Recently I discovered a Tumblr that features famous logos done in the font Comic Sans. Comic Sans is infamous in the design community as one of the ugliest fonts around. It’s not just that Comic Sans is ugly, it’s also overused. But it’s not the only one. The Papyrus font is another overused typeface. Mostly it’s used for restaurant menus, but you sometimes see it in more professional contexts. It was even used in James Cameron’s epic sci-fi film, “Avatar”. In any case, it got me to thinking, what would other famous logos look like in Papyrus? Let’s take a look.
Some of the logos look fine in Papyrus font. Logos that use simple sans-serif fonts, like Amazon and Walmart, look okay. Logos with elaborate script fonts, like Ford and Coca-Cola, are virtually unrecognizable. The CNN logo looks pretty good, though after connecting the letters and adding the white stripe, it no longer looks like Papyrus. That brings us to the heart of the question. Why is Papyrus such a bad font for logos? It has to do with the proportions. Papyrus isn’t inherently bad. It’s just badly proportioned. Look at the size of the capital letters compared to the size of the lowercase letters. In many places, it just doesn’t work. And while a competent graphic designer can tweak the proportions, the result may bear little resemblance to the original Papyrus font. That’s because a good wordmark logo shouldn’t be made from a stock font. It should be tweaked, so that it becomes a unique work of art in and of itself.
Next week: logos in Algerian font.
Loading tweets...
2 comments
5 pings
John Mindiola III
January 4, 2013 at 10:27 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I think one of the reasons why it’s such a despised font is that it’s designed to look reminiscent of ancient Egyptian lettering, but it’s used for situations that aren’t trying to communicate ancient, Egyptian, or hand-crafted.
Steve Lovelace
January 4, 2013 at 12:29 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I totally agree, John. It’s really the same reason Comic Sans is so hated. It’s fine for its purpose, but out of context, it just looks silly.
Famous Logos in Algerian Font — Steve Lovelace
December 10, 2012 at 12:03 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
[...] in Comic Sans, I decided to create some of my own logos done in hated fonts. Last week, I featured logos in Papyrus font; an ill-proportioned font popular with restaurants. This week, I’m redoing logos in the [...]
Famous Logos in Helvetica — Steve Lovelace
February 4, 2013 at 12:01 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
[...] while back, I took a series of famous logos and rendered them in the fonts Papyrus and Algerian. Why? Because along with Comic Sans, Papyrus and Algerian really irk graphic [...]
Famous Logos in Jokerman Font — Steve Lovelace
February 20, 2013 at 12:04 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
[...] change the feel of a logo. I illustrated this a few months ago by using two widely-despised fonts, Papyrus and Algerian, in a variety of famous logos. The results were pretty hideous. As one commenter on [...]
Death to Caps Lock — Steve Lovelace
April 19, 2013 at 8:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
[...] phones, typing capital letters is even harder than before. Perhaps one day caps will be limited to period fonts and antique signage. Until then, lets make it a little harder to type in all [...]
The Rule of Tincture in Modern Design — Steve Lovelace
April 20, 2013 at 11:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
[...] always found it fascinating. Heraldry has a great deal if influence of modern corporate branding. Corporate logos are just the 21st Century equivalent of medieval shields. This shows up on subtle ways, such as the [...]