Why the Papyrus Font Isn't That Bad

all right class the next presentation is gonna be from Gabby oh yeah hi everyone uh for my history project I want to take you on a tour of my favorite ancient civilization oh God ancient Egypt guys it's a good font I swear it's see it's it's it's like Egypt it has ancient motifs and such you know my dad's gonna get you all banned from fortnite he works there he works at fortnite he works at epic games and he's gonna get you all banned [Music] besides Comic Sans there's only one font that seems to elicit extreme negative reactions from pretty much anyone who views it and that font is you guessed it because it's not obvious at all Papyrus with its Gravelly outline angular letters that curve in odd places and a g that does that weird little thing where it looks like an S wearing a monocle it's really hard to mistake this ancient looking typeface as anything other than Papyrus Papyrus is on every hookah bar regular bar small business sign menus Yachts you've seen it everywhere it has its own subreddit even SNL's made content surrounding Papyrus Papyrus usually I would think that if SNL is making content surrounding a font that they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel for Content but honestly Ryan Gosling's mental breakdown about the Avatar logo feels Justified here and clearly y'all agree you've shown me this before I don't even think this is literally Papyrus maybe that was the starting point but they clearly modified this or whatever they did it wasn't enough so today I want to Deep dive into the history of Papyrus the culprit and his motives for creating such a brave yet controversial font its rise to infamy and why Society so closely Associates it with ancient Egypt aliens and Chinese food so strap in and like Brendan Fraser let's demomify the mystery of papyrus who made this why why again why [Music] ancient papyrus so where did this font even come from where did it go where did you come from Cotton Eye Joe this hat is getting to me as far as I remember Papyrus has been around since the dawn of time but that's because the font is older than me to understand where Papyrus began we're gonna have to make like share and turn back time to 1982. I'm really on it with the references today let's hop in the DeLorean dial it in dial 1982 in cause we're let's go we're gonna dock Brown our way to the back to the feet you can thank this guy for papyrus existing on every tea brand and remotely Arabic restaurant Chris Costello the creator of the Papyrus font was just 23 years old when he first began sketching the design for what would become the second most hated font in the world what were you doing at 23 inspired by his study of the Bible Amen brother Chris wanted to create a font that would represent what the English language texts may have looked like if it was written on papyrus two thousand years ago hence the name Papyrus yeah I didn't even know Papyrus was a real thing before the font I'm gonna get comments like you didn't know that and you mean shut up okay the American education system isn't the best I'm here to teach you things that you would feel dumb for not knowing but I'm gonna admit all my faults right here I don't know everything I didn't understand the Broken Clock analogy broken clock is right twice a day didn't understand that this is how distorted our world view has become we live in a society where people recognize Ronald McDonald before Jesus Papyrus wasn't a font or a silly skeleton in undertale and when I asked Mr Google what the heck is papyrus the silly skeleton showed up before the actual thing Papyrus is actually a plant that was cultivated in the Nile Delta region of Egypt and they get the stems and they crush them together and dry them to make paper right so Mr Chris Costello claims that his personal search for peace with God is what led him to First pick up a calligraphy pen and attempt to create the typeface by simply picking up his pen he started a war to which no end would be found and in trying to find peace he himself inflicted incalculable unrest in Conflict the likes of which have never been seen before anyways over the course of just a few days Chris Costello worked tirelessly to hand draw the font on textured paper and then he sold it to Microsoft and it became what it is today and he's a millionaire and you know he lives happily ever after I lied he tried to sell it to several companies and literally everyone rejected it except for this one small British company called letra set you know electric set good old letra set yeah I've never heard of them either but apparently they allegedly created the lorem ipsum text so 1984 Chris sold the rights to Papyrus four for 750 pounds which is about 2 300 pounds or 2900 USD in 2023 that's it if only Chef Prudence knew the truth the company that bought Papyrus sold it to Microsoft in the mid 90s and when Microsoft Office launched in 1997 Papyrus and Comic Sans came pre-installed on every Microsoft computer and these fonts were released into the world like the invasive species that they are spreading like wildfire sparking hatred in the minds and hearts of the public imagine having this much emotional impact on the entire Western World just from making a font oh but it's not just Microsoft either little Steve Jobs wanted in on the Papyrus action and Papyrus became a default font in Mac OS since 2003. clocking in at a grand total of at least a billion Windows machines that's that's just what the site told me I don't know and over 120 million Max that's more times than Gangnam Style has been streamed on YouTube even after 20 years of Microsoft owning Papyrus Costello says he's received very little royalties from the font we don't know exactly how much but it's not enough or too much depending on how much you you hate this font I mean I guess how this happened though because how is he supposed to know how is anyone supposed to know that this freak of a font was going to inspire the signage of every vaguely Mediterranean restaurant in white people yoga studio across the world even Chris himself has said the typeface is overused he says it was not my intent for it to be used for everything we know that now Chris but it's too late so there you have it a harmless project in one man's search for reconciliation spiraled into a war of hatred and pandemonium and if you're wondering Chris has made other fonts and Designs all of which have made him more money than Iris has this whole time and are much lesser known but what exactly makes Papyrus so hated I'm gonna be honest I don't think the collective loathing of Papyrus is deserved hot take it's over hated not overrated so complex history aside let's look at the actual font itself and try to get to the bottom of