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A Mystery Font That Took Over New York
- ChuckMcM 8y agoLooks like Comic Sans to me :-)
- vanderZwan 8y agoObviously you're not a golfer.. I mean typographer :P I can see why it might remind an untrained eye of Comic Sans, but I strongly disagree. Then again, I have an arts degree, so let's chalk that up to déformation professionnelle. The funny thing about Comic Sans is that you can see that it is from the nineties computer era. Although I don't know if it was first created on paper and then transferred, or created directly on a computer, its curves feel both too mathematically "perfect", and at the same time ruined by human intervention. This is probably best highlighted by fonts that attempt to "fix" Comic Sans, like Comic Neue[0]. It's a bit like how tweening in computer animation can feel off when it uses naive linear interpolation, because it breaks our intuitions of normal physics (or is maybe that's just me). Choc on the other hand is very clearly (to me) a font that was created before the digital era. The brushstrokes feel natural in a way that we could not create from within a computer medium until recently (thinking in the order of decades). And yet, its feels more consistent with itself than the comic sans letters do. Furthermore, if you view it in the context of designs from the fifties it just "fits", you can see that it was a products of its time (same with Comic Sans and Microsoft Bob being visibly a nineties product, actually - and that is not me throwing shade on either of them). [0] http://comicneue.com/ http://comicneue.com/
- Baeocystin 8y agoIs there a book/resource you would recommend to someone who is interested in learning more about typography, and how/why the field has evolved the way it has? (Honest question.)
- vanderZwan 8y agoI'd love to help, but typography wasn't my direction. It's just that any training in the visual arts bleeds into other visual arts. Apologies, I should have been more clear about that in the previous comment. Sure other people here do know more on the subject though, let's hope they'll see your question and give some suggestions.
- plasmidic 8y agoIf you put your hand to your ear, you can hear into the future, when ten years from now disgruntled nerds will complain about their day being ruined by yet another unoriginal restaurant sign.
- Alex3917 8y agoSee also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonton_font https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonton_font
- jejones3141 8y agoOops... they either let Kumo II slip in or intended it to be there as an example of Mistral, the other font from the designer of Choc, and forgot to point that out.
- kupaka 8y agoThe "Japanese Cusine" below the shop name is the specimen, not the shop name itself.
- jejones3141 8y agoAha... thanks!
- nvr219 8y agoWhat about Matura
- vanderZwan 8y ago> “There’s an unmistakable energy in all the designs that [Roger Excoffon] does,” said Tobias Frere-Jones, a Brooklyn-based typeface designer. “They project their personality so clearly. And it’s very obviously not Helvetica or not Times or any other generic thing that might be on the awning next door.” Excoffon’s most popular typeface is probably Mistral, which was modeled after his own handwriting. Both this passage and Exofon's fonts remind me of Henry van der Horst, a Dutch graphic designer who basically has a monopoly on Dutch market signs. His work has become so ubiquitous that a market stall without it feels less "authentic", so there is a lot of demand for his work. It's crazy: everyone here knows his handwriting, without knowing it was one man doing all of those signs for decades, and when I say "all those signs" I mean that at a national level (altough the Netherlands is small of course). He's like a weird kind of anonymous household name ("anonyfamous?"). Well, until a newspaper wrote an article about him down a few years ago, that is. [0] http://www.willemverweijen.nl/henry-van-de-horst/ http://www.willemverweijen.nl/henry-van-de-horst/ [1] https://www.volkskrant.nl/mensen/-op-de-markt-doet-niemand-aan-jargon-~bc16a6f6/ https://www.volkskrant.nl/mensen/-op-de-markt-doet-niemand-a...
- fermienrico 8y ago“There’s an unmistakable energy in all the designs that [Roger Excoffon] does” This type of analysis bugs me. Yes, with hindsight you can say it has "energy". Give this font in a controlled experiment with many "energetic" fonts to choose from and you'd not say the same thing. There is probably a word for this type of bias - perhaps confirmation bias? There is nothing more to read into this. When a font gets popular in local design circles, restaurants end up tangled in the whatever font trend it happens to be because the designers that they hire are from the same circle of influence.
- vanderZwan 8y agoI took unmistakable as meaning that you can recognize an Excoffon font. Which I don't find so strange a claim - they're not exactly minimalist sans fonts, so a lot of personal character will sneak in, consciously or not.
