Showing posts with label graphic design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label graphic design. Show all posts
Sunday, August 7, 2011
What’s Up With Messy and Stupid Fonts?
11:45 AM | 
Posted by
Hero |
Ok, so you know I’m a graphic designer (and if you don’t, that means you haven’t read my book – tsk, tsk, tsk) so I’ve got a million fonts on my computer. Well, fine, not actually a million, but well over eleven thousand. Oh yeah, you read that right. And yet, when it came time to make a banner for my blog, guess what? Uh huh, that’s right. I couldn’t find a font I liked.
So… I went out into Cyberspace and started fishing through my favorite font sites for some cool fonts. While perusing the myriad typefaces available, I couldn’t help noticing all the just plain crappy ones out there. Seriously! Do we really have that much of a calling for backward written fonts? How about fonts where all the open spaces in the letters are filled in? And I like the distressed and destroyed fonts as much as anyone, but people still need to be able to read what the word(s) says. At least I hope people expect them to be able to read it, otherwise, really, what’s the point?
Some of them were so bad that there is no way I would know what I was supposed to be reading if I hadn’t typed in my sample text myself. That’s pathetic. And yet… they’re out there. By the hundreds, if not thousands. On reputable sites, with downloads and feedback. It boggles the mind. Well, it boggles this mind anyway.
Oh – and one of my personal favorites… the fonts that put cross hairs on the letter “O”. There’s a ton of them out there; messy, handwritten-type of fonts with cross haired Os, ‘cuz, you know, we often have a need to create things that look like they were written by The Zodiac Killer. Probably some of the same people wearing Charlie Manson t-shirts. Don’t get me started! We’ll put a pin in that and save it for another blog post.
But really, those of you who have ever sifted through the font sites know what I’m talking about. There are a buttload of fonts out there that if you used them on your banner, t-shirts, magazines or just about anything, there is no way anyone is going to be able to read what you’ve written unless they are willing to sit there and decipher it like a code, but without a cool plastic ring from a sugary box of cereal. And come on, who wants to do that? Especially when there’s no Cap’n Crunch involved. We all have our limits.
Now you’re probably asking ‘What’s the point of this rant, Hero?’, well, I’ll tell you. First of all, who said my rants had to have a point? You want a point? Stick out your index finger. Ta da! There's your point! But in this case, you’re lucky, I do happen to have a point. Just because you can make a font, doesn’t mean you should.
Labels:
"funny blog post",
"hero fletcher',
design,
fhs,
fonts,
funny,
graphic design,
hero,
humor,
observation,
rant
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