Papyrus: The World's 2nd Most Hated Font
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- Опубликовано: 7 май 2024
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The villain origin story of Papyrus, the world's second most reviled font. Perhaps the hate is not so deserved? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Featuring the voice talents of:
@munecat @NotJustBikes @nativemediatheory @PhilEdwardsInc
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00:00 I know what you DIDDD!!
00:58 John Roshell, designing a custom Avatar font
01:51 The designer of Papyrus, Chris Costello
02:40 The 1980s, pasteup and Letraset
04:37 Letragraphica and the creation of Papyrus
05:59 The "Instant Lettering" production process
07:32 The 1990s - Office 97, Publisher 98, Papryus goes mainstream
08:22 The power of software bundling
09:04 Mismatched upper and lowercase details
10:41 Two sets of capitals. One awful digital conversion.
12:07 The mainstream appeal of Papyrus
12:49 Sponsor - Envato Elements
14:06 The 2000s and hitting Papyrus saturation
15:10 Organic food, yoga and wellness
16:06 Papyrus and Avatar. Problem 1 - expensive film, cheap font.
16:40 Papyrus and Avatar. Problem 2 - careless or quite fitting?
18:09 An Indigenous stereotype, imperialist tropes
20:13 A catchall stereotype for otherness and "natural"
21:02 The artificial patina of Papyrus
22:59 Life after Peak Papyrus
23:39 Does it deserve its bad reputation?
24:47 A milestone video and call for collaborators!
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Undertale did more PR for Comic Sans and Papyrus then designers have in the last 20 years.
true
it's funny... that people hate those fonts but as the characters named after THOSE fonts ingame seems to be universally loved
@@kaxcommentssomethingREAL EXACTLY LIKE ITS SO IRONIC 😂
I think that you should correct the “than” spelled as “then”.
I actually kinda like the papyrus font regardless. I have no idea why.
Ah yes, papyrus, the official font of everyone’s fifth grade PowerPoint presentations on ancient Egypt
It really gave those assignments an edge.
Voted most likely to be ON the document that a kid is staining with tea and burning the edges of. Either that or some olde english typeface.
I still vividly recall a classmate's presentation. It had a papyrus paper background, with a neon purple times new roman font. This was for a masters course.
It still haunts my dreams.
The only choice, really.
Brings back memories…
Papyrus: A very hated font but a very beloved skeleton
@@lovelykittycat5528 meh. Overrated.
@PhantomGato-v- nah he’s just the best character ( in my opinion of course)
@@Beans_And_The_Goobers in your opinion. While I don't agree (Asgore ftw), I respect it.
@@Beans_And_The_Goobers heats flamesman is the best one obviously
@@PhantomGato-v- Asgore is great. Shame he doesn't get a lot of attention.
Papyrus is great, one of the best characters in Undertale.
As someone who is aware of this, this entire video + the comment section is hillarious.
What about me? If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have an avatar in undertale, and therefore couldn't play it!
And Sans too
@@FriskDrinksBrisk turn into a font, then we’ll talk
Nyeheheheh!
A decade ago I began a list cataloging every theme we saw Papyrus used for, as a family running joke.
*It currently sits at 593 entries.*
What began simply with “Ancient Egyptian,“ “Italian,” and “Pirate“ soon ballooned to everything from “Cheerleading” to “National Hot Sauce Competition” and “Bacon Inspirational Quote.”
Literally yesterday my mother sent me a new one she saw. Recent entries include “Swordfishing,” “New-Age Cat Food,” and “Weight-Loss Voodoo Doll.”
Comic Sans might have the ubiquity, but the Papyrus treasure hunt just keeps on giving.
This brings something up which the video failed to touch on, which is that the "hate" for papyrus is largely half-joking. The premise of feeling passionate hate towards something as innocuous as a font is inherently funny. I feel like this video treats it as genuinely and authentically despised and "problematic".
@@JM-mu4jd you're literally the only one who thinks that. Have you ever read a social cue?
@@JM-mu4jd It works well as a narrative for the video but I don't think that anyone really takes the "hate" too seriously: not even the creator of this video. I took it as a way to talk about the interesting quirks of an odd font.... not an actual call to arms haha
I would love to see this list
I saw Papyrus used for blankets
"Breaking with SNL tradition, Gosling is genuinely funny" AMAZING line.
I legit laughed out loud. god, SNL is just terrible..
I mean it's true.
