, typography

I’m taking Typography this semester and our first assignment was to create 4 different monograms from our initials. Here’s what I came up with:

	This design uses Stencil Bold for the uppercase R and Hobo Medium for the lowercase e’s. In my sketches I had many ideas that involved laying lowercase e’s over an uppercase R. I found that the ultra-thick stroke of a Stencil Bold uppercase R allowed for a nice placement of 2 lowercaes e’s.
	This design uses Poplar Black for the uppercase R and Didot Regular for the lowercase e’s. I had several sketches that played around with the idea of laying lowercase e’s over the counter of an uppercase R. The uppercase R of Poplar Black works well for this because it has a small counter that doesn’t compete too much with the lowercase e’s. The thin bar and terminal of Didot’s lowercase e’s makes a nice contrast to the thickness of Poplar Black.
	This design uses Arnold Boecklin Regular. The typeface has a vinelike quality that I found well suited to the intertwining nature of this design.  I think the final result works well, although it’s a little bland. The best part about the design is that it is recognizable even when scaled to very small sizes.
	This design uses Hobo Medium for the uppercase E’s and Cooper Black for the lowercase r. I knew I wanted to attempt a design with back to back uppercase E’s, but I wasn’t sure which typeface to select. I experimented with different faces and settled on Hobo Medium for its playful quality. I chose Cooper Black for it’s thickness, which I think lets the lowercase r show up well at smaller sizes.

We were also asked to take one of the monograms and use it as a logo to design a business card. Here is the result:

I selected this design for the business card because I felt it had the most interesting overall shape. Turning the 2 E’s to an angle allowed me “activate” all sides of the composition and integrate my name and title into the design of the monogram.

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Topics: Design, School, typography