There are many ugly fonts in the world, there are
many bad fonts, but there are only a handful of truly hated fonts. Two names tower over all others
in the field of cringe-inducing typefaces, Comic Sans and Papyrus. Yet, only one of them infamously
became the subject of a short on Saturday Night Live. Starring Ryan Gosling as a man driven to
obsession with the font's use as the Avatar logo, the video has over 18 million YouTube views.
Breaking with SNL tradition Gosling is genuinely funny. When his therapist reveals they're working
on Avatar sequels, he's relieved. "So they fixed it? They changed the logo!" Things in the sketch
don't go well from there, but in real life there is some good news on that front. I spoke with
John Roshell, a prolific designer who co-founded ComiCraft and now has his own company, Swell
Type. John was commissioned to create a new custom font for Avatar sequels and spin-offs. The only
conversation we had about Papyrus was when I first talked to them, they said so you know, like the
day that skit came out, that was it for the day! Everybody was just sitting there responding to
all their friends who were sending it to him. It definitely had an impact on them and I think what
they wanted the branding to be for the [sequel]. It was at least partially driven by the fact that
they were made fun of for it. You could tell with the logo that they sort of kept that feel,
that rustic feel where it's got the little divots taken out of it. When they sent me the logo, like
as an Illustrator file, one of the first things I did was just to kind of clean it up and simplify.
They just said, "We want to extrapolate out a whole alphabet out of this. Can you do that?" So
it was kind of a matter of just taking those four or five letters and then kind of building the rest
of it out of that. The uppercase went pretty fast, the lowercase was a little more challenging. We
tried three or four different kind of approaches on that until we settled on one. When John posted
about this project on LinkedIn, Chris Costello, the designer of Papyrus, replied with a
tongue-in-cheek comment. Costello still works as a graphic designer today and seems quite well
respected for his work in coin and medal design, including work for the United States Mint
and the Royal Mint in the UK. Having read many interviews with the man during my
research, it seems he's slowly come to accept his destiny as having designed one of the
most reviled fonts in pop culture. And with age, it seems he's been able to find the humour in it.
It's not only SNL who has poked fun. Papyrus has been the subject of memes and jokes for years.
– “Papyrus, are you kidding me? There's no place for that in a professional office setting!” – ”Yes!”
But why does it have such a notorious reputation? Well to answer that question, we're going to have
to go back to the beginning. In the early 1980s, certain things seemed immutable. The
popularity of big hair, the unstoppable rise of the Rubik's Cube, and the dominance of paste-up in graphic
design. But as we know, home computing would soon turn the design industry upside down with
the advent of desktop publishing. The technical details of paste-up and photo typesetting are
fascinating but will have to wait for another video. Suffice it to say, it was an arduous
process of physically cutting and pasting page elements, type, photos and illustrations, onto
a board and aligning everything to grid by hand, before it was then photographed and converted
to printing plates. But this gave designers greater creative freedom than they'd had with
metal type. In graphic design, fonts used for large blocks of text are called body typefaces.
