Least favourite fonts?

PistolPete

Member
The favourite fonts thread got me wondering - which typefaces make your heart sink whenever you come across them, either through their widespread misuse, or just because they're plain ugly?

I'm taking Comic Sans as a given.

Since it shipped with Windows 7 I've seen Bleeding Cowboy turn up in many places beyond its acceptable use advertising the Wednesday night mechanical bull contest at a theme bar too. Even better when the poster was designed in Word & the tops of the letterforms are clipped....

So what are your typographical pet hates?
 
Agree with you that Comic Sans is given. But what do you think about the 2012 olympic font? It looks like it has been created by a group of young schoolchildren having nothing better to do.
 
For me it's not the fonts per se, as there's always the right place for them, even Comic Sans.
Papyrus also works for churchy stuff.

For me it's using the wrong font for the job or a REALLY bad font choice that I don't like.
That and my other arch nemesis.
Using a script font in CAPS.
This is usually seen on the back of Vauxhall Corsa's and the like. :(
 
For me it's not the fonts per se, as there's always the right place for them, even Comic Sans.
Papyrus also works for churchy stuff.

For me it's using the wrong font for the job or a REALLY bad font choice that I don't like.
That and my other arch nemesis.
Using a script font in CAPS.
This is usually seen on the back of Vauxhall Corsa's and the like. :(

I agree with all of that, although there are definitely fonts I see misused far more often than I see them used appropriately. I thought this would be a good place to vent about such things.

Interestingly the 70s version of "Ban Comic Sans" was "friends don't let friends set in Souvenir." Now I rather like Souvenir in its place, as it evokes old fashioned family run restaurants & the title sequence of The Waltons, but I suspect that's because I didn't have to see it widely abused for a decade...
 
Gonna be controversial, but Helvetica… I don't think I've ever found a situation where I feel I've been able to use it. It's not really suited for body copy, and I see the bold variants used in branding constantly which makes me look for something different. I do like the letterforms of the bold/heavy and light weights, but everything in between I'm not really a fan of. I prefer Univers myself.
 
Bad fonts for me are those that are too specific/novel to have as a go-to font. It means I never experment with them:

Zapfino, Badaboom BB, Papyrus, Comic Sans.

For the record I love the elegance of Helvetica (and Eurostyle deserves a mention here) - but they are both so overused to the point of being cheesy design clichés.

Another kicker for Helvetica for me is that the default tracking in every set of the font I have seen is woeful. I always crush it up a little bit before I go in for the individual kerns.
 
What do you people here think about Ecofont? It should be mentioned that it's a software but it makes any font look bad. Perhaps those who created it were obsessed with the many odd holes in Swiss cheese so they decided to introduce Ecofont. Or they had a mission to save the planet. Basically Ecofont will take any font and add holes to it. The positive thing is that it reduces your ink consumption so you save money. It's also friendly for the earth. But the positive is outweighed by the negative here as it makes your fonts look terrible.
 
What do you people here think about Ecofont? It should be mentioned that it's a software but it makes any font look bad. Perhaps those who created it were obsessed with the many odd holes in Swiss cheese so they decided to introduce Ecofont. Or they had a mission to save the planet. Basically Ecofont will take any font and add holes to it. The positive thing is that it reduces your ink consumption so you save money. It's also friendly for the earth. But the positive is outweighed by the negative here as it makes your fonts look terrible.

Ecofont means well, but I for one have never done any print work on a scale that would justify that level of budgetary concern at the expense of the design quallity. You did however remind me of this lovely story:

Boy saves U.S. government $40o million per year by changing fonts

In a world full of bad headlines, this one makes me feel warm and fuzzy - and it's a great line to use whenever the importance minor design details are questioned.

Avenir has terrible letter pairings.

Agree 100%.

It's kind of attractive in an overly basic sort of way , but it's another one where the default tracking is crap. Unlike Helvetica, when you tighten it up - it seems to get worse, which is a paradox because for a font named AVenir it has a natural A-V ligature that you could drive a bus through - which when you re-kern starts looking a bit cramped. I've done an example - but it only seems to work when open tracked for titles and things like that (it seems to be popular in videos for example).
 

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@Jri

Thanks for sharing the news article. It's indeed a warm story in a world full of bad headlines. :) It's always interesting to read about young persons with a passion to change the environment and the world to the better .

Then it would be interesting to know what you people here on the forum think about hand-written fonts? Do they convey personality or do they come across as inauthentic?
 
Yeah I like raleway.

I find its a nice one to pair with some serif fonts, as long as there aren't any words with W's. (y)
 
Agree with what has been said about Raleway. It's a nice font but sadly the W's (which look like two v's intersecting each other) destroy the appealing part of the font. Is there an alternative to Raleway for those who love all the bits of the font except for the W's?
 
Another example is Papyrus. The name implies that it's inspired by ancient times, when people used papyrus to write down things. It has a somewhat ancient look. But mainly it comes across as being childish and outdated. I don't know which font is worst. Comic sans or papyrus? On a side note it should be mentioned that papyrus is a font that has been used for movies. Take a look at Avatar for example.
 
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