Love to Hate Papyrus

Some while ago, a friend sent me a link to this comic from xkcd:



xkcd is created by a geek named Randall Munroe, and it's very popular with the the boingboing cohort, among others... according to the Wikipedia, it gets 60 to 70 million views per month. (So I guess the odds are you already know about it.)


In case you don't already know what it looks like, here's a sample of Papyrus, much reviled among typefaces. There's even a blog called ihatepapyrus. Seriously.

The thing that bugs me the most about Papyrus is how light and wimpy it is. It has no graphic weight. I think its designer intended it to be used at large sizes, but it usually isn't.

It's one of those fonts that appeals to novices (like Comic Sans or Sand, or many, many others that shall remain namless). When you see Papyrus in a design, there's a 99.8% chance a designer was not involved.

A post from another blog, jesse.blisten.net, put it this way: "It’s that font that every small business thinks communicates exactly what their business is all about."

Papyrus Casts a Long Shadow

Hated and ridiculed by many, Papyrus is a font used on everything from religious music recordings to Hawaiian newspaper headlines to the subtitles in James Cameron's movie Avatar (not soon to be forgiven).


This shopping mall sign takes the font to a new level of subtlety, if you could call it that. In it, the slightly blurred drop shadow was created using Papyrus, but the white type in the foreground is not in the same typeface.

Due to a font loading error, the Adobe Sans font was substituted for the white type. The result is a silly, funhouse-mirror combination, as if the spare, minimalist sans type could have cast a shadow with bent crossbars, calligraphic letterforms and tilted "i" dots.


Not including the mottled background used in the original, this is probably what the type was supposed to look like.

I can only wonder if the designers noticed the error or not. Or even if they did, they may have thought no one else would know the difference, so it wasn't worth reprinting.

Seen at HarMar shopping mall, Roseville, Minnesota.

Ugly Memes

I've been saving some of the worst meme graphics I've seen on Facebook for a little while. Here goes.

So far we've seen a lot of Comic Sans, a bit of Papyrus, wince-inducing art, at least one unneeded apostrophe, and enough sentiment to drive a sane person under the desk.

This one isn't badly designed generally, but it has a cloying message mixed with some of the worst-set type (at the bottom) I've ever seen:



And just to prove I dislike bad graphics even when I agree with what they say:


Wow. Unreadable. Here's a hint: If you feel as though you need to put a dark outline on your letters, there's something wrong with your design. (Among other things, in this case.)


What a mess of a good message.

Downtown La Crosse, Wisconsin

Returning from my recent Wisconsin jaunt, I stopped in downtown La Crosse. Here are a few fun and funky sights around town.


La Crosse has plenty of classic commercial buildings and the signs to go with them. This notable mosaic now graces the doorstep of Pearl Street Books.


The Wiggert's logo is a fun example of naive lettering. Nobody else's logo looks like that! (Although some naughty person has been busy scratching out parts of letters, to rude effect.)


Unfortunately, Piggy's "historic" restaurant doesn't have one of the classic signs. Its home in the Pioneer Foundry Building is clearly historic -- the 1871 structure is the place where parts were made for the paddle wheelers that plied the Mississippi. The sign, however, is a complete disaster -- not just because it uses Papyrus, but because of the enlarged P, the vertically arranged word "historic," the random fading blocks, and the extra little touch of a pig's tail for an apostrophe. Less is more, Piggy's, less is more.


Perhaps this sign business is the source of the Piggy's sign?


A corner bakery window was graced with this Barbie-as-wedding-cake. I thought it was pretty funny (especially the use of a Malibu Barbie who really should give the tanning salon a break), but my daughter informed me that Barbie cakes are common. I guess she's right.

Plus, La Crosse is lucky enough to have a full-service food co-op, People's Food Co-op, right next to the farmers market.

Lousy Book Covers

The internet is a big place. So it shouldn't still surprise me when I find out about a site that's been around for a while and is right up my alley, though I've never heard of it.

Such is Lousy Book Covers. Its creator trawls the book pages of Amazon.com looking for clueless cover art. And boy, is there some clueless stuff out there.

The covers mostly fall into one of (or in some cases more than one of!) these categories:

• Extremely bad artwork 
• Unreadable or painful typography
• Utter incomprehsibility

The fonts used are almost exclusively either free fonts or ones that came standard with a computer operating system. Lots of Sand, Comic Sans, Papyrus, Curlz, Verdana, and Impact.