These are usually quite conservative but easy to read and they try not to draw too much
attention to themselves. On the other hand, display typefaces are fonts used at large size
for short text like headlines and for advertising. These fonts could be much more expressive
and eccentric. They're supposed to grab your attention. And the 1970s and 80s was a time of
rapid growth and development in display typefaces. This was in large part thanks to a company called
Letraset, which pioneered a new technology known as “dry transfer lettering”. These were sheets of
alphabets, numbers and other characters printed on a translucent film with pressure activated
adhesive. To transfer them directly to a layout, you would just burnish the top side with a pen
or stylus. For customers, dry transfer lettering was inexpensive, easier to use and allowed more
flexible layout techniques compared with other available methods. But it was this combined with a
much lower cost to produce and distribute compared with metal type that helped to propel Letraset
to huge success. Fast forward to 1982 and a 23-year-old Chris Costello is working as a junior
illustrator at a Florida ad agency. It's his first job out of art school and they hit a three month
lull in business. Being a devout Christian and the son of a sign writer, he begins playing around
with lettering and starts imagining what the Latin alphabet might have looked like in biblical
times. Based on these sketches, he creates an all uppercase alphabet and pitches it to nearly
a dozen different typehouses. Only Letraset writes back. Now Letraset was the clear market
leader within their niche with a huge catalog of well-known fonts including Helvetica, Futura and
other famous typefaces they licensed from other foundries. But they were also an incubator of new
talent, especially when it came to display fonts. They offered a subscription to agencies, bureaus
and design studios called "Letragraphica" which shipped new display typefaces in the post every
month. Any unused sheets were simply mailed back to Letraset. This was a brilliant business
model because it allowed them to take a gamble on new fonts from unproven talent without making
a commitment to mass production or putting them directly into their main catalog. And so Letraset
purchased Papyrus for the Letragraphica program for only £750, debuting in 1983. Of course a
sketch is not the same thing as production artwork for a typeface. The transfer sheets were all
created using photographic production techniques. The British type designer Freda Sack began
her career at the Letraset Type Studio and she described the process in an interview. The work
was meticulous, and accuracy was essential… Having measured and analysed all the different aspects
and features of a particular typeface we would make a ‘jig’ as a template, draw the outlines, and
then cut the Rubylith... at between four and six inches cap height. Although with more intricate
designs – we worked at much larger sizes… Although termed ‘Instant Lettering’ the creation of
it was far from an instant process. It used to take one person around four to six weeks to
draw, cut and space one typeface… If we weren’t working on the ‘classic’ range, it would be on
ideas for typefaces sent in by type enthusiasts… Most of the submitted typefaces were supplied to
Letraset as quite rough smaller scale drawings, sometimes just as marker sketches, and all had
to be drawn up, and in most cases a fuller range of letters designed… During most of the time
that Letraset was producing typefaces, it was an accessible alternative to traditional hot metal
type setting… I suppose you could say it helped in the democratisation of type. The following year,
Papyrus made it into Letraset's front catalogue, but it wasn't particularly noteworthy. It was just
one of many novelty display fonts they published. Some have stood the test of time, and others not
so much. Papyrus could have easily joined the latter group and been forgotten by pop culture if
it wasn't for a twist of fate over a decade later. When Microsoft released Publisher in 1991,
it signaled that desktop publishing was going mainstream. Publisher wasn't intended to
compete with software for design professionals like PageMaker or QuarkXPress. It was marketed to
a different crowd, advertised as making it easy to create professional-quality newsletters,
business cards, brochures and more. In late '97 they released an update to the Small
Business Edition of Microsoft Office with the newly released Publisher 98. This version
included the headline feature “Clipart Live”, which put Microsoft Clipart on the internet
for the first time. But that wasn't all. It also included a new suite of display fonts,
including Papyrus. Fast forward a few years and Papyrus came installed by default with any
version of Microsoft Office. Before broadband internet was widely available, having your font
bundled by Microsoft was a huge deal. It was kind of like being picked out of obscurity to
be signed by a major record label in the time before streaming music. It meant millions of users
without any knowledge of typography had access to your font. In 2003 Apple included Papyrus as a
system font with their operating system as well, reaching an even bigger install base. But
the versions from Microsoft and Apple were not exactly the same. So let's pause to take a
closer look at the design of the font itself. The ragged edges of Papyrus don't come from real
ink over paper. This was made in the time before high resolution digital scanning, so even if the
original sketches had been made on highly textured paper stock that just was not a possibility. The
original masters are still in the collection of St Bride Library, and we can see the original design
was meant to be even more weathered, with patches of white space within the strokes. But these
were retouched out at the last minute, likely because when reduced down to size the detail was
either lost or created other issues. Papyrus has a handwritten style, but it's not calligraphy
or cursive. It's made up of mostly block letters with some unusual traits. In his original doodles,
Costello was clearly experimenting with different styles of calligraphy, including Uncial, Blackletter
and Italic. But the final result shows very little of that, except for the distended bowl
of the uppercase U, which has an Uncial flavour. There are other quirks in the uppercase, like
the high crossbar on the E, F and H, for example. Originally, Costello's design didn't include a lower
case, but it was added on request from Letraset. As a result, the two cases feel a bit detached.
