Another Unfortunate Font Cliché
By bohus
Fonts have been much on my mind lately thanks to a project I'm working on. There are certain font cliches out there that I'm sure we all suffer through every day. My friend Tony pointed out the overuse of "Curlz", "Fiesta" pollutes every retirement party invite and daily specials at Mexican restaurants, and let's not even consider the unspeakable horrors visited upon us by users of "Comic Sans" (the 2004 Canada Day collector coin, for one...).
Who knew that "Trajan" has commited crimes on an even larger scale in just the last few years? According to this video, a surprisingly large number of movies use Trajan as their title font, trailer font, or as part of the DVD packaging. There must be some Trajan-friendly focus group somewhere that made this happen. If you've seen the brilliant documentary film "Helvetica" (created for the font's 50th anniversary), you know how easily a font can become so ubiquitous that it can lose some of its power.
Why do certain fonts hold our fascination more than the many other varieties out there? I guess because they still work. "Verdana" still looks great, "Times New Roman" will live forever, and "Georgia" is a classic that we even use around here on Retro Thing. Just please make it so I don't ever have to see "Magnetic" or "Chicago" again.
Pick up the documentary "Helvetica" on DVD from Amazon
related:
Typewriter parable - How far have we come?
Tippa S portable typewriter by Grundig-Adler
Terrific typewriter titillation