I nearly spat my drink out when he said that.
i know the line was gold 'cause i had to stop the video for a bit.
It used to be funny decades ago...
I think the problem is that Papyrus and Comic Sans are actually too good. At least, too good at their objectives. They try to uniquely evoke hand lettering associated with specific formats in specific eras. They both succeed with flying colors, and that makes them stand out when you're looking through a font list in Microsoft Word. They stand out not only as unique, but as uniquely competent in communicating what their design is meant to evoke. As a result, every single uncultured non-graphic-design-educated swine uses one of those two fonts in every single fucking thing that they do, and that leads to oversaturation. It's that oversaturation that attracts the hate, not the fonts themselves. These fonts would be loved if everyone weren't so tired of looking at them.
i find it ironic that the most two hated fonts are also that of two popular characters with the same name XD
@@paradoxtatorstudios9681 The characters were named after the fonts
@@kankeydang2488 sorry if that wasn't clear, i'm an undertale fan so i know fair well that the characters are named after the fonts, not vice versa lol.
i tried to word it that they just _share_ the same name
😂
It is in a lot of ways a mirror to the dislike/hate towards Helvetica, it's an extremely compitent font that was well liked and hence used in absolutly everything. So much so that it's oversaturation started to create a backlash towards it within the graphic design world.
@@paradoxtatorstudios9681 So the ironic part is that the fonts are hated by the characters are loved?
Sans and Papyrus...
What a duet...
i didn't know THOSE two fonts in particular where so hated and the fact that the characters sharing the same names are brothers is just funny to me 😂
you should never say that again unless you want any designer to know you dont know wtf you're talking about.
its like talking about meat and saying "skinless and porc. what a duet"
@@alex_oiman I'm talking in contex with the Title, I just find it extremely funny why those two fonts are hated for, it just seems like people hate them for no reason.
As for the duet part, it was a reference, I just really don't get why the duo of fonts are hated.
@@razi_man dude "sans" isnt a font. just like "skinless" isnt a type of meat. sans is short for sans serif (without serif). half the fucking fonts are sans.
@@alex_oiman Okay, sure. Still, I am talking about the contex of Comic Sans and Papyrus.
Is there any real reason why these fonts are hated other than "I don't like it"? I honestly just doubt that.
I honestly dont think as many people hate Papyrus as they say they do, I think they just know its a meme to hate it so they joined in. Most people are probably indifferent to it. Same for Comic Sans.
No I would say that sans is quite popular if you know what I mean.
Megalovania starts playing, get dunked on 😂😂😂😂😂
@@ellanimation816 Wow, you got the whole squad laughing 😐😐😐😐
@mahoushoujo yes, because this comment add absolute NOTHING of value to the conversation and is barely funny. Undertale fans need to learn that not everything is about them. I’ve seen all over this video, but most importantly everywhere else on the internet, and it just makes me cringe so bad.
I know teenagers love making things that hardly get looked at Comic Sans for the fact it’s hated and kind of silly looking. But if all legal papers were in comic sans it would genuinely make me both less likely to skip reading, and actually come to hate the font. It’s so easy to read, but so easy to become boring to read. Like how all my resumes are designed in Garamond because it’s an eye-pleasing break from the constant flood of Times New Roman.
@@redtomato4903I couldn’t resist
I think the fact that it's both quirky and highly legible actually makes it a good font. Yes, it's absolutely one of the most badly applied fonts of all time, but that's a user issue. One of the terms we use in IT is PEBKAC - problem exists between keyboard and chair - and I think that's the case with Papyrus. You make something good readily available to a mass audience and it will inevitably be misused.
As a graphic design artist, I’m inclined to agree. The font is fairly well-designed, just *grossly* misapplied.
Agree 100%. Like Comic Sans, it's accidentally extremely legible, leading to people preferring it more often.
Oh man! I miss that term! Gotta bring it back!
Hard disagree. Did you not watch the bit where he breaks down all the design flaws? THE FREAKING U'S DONT MATCH. IT IS NOT WELL DESIGNED. YES I AM SHOUTING.
personally as well I like its look a lot!
Papyrus and many other "exaggerated patina" fonts have been and continue to be a godsend to anyone who plays D&D, where that kind of thing is perfect for handouts that look "ancient" but still need to be legible.
agree, far before i begun to play D&D i used Papyrus for this specific purpose
They didn't get rid of the original Papyrus in the subtitles... The Swedish subbed version of "Avatar: The Way of Water" in cinemas uses Papyrus for the _entire_ film in 2D, and strangely both Arial (for english spoken) and Papyrus for Navi' dialogue in the 3D version.
