Font Smackdown

[mutepointe]

1 Vote. Re-voting permitted.

I will express my opinion later so as not to bias this most scientific of all smackdowns but I did want to post this Funny Picture:

[emmline]

No. It seems like the worst one is Haettenschweiler. Very claustrophobic.

[I.D.10-t]

Depends on the environment and what is most legible.

[buddhu]

The worst front by miles is the one I use for my handwriting...

[Innocent Bystander]

It makes me laugh that there are graphic designers who want to ban Comic Sans. Snobs!
If by some fluke of misfortune they managed to succeed, what then? Ban Lucida Console? OCRB?

Granted they say all publicity is good publicity. I'm not sure it is good publicity if it makes them look like a whiney dog-in-the-manger. Maybe it's not stylish or fancy, but it's legible. Use it! Annoy these pontificators!

It's not difficult to make a font. I've made half-a dozen. If Comic Sans was struck down, a dozen similar fonts would rise in its place.

[Innocent Bystander]

And they used Arial in their response. Wooo! Imaginitive!
(We all have our bugbears. I might have quibbled about the number of exclamation marks.)

[mutepointe]

They're a Fortune 500 Company. They have exclamation points to burn.

[s1m0n]

There needs to be a third sign saying 'actually, I am a door'.

[highland-piper]

There are so many pathetic fonts from the 80's it would be hard to pick just one.

As far as fonts commonly abused, I think Comic Sans is near the top of the list. As far as commonly used fonts used for their appropriate purposes that I wish weren't used as much I might go with Arial.

[dwest]

I only use A and C fonts from folks like William Morris, Dard Hunter, Rennie Mackintosh. Really makes a business card pop.

[emmline]

With all due nods to the fact that this entire thread is tongue-in-cheek, what is an appropriate alternative to the overuse of a font such as Comic Sans or Arial? Do we randomly generate a font selection for each sign we post on the washroom door? Surely, if so, you are at great risk of incurring derision when Curlz comes up. Or consider this exchange:
Hey! Frank! Don't leave rotten sushi in the lunchroom fridge! Didn't you see the sign?
You mean THAT sign? It's in Wingdings!

Is any font safe????(extra ?s used for emphasis and annoying effect.)

[Innocent Bystander]

Aye, Curlz is a good one. So is Jokerman, and Blackadder.
Kidnap can be really irritating. (hee hee!) The kids had a Harry Potter game which came with some pretty good fonts - I must see if I can dig them out.
One of my graphics apps comes with 500 fonts. I don't dare load them all. Now and then I download some of the display fonts. They're fun.

Do you remember the tombstone that Dubhlinn found, with text in Cursive Capitals that took us a few days to decipher? (I made a font file for that, and called it Epworth2 - I think Epworth was the name on the tombstone.)

You can always drive a graphics-snob crazy by sending them something all in Old English Capitals.

[highland-piper]

With all due nods to the fact that this entire thread is tongue-in-cheek, what is an appropriate alternative to the overuse of a font such as Comic Sans or Arial? Do we randomly generate a font selection for each sign we post on the washroom door? Surely, if so, you are at great risk of incurring derision when Curlz comes up. Or consider this exchange:
Hey! Frank! Don't leave rotten sushi in the lunchroom fridge! Didn't you see the sign?
You mean THAT sign? It's in Wingdings!

Is any font safe????(extra ?s used for emphasis and annoying effect.)

The problem with Arial is that it's a poor Helvetica knockoff. If you have a need for a insipid font, go for the original instead of the knockoff.

I think Comic Sans is a great font -- for those occasions when you want to conjur up memories of Doonsbury or Superman. It's not an appropriate font for general use.

In our office we use Myriad now for most purposes. We had been using Garamond previously.

[mutepointe]

Fonts project image and style. I find Times New Roman a particularly harsh & ugly font. I would like to find the person who decided to make that the default font for Word and yell at them. I think Arial is used for the accessibility issues. I'm not fond of that font either. That font and all its variations totally lack style and grace. Out of all the installed fonts in Word these days, I've chosen Goudy Old Style as my signature font. Similar to Times New Roman that no one who is not font obsessed would notice the difference but it has a grace to it that doesn't jump all the way over to a ladies font. Calibri showed up as the default font in Outlook and I can live with that one too. That font has the simplicity of Arial without the harsh blockiness.

The older versions of Word or Corel WordPerfect had a font like the titles of the TV Show Ellery Queen. I really like that font but a person can't write business letters in that font. One of the downsides of obscure fonts is that the receiving person has to have the same font.

[mutepointe]

No. It seems like the worst one is Haettenschweiler. Very claustrophobic.

This font can do nice stuff in TextArt.