4 ms·

The Papyrus skit is funny, but am unclear is there an issue with using Papyrus? Is Papyrus not a good font? I'm not getting it. In other words why was the skit

by yumraj 4y ago

The Papyrus skit is funny, but am unclear is there an issue with using Papyrus? Is Papyrus not a good font? I'm not getting it. In other words why was the skit made?

DHPersonal 4y ago
It’s an overused and often misused font, similar to how Trajan went from Rome-based works to being used on most dramatic and thriller film posters in the early 2000s.
hnbad 4y ago
Papyrus is so widely used it's comparable to Comic Sans for many designers. It's not a bad font (even less so than Comic Sans) but it's overused and thus comes off as "amateurish". The skit names hookah bars, Shakira merchandise and off-brand tea because these are not only things that actually often use the font but also aren't considered examples of great design. This is contrasted with Avatar being a massive blockbuster movie with a huge production budget and arguably one of the most successful movies of its time. As the article states, the font isn't really a terrible choice for the movie but because it's so "basic" it comes across as low effort compared to the overall production value of the movie itself. You could argue that it's elitism but at least in part it's played for laughs because it's such an irrelevant detail while also being so potentially infuriating to those who actually do that kind of thing for a living. Realistically most professionals likely just rolled their eyes when they saw it used Papyrus or had a good laugh, but it's fun to exaggerate this to such dramatic proportions because it mixes a grain of truth (the font choice feels cheap) into an escalation of dramatic stakes (the protagonist losing sleep, obsessing over the typeface, stalking the designer, and finally crashing his car and yelling at him from the street) and the final pay-off (the designer smugly looking at him, implying the protagonist was right about the font choice being an evil act that the designer "got away with").

by yumraj 4y ago

The Papyrus skit is funny, but am unclear is there an issue with using Papyrus? Is Papyrus not a good font? I'm not getting it. In other words why was the skit made?

DHPersonal 4y ago

It’s an overused and often misused font, similar to how Trajan went from Rome-based works to being used on most dramatic and thriller film posters in the early 2000s.

hnbad 4y ago

Papyrus is so widely used it's comparable to Comic Sans for many designers. It's not a bad font (even less so than Comic Sans) but it's overused and thus comes off as "amateurish". The skit names hookah bars, Shakira merchandise and off-brand tea because these are not only things that actually often use the font but also aren't considered examples of great design. This is contrasted with Avatar being a massive blockbuster movie with a huge production budget and arguably one of the most successful movies of its time. As the article states, the font isn't really a terrible choice for the movie but because it's so "basic" it comes across as low effort compared to the overall production value of the movie itself. You could argue that it's elitism but at least in part it's played for laughs because it's such an irrelevant detail while also being so potentially infuriating to those who actually do that kind of thing for a living. Realistically most professionals likely just rolled their eyes when they saw it used Papyrus or had a good laugh, but it's fun to exaggerate this to such dramatic proportions because it mixes a grain of truth (the font choice feels cheap) into an escalation of dramatic stakes (the protagonist losing sleep, obsessing over the typeface, stalking the designer, and finally crashing his car and yelling at him from the street) and the final pay-off (the designer smugly looking at him, implying the protagonist was right about the font choice being an evil act that the designer "got away with").