And to add to the mess; the 2D subtitles follow the action with the text being all over the place, even in the middle of the screen at times. 🙈
That is one of hot mess.. lucky for me it doesn't really affect my experience on the movie. But still, it makes you wonder what the hell happen there.
FOR US TOO! In Chile that was my exact same experience. Really weird... And really funny!
Here in Chile they were in papyrus too, but i actually searched for why they move around. It's part of accessibility guidelines for subtitles, because in scenes with lots of characters, and especially when multiple of them are speaking, it's way more clear who is saying what, in a faster to understand and more intuitive way than writing the name before each line
Same here in france !!
russian used some sort of sans serif font like arial for na'vi, if i remember correctly
Funny to see how they used it in the new Avatar film despite scrubbing it entirely from the marketing.
The LEAST they could've done was colab with Ryan Gosling and leaned in to the joke
I recorded this before the release, but I was disappointed to hear that the captions for the space whale are still in Papyrus.
@@LinusBoman I watched it in France, and the WHOLE subtitles were in Papyrus. Horrible in terms of accessibility.
@@hazrod13 That’s crazy, you’d think there’d be regulations in place to make sure that’s accessible.
@@hazrod13 wait.. so it's happen to all the cinema release? The Indonesia subtitle also in Papyrus..
And are the France subtitle also keep moving for some reason? Like there are not staying still on the center-down of the screen. It keeps jumping here and there on some occasion.
An element I'm surprised you didn't mention in terms of why Papyrus became so popular and associated with what it is- the name. Simple as that. It's a font that looks handwritten and weathered, and it's named papyrus, something we associate with the ancient world, Egypt, etc. If it were named "Bible Font" it'd likely not have had the same history.
I associate the name with Undertale
BIBLE FONT 🤣
I honestly think Papyrus might be more ubiquitous than comic sans. Comic Sans' silly look stops some people from choosing it for more serious subjects, but Papyrus looks just sober enough for it to be used for stuff like self-help books and movie logos, yet still silly enough for it to be used for lighthearted stuff as well.
I worked as a paste-up compositor for a newspaper in the late '80's. This is the first time I've seen anyone talking about paste-up online. I try explaining this to younger people and they look at me like I'm nuts, especially when I try to explain the waxing machine.
I wish I had been around when it was the done thing, it looks so kool. Cutting and pasting is how I made my own 'zines back in the day, obviously at a very basic level.
I worked on my high school newspaper back in the paste-up days. Years later I was still finding wax smudges and bits of hairline tape on some of my clothes.
Cut and pasted our high school yearbook in the 70s. Always carried an exacto knife in my purse because I had to use it pretty much daily. Maybe that's why I like junk journaling now?
I feel I am the rare graphic designer who actually thinks it works for the Avatar font. Is it lazy? Yes. But sometimes recognition has its own brand appeal. I personally think the new typeface they are using is similar-enough to the original that is recalls the feel of Papyrus, but still has it's own uniqueness and therefor is better. But, that said, Papyrus does have its uses, although it's now been far overused. You touched on some of why it's appealing: it's legible and easy to read, but it's also decorative. One of the problems with a lot of decorative fonts, is that they are too decorative. Papyrus is interesting in that you could basically use it as a body copy font, and it'd still be legible at that small size. And yet it's still decorative enough that it's not a conservative sans serif font like Arial or Helvetica, or a serif font like Times New Roman or Bodoni. And it has that deteriorated look kind of like many grunge fonts, but is far more legible than many grunge fonts. It's just a clean font that looks good. But just like how Times New Roman and Arial, and so many other fonts bundled in MS Office get overused, I think people simply tired of Papyrus because it was one of the few decent legible decorative fonts that was bundled in Office. Overuse of anything makes something feel tired. It's like when an otherwise good song gets played over and over again on a top 40 radio station: you get sick of hearing it, no matter how good the song is by itself.
Thank you, I thought I was the only person in the world who actually liked the old Avatar logo. The simplicity fits the themes of the movie, new one is too decorative for me.
Well put.
(another ex-graphic designer who likes papyrus - in moderation)
I think the overuse is a very US-centric view. I still remember in school we watched a educational movie and they used Papyrus it was the only time I saw that font outside of Avatar so I pointed out to my friends how they used the „avatar font“… they just found it strange that I care what a font is…
I love the fact that the Papyrus and Comic Sans fonts are vitriolically hated, but they're also the names of two of the most beloved characters in gaming.
the way you word this makes it sound like a coincidence but the names of these characters where specifically chosen *because* of how hated those fonts were
@@taggerung_ yeah that's why they were named that
@@PeriluneStarI'm pretty sure the creator chose them for that reason
Surprised the only reference to Undertale in both these videos was that one meme
How can you hate Papyrus?
He's the greatest warrior in the underground!
WELCOME TO THE UNDERGROUND!
*greatest royal guardsmen
* *Undyne Appears* * HELL YEA HE IS NGAHHHH! * *jumps out window* *
I'll die on this hill: Papyrus is actually one of the best fonts.
I'll go tell him! Wait... you mean the font
i don't understand the supposed "hate" towards comic sans and papyrus. i think at most, they are just silly looking fonts. it's more of a meme. i doubt most people even care about these 2 fonts apart from being able to recognize them at a glance.
Same with comic sans
@@maggyfrog There isn't any real hate. It's just a meme, and then there are the usual stupid people who don't realize it's just a meme and actually make it their sincere personality to hate these things, thinking it earns them internet cred or something.
As a kid I loved the Papyrus font because it looked like my terrible handwriting, and I used it a lot for personal messing around on the computer purposes. I had no idea it was hated until the reaction to Avatar using it.
I like papyrus, as someone with dyslexia I actually find it easy to read. I think it might be to do with the noisyness of the edges. Perhaps it doesn't produce as much visual stress as the crisp lines you get on most fonts. It's a little thicker than most body text fonts but the visual noise makes it appear thinner than it actually is. As a font for headers or signage, it's not as bold as most but still has enough thickness to be seen, perhaps making it appear more elegant than a chunkier font.
As far as why it's used a lot with food and wellness, it looks like someone has hand written the sign. Someone with nice but slightly unusual handwriting, they've taken care to write it, but not done anything too fancy. It says home-made, care and skill, without being pretentious. Exactly what you look for when going for some honest food or attending some kind of wellness class or shop. It also doesn't look like a font that has come from the UK or US, it has a kind of non-descript foreignness about it that means it can be applied to anything to give a touch of the exotic.\
People might not like it but that doesn't take away how cool I felt when I found it when doing my year 8 poetry work in the computer room at school
I use comic sans to make reading my text documents easier for similar reasons to yours. It's kinda weird that I'll use a font cause it's truly, legitimately useful to myself, but not use it in any of my own graphic design work cause of people like the video creator. When I get a PDF file, I always copy-paste it into notepad so I can read it in comic sans; don't care about whatever font another person is using; comic sans is better for reading.
Nothing wrong with any font, just people trying to make themselves seem more important by complaining about it in public. Avatar lost so much money using it... oh wait...
Sans Serif fonts really should be the norm for accessibility, even if they don't look the most pleasing from a visual perspective
@Veles343 great comment -- I found it as insightful as the video itself.
@@retroarcadefan yeah man how dare they make their opinion on a font known! And I'm public no less! How positively barbaric of them lol. Like dude, just cause white people think papyrus is exotic in the same way they think falafel is a foreign delicacy shouldn't get your panties in such a twist.
Wellness! Does nothing escape its grubby paws?! Poor papyrus and comic sans, truly suffering from their success. Especially learning the reason it often looks bad is because everyone used the wrong caps! I still like you papyrus.
Congrats on 100k! 🎉
what about wingding gaster
@@emperordalek102 we don't talk about gaster
@friskdrinksbrisk3242 Lol
i feel like if papyrus was lost in the crates of font design, and then magically found, people would love it. it's horribly lovable
Nooooooo 😱
Yes! I agree
The cultural memory I associate with Papyrus is slightly different, and I'm surprised it didn't come up here. The show "Grimm", which ran from 2011 to 2017, had a thematically appropriate quote at the start of every episode, and the quote was always, ALWAYS, in Papyrus, usually pale silver over a dark, slow-moving background. It was NOT the font they used for the title of the show, but they kept that "quote at the start of the episode is in Papyrus" thing going for six straight seasons. My guess (although unconfirmed) is that the show designers needed something inexpensive that would be readable on a small screen. Something that looked old-timey, but something everybody would be able to read the quote, whether they could decipher script or not -- since the quote was usually very important to the episode!