A few fine examples from the painfully many available:


This one combines bad use of photography with bad color, a bad typeface choice, too many titles, and the worst use of vertically stacked type I think I've ever seen. (Stacking type vertically is generally not recommended because the varying widths of the letters make it hard to read and awkward.) What is the name of the book? Who is the author? After some analysis, it finally became clear that the type stacked in the left column is supposed to say "Aim High" even though the designer has used a lowercase "L" instead of a lowercase "I." Is Aim High the author's name? I'm still not sure.


Bad artwork is probably the most common problem. I'm glad that people try their hand at drawing, but it's another thing to publish it on the front of a book.


Then there are the ones that you can't even read.


And the ones that have eyes coming out of Lincoln's nose.


And the ones who think they can use a little tiny scan and blow it up as big as they want and the pixels will just magically appear.


A few are not bad designs -- they suffer only from bad art.


But most have both bad art and bad design. I love how this designer made sure we could read the title and subtitle, don't you?

I can imagine the chagrin of having your book posted on Lousy Book Covers. But from what I've seen on the site, there are only a few covers included that could be considered even marginally acceptable in a bookstore. You have to learn some time.

Colbert's White Wail and a Billboard Critique

The first time I saw the Colbert Report almost five years ago, I disliked it. I don't remember if I didn't get the joke (of course I hate to admit that's even possible now), or just didn't like the fake stridency. I didn't watch it for very long before turning it off.

I still think the show is an acquired taste, and it's challenging to watch much of the time. It assumes a lot of knowledge of the pundits Colbert is parodying, as well as the events he discusses. But in a time full of outrageous stories, parody is sometimes the only possible response.

As was the case on last night's show when he took on white privilege in the context of the recent Congressional vote for compensatory payments to black farmers and native tribes.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - The Great White Wail
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

The second segment of the show focused on the story of American Atheists' billboard on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel:


Colbert noted that the Catholic League has responded with its own billboard on the other side of the tunnel:


Catholic League president Bill Donohue described the second billboard as a "counter-punch" to the atheist billboard, to which Colbert replied: "Just like Jesus says, if someone slaps you on the cheek, counter-punch!"

My comment on the two signs is that the atheist design badly lags the Catholic billboard (despite their use of an all-white holy family).


Here's my quick attempt at a design modification, ditching the Koch Antiqua font in favor of a sans serif that's more readable at a distance. I changed all the words to sentence case to simplify it visually, and made the one word they really wanted to emphasize (know) bold instead of all caps.

I've also decreased the size of the three kings and their camels to allow more room for the type and moved the star just a bit.



I guess the original design could have been worse, though. It could have been typeset in Papyrus.

Aisle of Wrong

Errors on signs are probably the worst, since the signs cost so much money, they often can't be replaced even when there's a mistake. Here are a couple of examples from a recent trip to Cortland, New York:


The sign hanger in this case was a bit unclear on the concept of ampersands.


I am flummoxed by the aisle signs in the Whole Heart Cafe and natural food market. Not just the use of the Papyrus font, though that is bad enough. It's that lower case L (or capital I) used instead of a lower case I. Alsle? Or are they making a play on the word Isle? I'm not sure, but it sure distracted me.

It's a nice store though, and a good place to grab a quick bite to eat.

Minnesota State Fair 2010, Part 1

It's that time of year in Minnesota again... the State Fair.


A mosaic I hadn't seen before, even thought it's been up since the sesquicentennial in 2008.


They have a new sign on the Food Building. It's bad enough that the Fair -- where every square foot of walking space is paired with a square foot of food -- would have a building with such a generic name. But this new sign is even dumber than the name. Papyrus, outlined and on a curve, with a bulbous blue cloud around it (with yet another outline!) on a background that's supposed to be.... what? Beer? Fish scales? Urine through a glass darkly?


You can always learn something at the Fair, usually in the Horticulture building.


The Fair is also good for the odd sight gag. (Seen at Choo-Choo Bob's train store... those are wooden train track pieces in the basket.)


The maker of this earnest sign in the Eco Experience forgot all about the apostrophes until it was too late.


Well, almost too late. Someone with a bit of Post-It note paper rescued the display.


The Fair is a place of excess. And I swear, some people dig out their most offensive T-shirts just for the occasion. Others go in groups wearing matching clothes so they can find each other in the crowd. On this visit, I saw five members of a white family all dressed in colorful dashikis. Wish I had gotten their photo.


There's at least one food place that has nothing on a stick. This place is clearly not part of any chain.


I couldn't resist this bit of childhood memory, except I don't think the ducks were wearing sunglasses back in my day.


This bear is kind of creepy.

Plus a few classic Midway-at-night shots: