That’s right, I’m in Minnesota with my girlfriend visiting her family for the holidays. It’s a snowy wasteland outside and I have been informed that it will be getting worse between now and Saturday. Saturday, the day we were supposed to leave. Crap.
Since I’m stuck inside with no design software I decided that I would update with my latest typography rant… on how much I hate Papyrus.
No, not the old Egyptian material from which we derive the English word for paper, but rather the display font of the same name. Notice I said DISPLAY FONT. That’s important.
What sparked this? James Cameron’s visual masterpiece “Avatar”. What it lacked in a slightly dated story it made up for in beautiful CG and strangely appealing, scantily-clad alien women. So where does Papyrus and my disdain for it come in? In the subtitles, that’s where.
As stated by Wikipedia, Papyrus was designed in 1982 by graphic designer Chris Costello when he was fresh out of college. Chris bit off a pretty big chunk with his first font, too… It took him 6 months with a calligraphy pen and textured paper to create it, and that was just the upper case set! Chris also mentioned in a 2007 interview with IHeartPapyrus.com that he now has to hide his face in public due to the scathing the font receives these days.
So let’s break this down and figure out just why it is that Papyrus sucks so very much.
As stated earlier, Papyrus was meant to be used as a display font. What that means is that it’s meant to be used at larger sizes (usually 36 points or higher) for things such as newspaper headlines or book titles. What they’re not meant to be used for is EVERYTHING ELSE. The major problem is that at some point Papyrus was added to the list of Mac OS system fonts and is now accessible to everybody, including good designers, bad designers, and non-designers. As designer Costello stated in the interview, “After she was released into the wild, her design career was finished.”
It’s latest uses include text on the side of Arizona Iced Tea cans, the Lamb of God logo and all of their album covers, and the (as stated earlier) subtitles in the new James Cameron movie “Avatar”. Beyond that it’s also used on pretty much every homemade business card, health and wellness shops, greeting card shops, amateur brochures and church flyers.
Ultimately I agree with the font designer about the reason this font is no longer usable in design… It’s not that it’s ugly, as a matter fact it’s quite the contrary. The font itself is aesthetically sound. The problem is with the overuse and misuse of the font by anyone with a computer. It can be found anywhere and everywhere as illustrated by IHatePapyrus.com and IHeartPapyrus.com. Due to it’s ubiquitous nature many graphic designers and typographers rip into the font and it’s designer like they’re something to be spat on and thrown in the dump… Rather I think it’s a stigma with the function, not the form, that’s causing the problems found with Papyrus these days.
So if you care about the happiness of Chris Costello (or any good designer for that matter), do us and yourself a favor and don’t use Papyrus. Rather, look for a better font. There are some great resources to find plenty of FREE fonts that could easily fit your purpose. Here are some links to make sure you can find other fonts to help us creative minds maintain our sanity: