A Simple Typographic Pledge

promise_poster

Does someone in your studio use one of these typefaces? Does it make your typographically sensitive skin crawl? You can help. Order this poster and make your hack designing colleague take this pledge and sign it.

Jeff Matz Designer/Principal of Lure Design created this last week for a screen printing presentation at “Pull + Ink” Art Center of South Florida, South Beach for AIGA Miami. They were such a big hit – they decided to put them up for sale!

Made me smile.

30 Comments leave a comment below

  1. Brilliant! I already ordered mine! I can’t wait till it comes in!

  2. will Metropolis make that promise?

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/numstead/3288495023/

  3. I’m not going to lie, I don’t think Hobo belongs on the same anti list as Papyrus. Hobo has some decent qualities and I’ve used it once appropriately and seen it used a couple times really well. Papyrus however… not going to ever see that used well, nor will I touch it. Hobo deserves some love and protection.

  4. Needs Copperplate added. Can’t stand that font.

  5. Let them all burn.

  6. I herby acknowledge and agree with these terms. Hear-ye hear- ye

  7. Caryn, you have a point. I had a colleague point out Hobo’s pedigree after seeing this poster. He cited seeing one of the original drawings of it in a type specimen book from 1916. It may not really be in the same category of bad, as Comic Sans and Papyrus. But it’s one pretty hideous typeface that is dangerous in the hands of most designers so included it. And there are better ways to set in an Art Nouveau style.

  8. I rather enjoy them!

  9. …but i will use trendy and overused slab typefaces.

  10. Sorry to be a grind, but I’ll wait for the “I promise to consider the project and its needs before I choose or refuse any typeface based on the design community’s love or disdain of it” poster.

  11. they should have actually used the fonts in the poster. or is that too ironic?

  12. I’m SOOO bored of these posters. The fonts were created for a particular purpose and they serve that purpose quite well! my 5 year old cousin doesn’t give a damn about akzidenz grotesque, he loves comic sans!

  13. Well your 5 year old cousin isnt a professional designer producing crap with these abused and regurgitated typefaces. I dont care about your 5 yr old cousin, Comic sans blows! There are far better solutions out there if you want to try to convey adolescence. Same goes for Papyrus. Its the first thing any hack designer goes for when they want an antiquated and or ethnic feel to something. Its lame and and just sad. In the end this is just a funny poster with a clever little stab at designers. It in and of itself is designed well and I like it!

  14. As much as I feel pained to see Papyrus as the front of a new spa near where I live…

    My mantra is to choose a font appropriate for the occasion. This is rarely any of the common fonts like Copperplate or Comic Sans, but I’m not banishing them from my repertoire yet. Who knows? If I worked at a kindergarten I’d print everything in Comic Sans. Kids seem to like it.

  15. Papyrus makes me physically ill.

  16. Ha Ha! My partner and I refer to Papyrus as the “restaurant font” for it seems for the past several years anytime a new restaurant opens, they use this wretched font for either the “logo” or menu.

  17. This idea of “witty” self-praising posters is beginning to be over-used and annoying.

    Anyway, what font is this on it? I love it :D. Can someone tell me?

  18. What, no commas? Shouldn’t that be “Hobo, Comic Sans, or Papyrus”?

  19. That typeface is Ziggurat.

    There’s no period either. I took some license in leaving out punctuation to make it cleaner. Commas and periods hanging on the right side would be distracting.

    yes! papyrus seems to the typeface of choice for badly designed menus.

  20. While I can understand the sentiment with things like this, but it just feels like it reinforces a dogma more than anything.

    I mean, not that it promotes some bad idea, but it just closes our mind a little bit in regards to the design project and makes us think more about what the design community is thinking. It’s like Helvetica. There are so many people using Helvetica now, not because it’s the right font for the project or they understand its graces, but because so many designers (good and mediocre) overpraise it.

    Dogma leads to deferral. Designers can not fall into the habit of deferring choices instead of finding the answers to design problems through research and work.

  21. Dogma is something used for serious ideas and mantras, Not plastic toys you get in a happy meal. Comic sans and papyrus are exactly that. Prepackaged plastic bullshit you get with your computer. Never has there ever been a choice in front of me whose best and only answer was comic sans.

  22. Someone thinks this is serious enough to make a poster with an ‘I promise’ mantra on it.

    Yes, it’s whimsical (and even funny), but all it does is subconsciously puts up barriers that less-experienced designers may start to use as formalist rules as opposed to learning how to determine a typeface’s suitability based on the project.

    To me this isn’t about these typefaces at all; this is more an issue about design culture. It’s to make us feel good that we’re not the poor deluded fool working some shitty printshop who’s never heard of Sagmeister. It’s a simple validation of us as enlightened designers… we’re humans, we crave that.

    There will be a day when some really clever designers start to take these fonts and make amazing things and blow the doors off design. Design has been a long string of reactions, many times, against itself and the prevailing dogma of the time.

    Good design is not about promises or mantras; it’s about so much more. It’s about leaving the mind open to possibilities that will lead a design to getting that emotional response. There are no rules for that. This openness separates the good and the great designers.

    I love design but i hate closed doors.

  23. i just wish I included University Roman in the list. I just had to redesign a job that used it. Even the client thought it was hideous type seleciton. But the name University Roman is way too long to work with this design.

  24. YES! University Roman is what i wanted to mention too, but I somehow forgot it’s name

  25. Haha! This cute and you have my word. :)

  26. This is great!! I will give it to everyone that uses that font type :)

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    is also happening with this piece of writing which I am reading at this place.

  29.  El video-game es realmente estupendo, empero resultaria resultar un mucho mas adecuado