- 8y ago
- andrethegiant 8y agoOh no... now I will not be able to unsee.
- smacktoward 8y agoPaul Boegemann was trained as one such sign painter — he is the proprietor of Paul Signs Inc., in Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn — and has been in business for over 35 years. “I learned how to hand letter signs and trucks,” Mr. Boegemann said. “We started with a simple pencil and paper. We designed what we wanted and used the styles we wanted and knew how to apply...” Asked if he’s ever made a sign in Choc, Mr. Boegemann said: “This style is a ‘Bastard’ letter style.” I like this guy :-D
- yuchi 8y agoAFAIK the term is how brushed typeface are called in the industry.
- kazinator 8y agoAlmost all the shops in the sign photos are Asian. Because the font simulates brush strokes, it adds an Asian element, since Western writing doesn't use brush strokes. Brushes may be used in painting letters onto a sign, but only as a tool to fill an area, whereby brush marks are regarded as artifacts to be avoided. The font doesn't look quirky to someone whose native writing system's canonical form is rooted brush strokes. Basically this remark in the article nails it: > This could have to do with what Choc evokes. For some it bears a resemblance to the calligraphic forms of Asian writing systems. But then: > However, it’s disputed as to whether Choc was a direct homage to these styles. According to Ms. Chamaret, José Mendoza, Excoffon’s assistant at the time of Choc’s production, said that the letterforms were drawn in outlines. “Never with a brush!” she said. That hardly counts as an effective dispute. Obviously, the font painstakingly captures the appearance of brush strokes in exactly the same manner that Asian fontographers do in certain fonts. They also don't use brushes, but rather vector graphics: precisely specified outlines or strokes. Choc is undeniably Asian influenced. Look at the C in Choc; it starts with a little right tick and then reverses. The roman letter C doesn't have anything like that; this is reminiscent of the top stroke in the Japanese こ (ko).
- rebolek 8y agoExactly, it's not very mysterious, it looks like kanji and that's why it's used by Asian restaurants. Case solved.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tschwimmer 8y agoUnfortunately they can't publish the GP's (convincing) comment in the New York times.
- kazinator 8y agoHowever, I could easily write the sort of twaddle that the NY times seems to consider publishable nowadays.
- evo_9 8y agoIn case anyone wants to see the font in question and/or purchase and download a copy: https://www.fonts.com/font/itc/choc https://www.fonts.com/font/itc/choc
- alwaysreading 8y agoI love typography and think it’s so helpful for developers to understand the basics. Typography for Lawyers is a great starting point - https://amzn.to/2S7vFyZ https://amzn.to/2S7vFyZ
- bitwize 8y agoThe article misses the obvious: the font resembles Asian brush strokes, and will be especially used for signage on Asian restaurants which are disproportionately represented in the examples.
- superhuzza 8y agoLiterally from the article: "This could have to do with what Choc evokes. For some it bears a resemblance to the calligraphic forms of Asian writing systems. However, it’s disputed as to whether Choc was a direct homage to these styles...There’s no denying that Choc has become a typographical shorthand for Asian-themed restaurants."
- zadler 8y agoHow is it that in 2018 with all the decentralised technologies that have been created we don’t have a simple way to mirror nytimes articles... perhaps on some kind of “permanent web”?
- toyg 8y agoWe don’t have a legal way. FTFY
- ssadler 8y agoWe have a technical method to do so, but the site has not been created, that I know of. For example: * A domain name like ipfs://nytimesmirror.com that mirrors nytimes articles (at the same relative URLs) * Some kind of crowdsourced process for content curation. I'm aware that it's not legal, but I wouldn't be against it. Content piracy has been a catalyst for change. I simultaneously would be willing to pay nytimes for access to their content but I'm not willing to sign up to a $15 / month subscription. So if their content was widely pirated using delivery method like IPFS they might be incentivized to problem solve that for me.
- quickthrower2 8y agoBecause nytimes doesn't want to be mirrored. A mirror would be a kind of arms race between nytimes and the mirror.
- matt4077 8y ago
- croisillon 8y agoI remember how incredible it was to have so many different fonts in Windows 3.1, Staccato was one of the favorites in my family
- pgtan 8y agoAfter watching "Stranger Things" with my son, we play now Spot-The-Benguiat-Font everywhere.
