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Jul 26, 2010

Worst Typeface - That’s easy. The second worst - that’s tough…

Comic sans is number one!  That’s the truth according to every graphic designer I know.  I’m on that bandwagon, too. While we’re all in agreement, we can’t come to consensus on number two.

Recently a young designer that I respect and admire totally blasted Bleeding Cowboys on a popular social media site. She said it’s the “absolute worst.” Bleeding Cowboys is a distinctive typeface with limits to it usefulness, and it has been greatly over-utilized of late–to my knowledge--by young designers with limited access to, or knowledge of typefaces.  But is it really the worst??

Last Friday, I enjoyed an incredible night of music and performance at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. I say that in spite of the bitter slap in the face I received when I looked at their summer program—laid out with headers and subheads in Cracked. Ouch!

Some say Times New Roman is Terrible! Horrible! Awful! But I haven’t heard a sufficiently good reason except that it was the default typeface for Microsoft Office (and everybody knows that as professional designers and Apple adherents, we must loathe anything non-Apple).

People, everything African, Indian, and Middle-Eastern can not be represented by Papyrus. This is another typeface that non-(or unskilled)designers use as a go to when unable to rely on sound typography skills to create an effective use of space, hierarchy, movement, purpose.  

Bradley Hand and Dakota Hand. I personally believe that these two live in the same zip code as Comic Sans.

Finally, this name wouldn’t have come to mind except that I got a request to create a logo from this font. What self-respecting professional membership organization wants to be represented by Monotype Corsiva? You heard me! It's ridiculous, yet this offensive, improperly used, over-used abomination is what they chose to represent their decades old, professionally respected organization. I choose Monotype Corsiva too... as my number two worst font of all!




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