For example, the capital and lower case U don't match. But that distinctive bowl is found on the
lower case Y. The x-height is also quite short for a handwritten style, giving us unusually tall
ascenders. And instead of the single-storey A and G found in handwriting, it uses double-storey
versions more commonly found in type. Here we have the original master sketch, and we can see two
sets of capital letters. A larger set with swash variants and a smaller set. Now small caps are not
unusual and are usually found in body text serif faces like Garamond or Palatino. But Papyrus
doesn't have regular caps and small caps. No, these are regular capitals and these are oversized
titling capitals. Because dry transfer lettering came in sheets of only one point size, it meant
that small caps weren't very useful for display text. But when the font was translated to digital
form, Apple's version used the regular capital letters by default, while Microsoft went with
the oversized set, which was never intended to be mixed with the lower case. Compare the same
text in these two different versions. This is part of why so much Papyrus looks terrible. The
proportions are just plain wrong. The titling caps aren't even aligned to the same baseline.
Personally, I think it does look better in all caps with titling initials as originally intended.
Letraset's own catalog from 1985 also seems to favour this configuration in their examples. So we
just talked about the major problems with Papyrus and why it's kind of an odd font. I'm personally
not a huge fan and I don't think many other graphic designers are either. But the core audience
for Papyrus had moved on from the domain of design professionals. Microsoft and then Apple made this
font available to the general public. And there's something about it that a lot of people like.
So let's talk about what it did right. There's a certain quirky charm to Papyrus. Its handwritten
effect has a casual appeal that sets it apart from other default Microsoft Office fonts. It's not too
stuffy or formal, but it's still highly legible. More so than many true handwriting fonts. So say
it's 1998 and you want a font that's easy to read, but still has a bit of personality. Papyrus might
be the way to go. Of course in 2022 we have a lot more options than the system fonts that come
with Office. But where do you go to find new and interesting fonts? Well, a great option
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even if you decide to cancel. So there's nothing to lose. Big thanks to Envato. By the late 2000s, Papyrus was reaching saturation point. Nobody can begrudge a grandma using Papyrus for
her stand at the church bake sale, but things were getting out of hand. By 2008 there were two
separate blogs solely devoted to showcasing tacky and inappropriate use of the font. This coincided
with the peak of hate for Comic Sans, which points to just how massive Microsoft's influence was on
popular typography at this time. As the smartphone era began with the launch of the iPhone in
2007, things would slowly begin to change, but even into the 2010s, Windows and Office had a
major presence in people's lives. Most folks only ever used fonts that came pre-installed on their
computer. This meant that small sign-writers and print shops often used fonts that were familiar
to their clients even if they weren't the best choice from a design perspective. Papyrus, for
as much as design snobs hated it, was extremely appealing to many people. As a result, a lot of
small businesses used the font for signage and promotional material. In the 2000s, the concept of
wellness also became increasingly mainstream from yoga to organic food. And before it became big
business, a lot of this stuff was grass roots or homemade, creating flyers for their workshops
or labels for their organic granola at home, often using their own printer and Papyrus to
express a rejection of the industrial modern consumer lifestyle and an alternative that was
“natural”. In 2009, the release of James Cameron's blockbuster Avatar pushed the font even further
into the spotlight. The film featured a humanoid alien race called the Na’vi. Not only was the logo
for the film based on Papyrus, but it was also used for the captions whenever the Na’vi spoke in
their alien tongue. This decision received a lot of criticism for many reasons, which I think
are well captured in the viral SNL sketch. At the time, Avatar was a huge deal. The budget
for the film was $237 million and the budget for promotion was a further $150 million. So using
a free system font that you might find on the sign for a strip mall nail salon felt glaringly
out of place. It's the typographic equivalent to the latest Marvel blockbuster, getting a cameo
appearance from Spider-Man, but it's actually just some dude in a cheap Halloween costume.
Especially amongst graphic designers, it was seen as a ridiculous choice. In the skit, Gosling is
obsessed in part because he thinks Papyrus seems like such an indifferent choice. But here, I'm
going to disagree. When a typeface becomes well known, it's usually because it finds a niche.
It comes to mean something beyond what the text itself might say. For example, Trajan becoming the
movie poster font which, according to Yves Peters, happened in large part thanks to it becoming part
of Adobe's default type library. Or the use of Gotham as a font for politicians and governments
in general since its use for the successful Obama campaign in 2008. Papyrus has certainly not
escaped this. To promote the Avatar sequel, The Way of Water, Empire magazine crowd sourced
an interview with James Cameron with questions submitted from actors, showbiz types and
surprisingly, one Chris Costello. For better or for worse, Papyrus is widely used to represent
indigenous themes as well as all things organic, natural and new-agey. Was the decision to use this
font in Avatar at all inspired by its association today with Native American culture? Cameron's
answer is rather glib, claiming it was a decision by the art department he didn't really look that
hard at. Clearly, Cameron is no Wes Anderson. He makes a passing reference to the SNL skit while
laughing off the larger question that this raises, which is pretty ironic in a magazine literally
called Empire. I've discussed how typographic stereotypes work in my previous video on Chop
Suey fonts, so I'm not going to rehash it here. But you don't have to scratch too deep to see
the exoticism implied by the use of Papyrus in Avatar. Cherokee writer and artist Roy Boney
Jr. wrote about his experience in 2015. Papyrus has become an oft-used font for anything
Indigenous… But harm comes from the symbolism of Papyrus being tied to ideas such as nature
and ancientness. It paints us as noble mystic savages while forcing us to continually live
as relics of the past. These are the same ideas used throughout history to subvert us as people
in attempts to destroy our cultures, languages, and land bases. It belittles our standing as
vibrant, 21st-century people with strong cultures. Far from being a careless choice, Papyrus is the
perfect embodiment of Avatar. The film's plot is famously generic. This led to multiple lawsuits
alleging plagiarism on the part of James Cameron, all of which failed. But in the course of one 2012
suit brought by Gerald Morawski, Cameron submitted a 45 page, sworn declaration detailing how he
developed the concept and script for Avatar, concluding with a summary of his influences.
My reference points were diverse, from serious films about Europeans or Americans immersing in
indigenous cultures such as Lawrence of Arabia, The Man Who Would Be King, The Emerald Forest,
Medicine Man, and The Mission to animated films such as The Jungle Book and FernGully. They
included the Tarzan jungle stories and science fiction novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs and the
adventure stories of Rudyard Kipling and H. Rider Haggard. Avatar has been criticised for its
primitivism, exoticism and perpetuating the cliche of the White Saviour. And while this isn't the
main topic of this video, it's worth mentioning that if you needed a greatest hits of these
harmful tropes, James Cameron's Netflix queue isn't a bad place to start. While its indigenous
connotations are some of its most corrosive, I think it's worth acknowledging how broad a set
of ideas Papyrus has become associated with. In the visual language of food, for example, Papyrus
has been used to signal any foreign cuisine, regardless of its origin. It could be anything
from sushi to feta cheese to jerk chicken. There's also the association with the organic and natural,
and with new age and alternative spirituality. But why is that? If you look at the design of
Papyrus, there's nothing particularly exotic about its letterforms. Going back to the original
development sketches, we see mostly European calligraphy styles as inspiration. So what is it
about the design that has led to such a strong association with these concepts? In 2019, author
and blogger David Kavady wrote an article called "In Defense of Papyrus" which is over 6000 words
long. While it contains some technical errors and repeats some common myths about Papyrus' origin,
I think Kavady's central argument is spot on. Papyrus breaks the rule of material honesty, which
in design and architecture is the practice of using materials in a way that is true to their
natural properties without attempting to hide or disguise them. The artificial rough texture
of Papyrus is a bit like how a child might age a treasure map by staining it with tea or coffee
and burning the edges. It's trying to come off as something that it's not. This is a big reason
for both Papyrus' viral appeal and conversely the reason so many find it garish. This material
dishonesty specifically falls into a subcategory I like to call "exaggerated patina". You can see
examples of this kind of thing all over film and television. Whenever a medieval village is
depicted, it's usually dirty, brown and dingy. Or whenever a scene takes place in Mexico or the
Middle East, there's a sudden aggressive yellow or orange colour grade. These visual cues are meant
to quickly communicate that a place or time is different from our own, but they're not value
neutral. There are visual shorthand for showing that a place is "other", maybe even "primitive"
or "dangerous". This is in contrast to the reverse trope of sci-fi colour grading, where scenes set
in the future or featuring advanced technology are often depicted with a distinctly cold colour
grade. Avatar is a rare exception where both tropes are combined, the sci-fi colour palette,
together with the primitive patina of Papyrus. Today, while it's hardly become an obscure font,
you're less likely to find Papyrus out in the wild than just a decade ago. This isn't because
the font has become shunned, per se, but more a reflection of technology moving forward. In the
age of smartphones and social media, Microsoft have been declining in relevance. People today
are just as likely to use Google Docs or Canva as they are to use Microsoft Office. And most of
what we read is online on our phones, not in hard copy documents. The centre of gravity has shifted,
and Google fonts now have much more influence on popular typography than ones from Microsoft.
So does Papyrus deserve its bad reputation? Some people say that the opposite of love is not
hatred, but indifference. And whatever else may be said, Papyrus does not evoke indifference
in people. Another font is good or bad, is highly context specific. Like its notorious
classmate, Comic Sans, its major sins were being too eccentric and too accessible at the same
time. Ultimately, Papyrus was not just a product of the time that created it, but of the last 40
years in type technology. Desktop publishing and home computers killed Letraset, but Microsoft gave
Papyrus a second career, making it one of the most used and abused typefaces of the 20th century.
It was a friendly face in a gallery of otherwise serious type options. It became a shorthand for
yoga classes, herbal tea, and a catch-all signifier of otherness. It might be one of the most obnoxious
and genuinely hated fonts of all time, but Papyrus might also be one of the last fonts that was ever
truly a household name. I hope you enjoyed this deep dive on the world's second most hated font.
Special thanks as always to my patrons over on Patreon. As this video goes live, I'm just going
to be shy of 100,000 subscribers, which is a crazy milestone. Thank you to everyone who has watched,
and if you also would like to support the channel, there's a new $1 a month level on Patreon if you
want to see some longer versions of interviews with my guests like John Roshell and other behind
the scenes shenanigans. If you enjoyed watching this and want to keep watching, I highly recommend
you watch either my breakdown on the Top 10 Most influential Microsoft Fonts over here, or my deep
dive on the origins of Chop Suey lettering, over here. My name is Linus, thank you for watching,
and I hope I'll see you in a future video.
Accidentally saw Avatar 2 with Open Caption screening. 3 hours of having Papyrus in the screen. I wanted to die.
I've always wondered why Papurus gets so much hate. I mean, it's not a favorite, but back in the day it was free and it looked good on Christmas e-cards. 🤷🏼♀️
Thanks for sharing, I really enjoyed that!
David Kadavy has a book 50 page book on it, “In defence of papyrus”, enthusiasts can check it out
"That one other font no one cares about, but some designers like to make fun of for some reasons even if it’s not that bad (albeit, it was a bit overused in the 2000s but not anymore)."
Truth
Papyrus is best font. And pluto is a planet.
These are the two hills I am prepared to die on