Design the Planet

I’ve been a designer for the better part of a decade. I’m certainly not the best designer around, and I certainly can’t say I always come up with the best ideas. But one of the first things I learned way  back when was that certain fonts were just inappropriate for certain situations. Some fonts were over used, and still, some fonts were just plain ugly.

I could go through an almost infinite list of fonts that should never be used, but for this particular blog post, I’m going to talk about only two.

At the top of the list resides Comic Sans. If you don’t know the history of Comic Sans, I’ll give you a brief overview. Basically, Comic Sans was created by a Microsoft engineer in 1994 for a program called Microsoft Bob. The geniuses at Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to use Times New Roman in the talk bubbles of cartoon Characters. Vincent Connare thought that was ridiculous, so he designed Comic Sans for a more fun interaction.

In the mid 90s when Comic Sans was shipping with Windows, there weren’t really many font options for the average Joe. The internet was still young and it wasn’t a simple to search for a new font online. Even installing a new font took a Doctorate in Computer Science.

Comic Sans seemed like a great choice for you new born’s first birthday party, when you wanted a “hand written” look, something playful, etc. I’ve also seen some pretty terrible uses over the years. Here are just a few.

A graphic designer’s job is to choose an appropriate type face for the message they are trying to get across. The font face should have the desired impact, and issue the correct response from the message reader. These previous examples did not take their message, or their message’s impact, into account, and they ended up looking completely ridiculous.

The second worse font created by man is Papyrus. Papyrus is probably more overused these days than Comic Sans. No scientific research was done before making that claim. I only base that on the amount of times I see Papyrus each day, which is about a thousand.

Papyrus is the font of choice for day spas, organic grocery stores, hair salons, frugal engaged couples looking to save money by designing their own wedding invitations, but most recently by James Cameron and his bloated budget blockbuster, Avatar.

I read a great blog recently, “An Open Letter to James Cameron,” written by Papyrus himself. It’s an obviously satirical letter, but it brings up a lot of great points.

Avatar is the most expensive movie ever made. James Cameron has been working on Avatar for more than ten years. The production company basically invented a new technique for filming movies. A process so advanced, that James Cameron had to wait for the technology to catch up. Obviously, a lot of thought and planning went into the production of this movie.

A comment was left on the blog that sums it up perfectly for me.

Posted by Jordan:

Just unbelievable that they spent as much as they did on this movie, and yet COULDN’T spring the minuscule extra cash to get something more suitable selected or designed.

Easily for a comically miniscule amount of money you could have had a unique custom typeface designed to use solely for the film marketing and subtitles, designed by any number of the worlds top typographers or type foundries. Plus, I’m sure most would have loved to jump on the opportunity to be part of this epic titanic-sized movie.

AND, it’s not like there wasn’t an insane attention to detail to begin with. They created an entire legitimate language for the Na’vi to speak, enlisting the help of top linguists! Really, an entire language… from scratch… and a default font pulled off your secretary’s computer?

I can’t believe on a production that probably had at least a thousand different hands touch it at some point, not a single person ever had the ability to speak up, at any stage in the game, and point out this gross typographical monstrosity. So sad.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the movie is intrinsically bad, or that no one should see the movie simply because of the font choice. What I am saying is that with so much money spent, and with so many other finer details gone over, how does something as important as the movie title’s font choice not get more scrutiny?

How does one justify spending so much on a movie, only to skimp on something as important as the movie’s logo, using a font that’s found on every house wife’s computer across the country. What is the rationale for not thinking about this further?

It’s beyond me. It really is.