I've always thought it was ugly, but I think that's mostly due to the lowercase. Seeing the original sketch I was kind of blown away. Not a bad font at all with thoughtful application in the right context. The demos in the catalogue look pretty good, especially Don Quixote.
I think a big part of the reason for Papyrus's initial popularity is that it came off as "not modern/USA" but not overtly related to a specific culture. It's not directly screaming "Chinese" or even "Egyptian" and not directly trying to imitate any other culture's alphabet in any overt way.
Papyrus, the cantaloupe of fonts. Something that most people didn't actual mind or care about at all until it became trendy to hate it.
The Nickelback of fonts.
And yes, Nickelback is awesome.
"The Nickelback of fonts" ha ha. That's great
Good to know! In countries that use Cyrillic letters we missed this papyrus thing completely, cause there was no Cyrillic version of it. On the other hand, Comic Sans had Cyrillic, so it has the same connotations for us, as for Latin-typing countries.
Ah yes, the younger of the 2 font brothers, not as much as his brother Sans, but still!
22:29 I did NOT expect to see pictures from the medieval center in random bumfuck nowhere Denmark where I grew up, used as reference in a video about the history of a typeface lol. But yeah, going to the medieval center on Lolland quite often as a kid I always got confused by Hollywood depictions of medieval Europe as some kind of mud-soaked hellscape. My mom would tend the houses used for jousting in the off-season so I got up close with a lot of the staff there, and damn did they spend a lot of time clearing and polishing armor in the name of historial accuraccy.
Cheers Linus, thanks for another great video.
Is this that place that gets Hollywood productions filming there, only for the crews to fling a load of mud over stuff that would historically have been relatively clean/colourful?
the exaggerated patina reminds me of the new 'VHS style' filters that have started popping up- They're such an exaggerated version of what VHS used to look like
Yeah. When it comes to retro effects, massive overkill seems to be legally required.
I like comic sans. It's the ultimate anti-designer font and for that reason I think it can illuminate the manipulation branding and design subjects us to.
The hate comes when you have to read paragraphs written in it.
@@eekee6034 Reading in it is very easy though, it's one of the few fonts good for dyslexics
IMO one of the reasons Papyrus is so appealing is that the letters have bits missing from them. It looks like a pen drew them but bits got missed by paper chunks or a blocked pen or something.
All the other cursive fonts I've seen look like handwriting, but every curve and line is complete. Perfect. Papyrus just looks more natural because the letters aren't all perfect.
Now I'm sure there are other fonts that have that characteristic, but I don't think any of those were installed by default on two of the biggest operating systems, so by dint of it being the only one, that's what got used.
My two cents, anyway.
I used to love making Microsoft Word Art when I was 8-10 years old, and I was obsessed with ancient Egyptian history, it was one of the "Fun" fonts and it looked "Egyptian". In my mind it gets a pass for that regardless of other sins
Same. I still love anything Egyptology, but it's not an obsession anymore. The font is iconic.
Congratulations, you made it through the whole video without talking about a single skeleton!
Was not expecting the Not Just Bikes cameo, what a crossover
I was looking for a comment about it!
Wait can you give me the time stamp? Think I missed it...
@@bluedekrass 17:31
Definitely a nice suprise!
I was ADHD multitasking at the time and had to rewind that bit twice. First I though "Scott Hanselman but deeper", then picked up the Canadian hints and the echo of trams and bicycles.
the fact that it doesn't have the same baseline for all the letters is what adds to the handwritten vibe even more since humans tend not to write in perfectly straight lines, often slipping a bit even when using ruled notebook paper
The fact that anyone can get mad at all about a typeface is why I love using Comic Sans.
😂👌
Papyrus lets the church congregation know the story was set in Egypt.
Papyrus is truly one of the fonts of all time.
I wonder if it ever tried to "solve" the horoscope? 😉
I was playing Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn while watching this, and turns out the localizers used Papyrus for some of the splash text. It's from the mid-2000s and is being used to give a medieval Europe-like old timey feel, so it fits right in the timeline. Fun coincidence, and fits the general cheesy vibe of 2000s game localizations, particularly from Nintendo.
Papyrus brings me so many childhood memories because I used it a lot when using MS Paint, I thought it looked like something you would find on a pirate treasure map or old letters because of the chipped away edges
To be honest, these days when I see either Papyrus or Comic Sans, my major feeling is not hate, but nostalgia. At the very least they are both evocative of times and places.
