420 Design Blog
Using a font just to use it: Papyrus
13 Jun 2005 | Angie H
Update: A few more examples of the (over)use of this font: Serenity East West Bookstore Six String Cafe Green Promise 1/30/06
Too often I see the result of a small businesses or individual taking a shortcut in design and/or marketing and to put it bluntly, it makes me cringe. There's a whole slew of reasons, but one of them that has recently caught my attention the most is the use of decorative or fancy fonts in logos or marketing materials, or both. It's one of those things that happen in waves of trendiness and it's unfortunate.
There are a few fonts where I've seen this "thing" happen. But for the purpose of this article, I'll stick to one: Papyrus.
Lately, I have seen this font everywhere. Or so it seems. Personally, I can't stand the font. One, because it just doesn't appeal to me; and two, because it's so overused. It's mere overuse is annoying, but it makes me wonder why anyone would use an overused font?? Well, let's go through some examples first and then ponder some more.
Here is a portion of a newsletter sent to me by a freelance writer. This particular example is okay. Not a huge offense since the font is used primarily as a header. Decorative fonts, if used at all, should be used as headers and not for bigger chunks of text or important information. Otherwise, it gets too hard to read, hierarchy in layout is lost and so is the message you're trying to make. Even the use of Papyrus for the pull-quote on the left in this example is okay. It's a short amount of text that isn't supposed to hold the reader's attention for long.
This "Dragon" example is a no-no for a couple of different reasons. In this case, yes there's a small amount of information that's being conveyed, which would seemingly be okay. However, this information is key as it's an address. This example was taken from a mailing label, so you can imagine the size the font is at. This font (again, a decorative font) becomes difficult to read at smaller sizes and when the information needs to be read quickly, as in the case of mail. Furthermore, this font isn't easily read by the scanners used by the US Postal Service. In this particular case, it probably wasn't a big deal as the label was a return label. Had the piece of mail needed to be returned to sender, however, it would've taken longer than usual despite it being printed and not hand-written. Yes, design plays a role even in the most mundane of situations: mailing labels.
This is just overkill. Someone loved this font so much, they just felt the need to splatter it everywhere for just about all their body copy and important information. This becomes a serious pain to read, especially at smaller sizes.
This is perhaps the worst offender (though the Thai Elephant comes in as a very close second). While they kept the use of Papyrus in the body copy to a minimum, they also used it in their logo. I won't get into why that logo isn't more than just two fonts put together, but a basic rule in logo and identity design is not to use the font in your logo for other text. It waters down the uniqueness of your logo. (This is a subject I'll be touching on soon.) Even with the minimal use of Papyrus the Cabo Tan logo is hardly a logo anymore.
Now, I've presented 4 examples of businesses using Papyrus. Okay, so 4 really isn't that many, but I can think of at least two others that for one reason or another, I couldn't post here.
I'm not saying you should never use Papyrus. I'm sure it has its place somewhere (and if you know where, please let me know!). But the overuse of it makes me wonder why on Earth would a business continue to use it in their logo or sales/marketing materials? It's a font that's used by many. Enough people have (over)used it that it's no longer unique, and that lack of uniqueness spills over into the material the font is being used in. From a business marketing standpoint this is virtual suicide. You're effectively conforming rather than standing out, in which case... why bother?