Please Papyrus Don’t Hurt ‘Em
Have you ever heard of Papyrus? If you don’t recognize the name of the font I am sure you have seen it in use. It is the most overused font in the history of the universe. It is used everywhere! I have always wondered about the history of Papyrus. Was it hatched from an alien egg at area 51? Is it contagious? Today I decided to do a little research on the most notorious font in the hack designer toolkit.
I personally have always theorized Papyrus was born from Mr. Helvetica getting frisky with the neighbor Mr. Wingding’s 17 year old daughter while Mrs. Helvetica was out with her friends Arial and Verdana shopping at Nordstrom’s. A little research told me I was on the right track but slightly off. It turns out the font was actually created by a graphic designer named Chris Costello in 1982. Not surprising, his goal was to develop a font that looked like it was actually handwritten text on papyrus. While he was successful in achieving the look he was going for. The unexpected result was a font that is used on nearly every low budget restaurant menu or spa advertisement created since 1982. A recent study of the Inlander, my favorite local weekly newspaper showed 13 unique advertisements which utilized Papyrus in some way. Papyrus even appears in some prominent locations like the Crocodile Hunter’s title and on cans of Arizona Iced Tea. Costello, the creator of Papyrus even recognizes the font is grossly overused.
Don’t get me wrong. Papyrus by itself really isn’t that bad of a font and I could see some uses for it if it weren’t overused by so many hack designers. The real problem stems from the fact that it appears on so many poorly designed marketing pieces. It has become a symbol of poor design. In design culture a line has been drawn in the sand. Real designers lined up on one side with their dark square rimmed glasses and Adobe Illustrator refusing to even acknowledge the existence of Papyrus, on the other side are moms with their Dell PC and Microsoft Word ready to create an advertisement for their bead shop or hair salon who only see Papyrus in their list of pre-installed fonts.
As a designer you cannot use Papyrus in a real project. If you do you will be ridiculed by your designer peers. Your Adobe Illustrator license key is likely to be revoked just for considering the use of Papyrus. Papyrus has become so notorious that there is even a blog dedicated to sightings of the font. If you don’t believe me you can check it out here. If that one isn’t exciting enough there is another here.
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Comments
I dislike Papyrus, but I detest Comic Sans. There are sites out there similar to the ones you listed for Papyrus, mainly Ban Comic Sans which has a Flickr group dedicated to sightings of the font and a page on MySpace. I’ve actually had clients ask for me to use Comic Sans – when they do I never no whether to laugh or to cry.
Sand. There’s another crappy font that has been overused.