(I still *hate* Avatar though)
I'm waiting for the near distant future where everyone starts wearing tshirts with quotes or words in Papyrus the same way crocs became unironically fashionable
i find it nostalgic as wel mostll thanks to undertale lmao. as for the fonts themselves i don't mind them its just a different style to me 😂
why do you hate it? ah, because the internet community told you to do so...
@@randomly_random_0 He is part of the Sheep community.
7:20 a real blast from the past. When I was just a kid in the 1990s getting interested of desktop publishing for the first time, I saw some of these fonts everywhere. Crillee was popular for some reason. Not as popular as Revue though. There was a time when Revue was bloody everywhere. Hardly a week passed without an ad in the local paper using the font. Nowadays kids only know Revue as "oh yeah, the title font for that cinema masterpiece The Room."
In my day it was Davida and Ringlet. That's putting me back with the dinosaurs.
Sherwood was my go to font in elementary school during the early 90s🤣
Years ago, in my first semester in art school, we had to design informational graphic cubes, and I did one on ancient Egypt, where I used papyrus. My teacher begrudgingly admitted that it looked pretty good 😂
The Great Papyrus is my favorite character in Undertale.
He speaks in the Papyrus font
I dont know how you trick me into watching a full video on one font, but you rope me every time.
I always love your videos on type; I find that area of design incredibly fascinating despite not being a graphic designer myself
Recently, the very popular online chat platform Discord actually changed its font from "Whitney" to a custom-made font called "gg sans". I suppose it's a bit late for the short window of relevance but I would definitely be incredibly interested to see a video (or short) you make looking at the change. I personally like the new font a lot, and I felt like I saw some design cues taken from Atkinson Hyperlegible (though it is very possible I was just imagining things since I use Atkinson Hyperlegible a lot)
I remember using Letraset to label photos and make figures for scientific publications. Of course, we didn't use display typefaces; it was mostly Helvetica.
To be fair, Helvetica works as display typeface in its heavier weights.
I used to use Papyrus for all my projects in elementary school, I must have been the bane of my teachers existence😂😂 I also used Lucinda Handwriting or something similar to that for like the longer form types projects. My mom was an Administrative Assistant at a University and she told me it was good to have a signature font and I took that to heart😅 this was still like early days of mass home computers, I remember saving my word docs on a floppy disk at school to take home to work on so I feel like font etiquette was not firmly established in tiny elementary schools yet.
My new signature font is Century Gothic which I think people should be less annoyed at, it’s my font for life, my one tattoo is in it and everything so you can say I’m dedicated😂😂
The backing track for the 1990s section is so good. Sounds like it would've been recorded by a band called the Backalley Lads
😂😂😂 spot on
I love Papyrus. It has come in handy for several projects I've done where no other font would do.
Exactly same. I'm surprised to see that anyone criticises it, and saying it being "second most hated"? My goodness, how my experiences differ. I'm partly glad from my previous ignorance...
I like papyrus too. It's actually a pretty cool font
i like papyrus and also comic sans, i think they are soo goofy and fun i love them
@@VonVikoGoat me too, there are just some situations where nothing else will do!
@@aiko0928 most recently I used it to make a bumper sticker of a Greek proverb and a label for a bottle of Poitín 😊 (Irish moonshine)
From the 90s to the Noughties, I produced a wide range of newsletters, brochures, tickets, and so on, for the school where I worked. I never used Papyrus simply because I did not like it, but I was also aware that it was not appropriate for the work that I was doing (though I did use Comic Sans sometimes, because pupils who struggled to read often found it easier with the simpler shapes).
To me, Papyrus gave a childish look, it was used by pupils a lot, and I remember one handing in an assignment totally in it (it was returned, unread, with a request for a reprint in a more acceptable font, apparently the parents' response was "told you so").
Sounds like teacher abuse, papyrus is perfectably readable. At least Avatar gaining a billion dollars can put you in the place of reconsidering what is "acceptable"
Hey there, congrats on 100K! Highly well researched and presented stuff. As a computer engineering student, I have to say Microsoft messing up with their choices is not... very unusual.
Check out Envato Elements 👉 1.envato.market/c/3671954/1159027/4662?subId1=video2 (since this video was published, free trials have been discontinued).