- barbegal 8y agoThis font is also known as Staccato 555. It was ripped off by Bitstream and included in the Bitstream TrueType Font Pack for Microsoft Windows 3.1 For some information about these fonts see https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.fonts/y3BOdTKSgc0 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.fonts/y3BOdTKSg...
- saagarjha 8y ago> This font is also known as Staccato 555. It’s mentioned in the article that it was packaged as part of CorelDraw under this name.
- ConceptJunkie 8y agoHey, it's better than Papyrus.
- softwaredoug 8y agoI KNOW WHAT YOU DID
- wtian2000 8y agoInterestingly, this hiring ad from the JS console :-) main.js:14 0000000 000 0000000 111111111 11111111100 000 111111111 00000 111111111111111111 00000 000000 000 1111111111111111111111111100000 000 000 1111 1111111111111111100 000 000 11 0 1111111100 000 000 1 00 1 000 000 00 00 1 000 000 000 00000 1 000 00000 0000 00000000 1 00000 11111 000 00 000000 000 11111 00000 0000 000000 00000 00000 000 10000 000000 000 0000 000 00000 000000 1 000 000 000000 10000 1 0 000 000 1000000 00 1 00 000 000 1111111 1 0000 000 000 1111111100 000000 000 0000 111111111111111110000000 0000 111111111 111111111111100000 111111111 0000000 00000000 0000000 NYTimes.com: All the code that's fit to printf() We're hiring: developers.nytimes.com/careers update: Those 0s and 1s formed an ascii-art style nytimes logo. The format is messed up.
- smcl 8y agoThere's a font I'm curious about, I wonder if anyone here knows it. I seem to see all round Czech Republic, I don't know the name, but you can see it in the sign for this place (the pic outside - "BUN CA HAI PHONG"): https://www.tripadvisor.cz/Restaurant_Review-g274714-d11686718-Reviews-Bistro_Hai_Phong-Brno_South_Moravian_Region_Moravia.html https://www.tripadvisor.cz/Restaurant_Review-g274714-d116867... It's used a lot in Vietnamese restaurants but also appears in random businesses (garages, hairdressers). I also saw it a lot when I visited Vietnam - I'd guess it's from there.
- bdsa 8y agoBanco? By the same designer and mentioned in the article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_(typeface) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_(typeface)
- nwellnhof 8y agoI remember seeing Banco everywhere on storefronts in France when I was there on holiday as a kid in the 80s. I immediately recognized it because it's also the font of the Thrasher magazine logo. Back then, I found it hilarious that every third boulangerie and charcuterie had that "Thrasher" font. I've never seen it on a German shop sign, though.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- needle0 8y agoIronically, come over to Japan and you will hardly see a single sign typeset in Choc, or any of the popular wonton fonts[1], anywhere. This is despite the fact Latin text is very commonly used in JP storefronts as decorative elements. The collective impressions around those fonts represent a westerner's orientalist stereotype of the East, not of the actual East. To an Asian native, it comes off as cheesy as hell. I usually find most complaints of cultural appropriation frivolous; go ahead and dress up as ninjas or wear kimonos all you like, we don't care! But this in particular keeps bugging me somewhat, as hardly anyone - even the writer of this article - seems to care about that angle much. Even in the logo for Disney's Big Hero 6[2], which I assume was supposed to be Disney's love letter to JP pop culture, wonton font influences die hard. (At least they de-wontonned the logo for the Japanese release, retitled as "Baymax."[3]) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonton_font https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonton_font [2] https://vgboxart.com/resources/logo/8390_big-hero-6-prev.png https://vgboxart.com/resources/logo/8390_big-hero-6-prev.png [3] http://www.lightweight.tokyo/3ds/baymax_hero/images/catch/logo.png http://www.lightweight.tokyo/3ds/baymax_hero/images/catch/lo...
- LeonidasXIV 8y agoOf course the lettering in Japan is not set in faux-asian typesetting since you already have real-asian typesetting everywhere else. Latin typesetting is mostly added to add a sense of occident stereotypes (to the point where the latin writing makes little to no sense, similarly how Superdry's Japanese slogan makes no sense to Japanese speakers), writing it in a brush stroke would defeat the purpose of such styling. This is also why you don't see fake-cyrillic writing in any country using cyrillic because it is just odd and meaningless to readers to these scripts.
- swah 8y agoHint: its not about Helvetica.
- msla 8y agoAn off-brand Comic Sans, then.