Fonts that you love and hate: Typographical discussion.

[Pupik]

These fonts are used for illustration purposes only, and not because I actually like to use them or see them.

1. MS Comic Sans

Please, Microsoft...even if you can't fix all the bugs, at least stop packaging this font with Windows. There's even a crusade against it.

2. Monotype Corsiva

This isn't so bad (but there's at least 1000 better fonts) but it's always used in ALL CAPS and looks terribly unbalanced. Fancy without style is lame.

3. Mistral

It's a wind, and thus, this overused font blows. Once the rap group N.W.A. sent this font into oblivion for their album's title (language warning), and it has had no visual impact since. It does not appear to be applied with a brush, once you've used it for same letter twice.

4. Impact

It's that loud person in a room that never knows when to shut up and allow others to speak, which is understandable since it laughs at its own jokes.

5. Times New Roman

It's not even that terrible a font, especially since ClearType and anti-aliasing was finally accepted as a de facto standard by the start of the millenium. But the next letter, business proposal, or FW: FW: FW: FW: e-mail I see with that font is going right into the trash can. Please do not italicize it, either. It looks wors-er-est.

 

[Sureboss]

Who crusades against a font? Who!!!

 

[McLaren]

How about the 3 fonts that are nothing but signs/symbols? Why do they need 3 fonts for that? Who can even read the 1?!

 

[OZZYGT]

Who crusades against a font? Who!!!

Haha exactly my thoughts! ^

 

[McLaren]

Haha exaclty my thoughts! ^

Oh, I see what you did there.

 

[OZZYGT]

Oh, I see what you did there.

Yeah I new somebody would notice quick lol.

 

[Wolfe]

Most of Pupik's complaints make sense, but ornery typography buffs perplex me.

 

[buickgnx88]

I am a decade old font, please love me!

 

[Wolfe]

I am a decade old font, please love me!

Hey, that's my math note font. I take class notes on my laptop, and a fixed-width font allows me to easily align equations and tables.

 

[buickgnx88]

True the alignment is nice, of course whenever I use it I think of the days of typing on an old Apple with Windows '95...

 

[daan]

 

[wrcsti]

I love the 911 porscha(not a typo) font

 

[Eric.]

True the alignment is nice, of course whenever I use it I think of the days of typing on an old Apple with Windows '95...

But Boot Camp only came out with the Core Duo Intel Macs...

 

[buickgnx88]

Haha I'm dumb, the Apples were at school, I think we had a Gateway...

 

[Moglet]

BASE02

It's not big and it's not clever (anymore)

 

[Alex.]

Blackoack STD, and of course Comic Sans.
Both deserved to be shot at.

 

[exigeracer]

Helvetica

 

[Jondot]

Papyrus. And, obviously, Times New Roman, Impact and Comic Sans MS.

BASE02

It's not big and it's not clever (anymore)

That does annoy me. It seems like every trying-to-be-EXTREME-but-not-so-much company is using that to seem cool these days. Whatever happened to originality, people?


(Yeah, I'm a big font nerd...)

 

[Tornado]

But Boot Camp only came out with the Core Duo Intel Macs...

Unrelated, but Virtual PC used to be on Macs.

 

[Duke]

Who crusades against a font? Who!!!

Sage appearing in 3... 2... 1...

 

[F1GTR]

Helvetica

Blasphemy. I can't think of any other typeface that's so neutral yet can convey different feels based on its weight.

The main culprits are already outlined, what frustrates me more is the sudden over-use of certain fonts such as Rockwell and Avant Garde Gothic and its alternate characters.

 

[Alex.]

Dont click the link in post 1 about banning comic sans, Norton reported I had a high strength attack blocked from that site.

 

[Stevisiov]

Uh-oh, my antivirus is out of date too...

 

[Aldo]

How about the 3 fonts that are nothing but signs/symbols? Why do they need 3 fonts for that? Who can even read the 1?!

yeah, those ones are just weird
who would actually ever even think of typing in barcodes

 

[Omnis]

HATE.

 

[TB]

Commercial Script

Brush Script

Years of making boat licenses, door decals and windshield banners for people has jaded me more than I can convey.

 

[Turbo Lag]

I hate Lucida Console. It's just so weird...

 

[opendriver]

’

I hate wingding's

 

[Sage]

Sage appearing in 3... 2... 1...

I actually “hate” very few fonts themselves – typeface designers are often very talented people and have thought carefully about their work. It’s almost always the misuse of fonts that I hate. However, it’s very very very easy for me to choose my #1 most-hated font of all time ever forever ever:

Arial.

A perfect case study in why I don’t like Microshaft and certain other cancers of typography. Back when Windows 3 was being developed, MS needed to choose a sans serif font to bundle with its OS. Apple chose Helvetica, arguably the most important font of the 20th century, and for good reason – it’s utilitarian, can be used just about anywhere, and doesn’t draw attention to itself, yet it’s balanced and quite a gorgeous font. MS was too cheap to pay the license fee for Helvetica, so instead they paid for Arial, which is a total ripoff of Helvetica (actually, it’s a ripoff of Monotype Grotesque and then stretched to fit Helvetica’s dimensions, but for all intents and purposes it’s a ripoff of Helvetica). It would be bad enough if it were a ripoff, but to avoid legal problems Arial has a few tweaks to some of the letters that makes it worse than Helvetica. So it’s a shameless ripoff without the grandeur of being a true ripoff. Horrible horrible piece of contemptible trash.

This shows you how much they copied Helvetica:

Red is Arial, black is Helvetica.

And of the differences that they did make, the change in “R” really steams me:

On the left is Helvetica’s “R” – it’s my favorite letter in that typeface. It continues the geometric 1960’s theme of Helvetica, but adds in a bit of early 20th-century flair in the leg. On the right is Arial. Okay, who the 🤬 decided to break Helvetica’s leg and put it in a cast? That’s already bad enough. But then they take it a step further by narrowing the stroke as it meets the bowl, which as far as I can tell only serves to make the leg look even more brittle. Stupid letter drives me insane. You people have to understand that I could write pages and pages and pages on everything wrong with Arial. The fact that it’s ubiquitous only makes it worse.

 

[daan]

Hating a font that much is not right...