The villain origin story of Papyrus, the world's second most reviled font. Do you think Papyrus deserves it's bad reputation? Let me know. Also, if you're an editor, researcher or other creative type and potentially want to help with future videos on the channel? Please add your details here! forms.gle/n1ihCC3nMkLDT7f67
unpopular opinion:
Ravie < Comic sans
Thank you for the history of this font's origins. It makes so much sense to me that it was developed in Florida as a sort of "Biblical" font. I will forever associate it with attending my Floridan Southern Baptist megachurch back in the mid 90's. The amount of evangelical leaflets, Sunday school literature, and faith group power point presentations pumped out of that church using that font gave me Papyrus fatigue by early 1998. 😅
Thanks for the 7-day free trial, too!
is the changes in aspect ratio on the face shots purposeful?
For me the Papyrus always looked like it's made from tree bark.
That Pluto Outline I used to see all the time during the 1980s. It’s now a perfect time capsule font.
_looks it up..._ Oh it's cute! It's a little after my time for personal nostalgia, but it's nice.
I do feel bad for the guy who designed it. He didn't even design or intend for it to be used with lower case letters. He actually did make a pretty cool design and seeing his inspiration for the font you can definitely see that influence, it makes complete sense. The original sketch definitely looks so much better
I love Papyrus! I also can't believe that I just watched a 25 minute video on a font - and it was fascinating!!!
I find it incredibly funny that you used the picture of the Healing Waters Spa. They are famous around Edmonton for having that papyrus font to the point where it's unintentional advertising for them. Great Vid. I hope that Fusion trick helps cut down your tracks.
Great video. I remember in the 90s, particularly in France, having a similar sort of 'hatred' for Brushscript, which seemed hugely overused on shop signs, postcards, etc, as if it was the only non formal/officey looking font that anybody had. Potentially a chapter 3? Although to be honest I think the broader abstract points you make about Papyrus here would also apply there
I don't know if I just became your 100,000th subscriber, but as a long-time font enthusiast I have no idea how I didn't find this channel before. Looking forward to watching the rest of your videos and congrats on 100,000!
it might be because i grew up using office for fun more than for work, but i'll really miss the office-default aesthetic's prevalence in the future (although i'm skeptical at google docs being as popular as office nowadays)
I grew up in a "new age" sort of household (ya know, quartz, meditation, chakras, and that kind of stuff), and a good chunk of my childhood was going to holistic centers and places that smelled like incense. That font is used everywhere, so I have fond memories of it.
Papyrus was used as the header font for my favorite roleplaying game (Earthdawn) for basically exactly the reason it was created: It had a pre-Christian handwritten feel to it.
*Laughs in Undertale*
I was a elementary school teacher for 30 years. Due to budgetary issues, we had to make the majority of our materials ourselves. I loved Comic Sans because it was easy to read and looked like handwriting. It used the handwritten “a” (not like this one). I loved Papyrus because it was very aesthetically pleasing and easy to read. The fonts we use are a personal choice, isn’t that the point of having so many? Please don’t try to make people feel bad for what they use, it’s not nice.
You go an entire 25 minute documentary on papyrus, without mentioning the undertale character that prominently used the front?
He's in there lol
"Comic Sans and Papyrus" seems.. familiar.
LOL
* for some reason you are filled with determination *
I had no idea that fonts could be so divisive. To be honest, I've never paid much attention to most of them. 🤔 But learning the history behind them was fascinating! Thank you!
Great video, as always. Would love to see future videos about font fads from previous decades.
I love the minutiae of detailed Font-videos! Keep 'em coming:)
Absolutely and delightfully whiplashed to hear Not Just Bikes provide the voice for Chris Costello
Not Just Papyrus
You absolutely killed it Mr Boman. Spectacular video!
And Massive congratulations on the subscriber milestone!
Papyrus, the ultimate font for every Spa, Health & Wellbeing class or workshop.
I wonder if it’s a coincidence that Toby Fox chose 2 of the most hated fonts for his characters along with wing dings
very much not a coincidence
definitely not a coincidence, as soon as i saw the character's dialogue fonts i knew what Toby was doing
some kind of masochism ig 😂
@@snowwalker3499 as an Undertale fan this is nothing but true
Any fanfic I've ever read is almost always about them lol
@Paradoxtator Studios
Spamton is also up there, and he's based on an obscure big shot soda commercial.
Also Jevil is based on the Line Art Clown Sticker pack.
