I saw a poster once that said, “I promise I will never use Comic Sans, Hobo or Papyrus Again”. For those of you who are not designers, those are the names of three extremely over-used type fonts.
I’ve been a graphic designer for nigh on 20 years, and an artist all my life, but I have a confession: I’m still not tired of Papyrus. I agree it’s overused, but only by amateurs who use it for entire paragraphs. I still think the font looks nice if it’s just a few words. Soapbox officially dismounted.
That said, here’s an old designer’s joke: Comic Sans walks into a bar, and the bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve your type here”.
You know what I miss, from the old days (probably before your time) is Letraset Dry Transfer Lettering. It was the greatest. You could even order custom sheets with artwork or your company's logo on it for mock-ups and presentation pieces. What I don't miss is SprayMount. For a long time I rented out a tiny enclosed corner of a studio and I figure I must have inhaled about a quart of the stuff. As for fonts, the great thing about doing packaging for Sears was that with the exception of the logo, all the type was Helvetica.
ReplyDeleteFred, Letraset is SOOOO not before my time, haha! I remember it well. I started typesetting with the first generation of "cold" type, that is, type run out on galleys from a proprietary machine, as opposed to metal type. Before that, it was dry transfer of bust.
ReplyDeleteBTW, what font is the Sears logo? Isn't it Helvetica now too, with an inline?