Also, as someone surrounded by people with limited vision, legibility is definitely an understated aspect of fonts. A library in my town for both people with limited vision and reading disorders is trying to develop a new inhouse font for both group which is harder than you think. (They also offer Braille in the library but as that is not influenced by the design process I left it out earlier).
Papyrus is Comic Sans for wine-moms. Also the new Avatar typeface is just the old Fantastic Four logo.
I used it in all caps for stone tablet art. It's good font. I mean its not for like everyday use, but if you want to go for that aged and crumbly look, it has you covered. Also it's extremely readable.
Cultural association with price has nothing to do with actual quality of it, and when used appropriately, its good at what it does, with wide range of niche applications from Halloween party invitations, to handcrafted soap tags, striking balance of being bit fancy, while not looking too pretentious and it stands out without being too obnoxious.
I see how it could get annoying with overexposure, but i only seen it and used it couple of times, and it seems perfectly fine.
There was a limited "Papyrus effect" we had at the design department when I studied graphic design in late 90s/early 2000s: most of the new students had their first encounter with desktop publishing on Pentium powered PCs running Corel 7... And ALL of them were immediately drawn to Avant Garde's geometric shapes at the top of Corel's default font list.
What else would I have used for Church bulletin headings in the early 2000s? Ha ha! Also glad you are putting in perspective as the world's SECOND most derided font.
the guest vo spots are amazing!! way to add production to the package!
Is that münecat doing your quote voice-over?! Crossover I didn't know I needed!
Linus, this is a brilliant video - thank you so much. i have to add one more thing to this soup - you said that the designer asked himself how would a latin biblical font would look like, and in addition to ancient greek papyrus writing, it seems to me (as an israeli designer) that he might took inspiration from ancient hebrew calligraphy, such as the dead sea scrolls (there are in fact several types of writing styles in these scrolls which are created in different times). a possible inspiration could be taken from the The Great Isaiah Scroll, or other archeological findings.
when i see the titling letters and also the lower case letters of papyrus, it seens that the habe really long ascenders and descenders, as you mentioned, and that is also prevalent in some of the styles of writing of the dead sea scrolls (such as the letter LAMED which has a high ascender). the scrolls themselves were not written on papyrus but on vellum (animal skin) which has a dotted texture, which might be inspiring the grungy texture of the letters. this theory is quite far fetched, i know, but i thought it might be worth mentioning.
Think you're bang on about why it got so popular - the combination of quirky aesthetic with legibility. So often when doing amateur DTP you go looking through a list of default fonts and manage to find something a bit interesting, but it turns out the text is just impossible to read on the page. (Are there ways around this? Sure. Is someone making a poster to put up in the office going to bother with them when they have their *actual* job to get back to? Nope!) Another ubiquitous font that seems to hit the same sweet spot is Copperplate Gothic.
Both Papyrus and Copperplate Gothic also have no alternatives readily available. No other typefaces really match their aesthetics.
I just discovered your channel, and it's amazing. Thank you.
I can't believe I get to watch such a detailed, well-researched documentary for free!! Well done Mr Boman.
Personally, I think the worst font is the one seen on so many restaurants serving Chinese. You know the one, in which English letters are written in style of Chinese. Makes me roll my eyes everytime I see one 🙄
Those are known as _chop suey_ or _wonton_ fonts. They've largely fallen out of favour for restaurant signage, but I still see them on some Chinese-inspired packaged foods and on the signs of older Chinese restaurants.
NYEH HEH HEH
I enjoyed this video so much. I’m so glad I discovered your channel! Keep up the good work!
I really appreciate how you explore the meanings and effects of things like fonts coding stereotypes about ethnic groups and cultures. Although some people might dismiss it as being silly, it's really important to investigate how everything around us contributes to the biases of society.
I once worked at an organization that, among other things, offered a computer class for adults. I once heard the instructor recommend "Algerian" as a good font for flyers and stuff. So I gotta ask: is that the 3rd most hated font?
that one I would understand the hate for
Oh hell yes, this is gonna be great. Also, (early) congrats on 100k subs!
🎉
100K! Congratulations, well deserved.
Another fantastic video! Great to see the channel growing and can't wait for the next video.
Sans and papyrus are full of determination
TBH there's a one called "Smooth Papyrus" and I really like it. Without the gritty wear it's much more appealing to me
Awesome video Linus! I really appreciate both the technical breakdown of how it came to be, as well as the analysis of its cultural impact. It is fascinating to think that we are really in a totally different age of type design now
congrats on reaching 100k coming into the new year!!