why this font is so silly I'm gonna judge this font in a vacuum and we're gonna just look at the letters themselves so I can scientifically prove once and for all that Papyrus is not a bad font I'm also just mad at my graphic design teachers I don't know I do have a history in graphic design and I took some classes in college and as you can see in my videos graphic design is my passion but in order to further help me with this I found a guide to five design elements of a good typeface consistency spacing kerning legibility and even color slash texture we're gonna go down this list and examine Papyrus as objectively and scientifically as possible in context with these elements and give it a pass or a fail grade for each one I'm about to cosplay as the teacher you had a crush on in middle school and at the end will total the school scores and if it receives a passing score in three or more categories we will know once and for all that Papyrus is over hated and not overrated in my opinion so first up is consistency this basically just means that the font has to be consistent in terms of character width letter height stroke textures Etc basically do the letters look congruent with each other if we take a look at Papyrus we can see that all the letters in punctuation are measured to be the same stroke height and width when compared with other characters with that said Papyrus receives a pass for consistency next is spacing spacing refers to how close the letters are when typed out if the letters are too close they start falling in love we get a little bit of a you know a workplace relationship and then I have to go contact HR and and you know what q and P do when they get too close together right and if the letters are too far apart from each other they get lonely and sad luckily for us Papyrus doesn't have this problem it gets a pass from me baby next up is kerning similar to spacing kerning deals with the distance between letters but on a more specific letter to letter relationship that's right it's almost Valentine's Day no matter what time of the year you're watching this these letters have specific relationships with each other and I'm just here to make sure that they're leaving room for the Holy Spirit you know what I mean to my understanding which is not much it basically makes sure that specific letter pairs look like they're even with the rest of the word even if the spacing is consistent but also it's been a few years since I've done any graphic design so I'm not sure if I have the trained eye that can point out flaws in something as intense as kerning but in my opinion it passes yeah oh yeah it passes legibility is pretty obvious can we read the font easily without much effort if you know how to read then yeah yeah I mean there's a reason that so many people use it as signage Papyrus is stylized and easy to read pass finally the last thing that makes a font a good type face is even color and texture and before you dork start well actually in me in the comments saying it's not a font font is the size and the typeface are the actual letters um actually I went to like 10 years of design school and and and your stupid point at minute 567 is stupid and you're stupid and I'm and you're stupid I I do not care that is a stupid Hill to die on and everyone knows what I'm talking about next so yeah Papyrus is the kind of font that naturally has the Riz as the kids say since the letters are well spaced legible and turned properly I think and in terms of color and texture I mean look at that texture what the is this category I can't feel the texture of a font so Papyrus as mocked as it is is a respectable Microsoft font they're not gonna release a type face with some design flaws poor spacing and off-kilter kerning right that's not how they roll I mean just look at wing dings what is that I don't know but it looks good is papyrus the most aesthetically pleasing font depends if your aesthetic is Jesus core but no not really but does it have all the components of a good decorative font absolutely and here's the hill I'm gonna die on the typeface itself is not bad it's all about the [Music] this is the reason Ryan Gosling drives his car into a fire hydrant this is why Chris Costello thinks the font is overused context Papyrus wasn't supposed to be used as the title of a multi-billion dollar movie franchise and the gosh dang subtitles baked into the movie James what are you doing it was supposed to be used in your class project about ancient Egypt where aliens were obviously you know like can we all just admit that aliens were the ones that built the pyramids or your hometown Church's Mediterranean potluck Knight don't blame the font blame the user it's not about the equipment baby it's how you use it amateurs and Dad business owners alike sometimes overlapping love using Papyrus as a substitute for actual cohesive brand design because the font itself is visually interesting on its own so they don't feel the need to supplement the font turned logo with brand colors design or purpose or any other collateral that makes a Brand's design stand on its legs Papyrus is carrying Mom and Pop Shop Brands all over the world on its shoulders and we're blaming it for that so sad so when people use Papyrus on their resume merchandise or for anything other than a cutesy decorative font it looks off out of place and the Fish Out of Water effect makes the font more attention grabbing than the thing that it's advertising perhaps for the wrong reason so now your hookah bar isn't a hookah bar that makes you nauseous after a couple hits in college after you've been drinking and you're wondering why you're even here you've never smoked before it's that place that uses Papyrus font to look rustic and vaguely Middle Eastern next to the Chinese place that also uses Papyrus for some reason can someone explain that I'm not saying we need to stop using the font I like Papyrus if anything after making this video I'm more of a Papyrus fan than when I started but there has to be a line and the only person that can cross that line is Harry Styles that's a reference to fine line by Harry Styles I'm just saying it's not anything weird I promise so please pay attention stay alert if you or someone you love is using Papyrus too much show them this video tell them to like it subscribe even hit the bell for the greater good and on the contrary if someone you love revolves their entire personality around hating this poor type face because I think they're too cool and they went to art school I wasted money on Art School show them this video tell them to get help hating things is so cool isn't it it's not like part of my job is criticizing from my bedroom or whatever tell them to like it subscribe even hit the Bell for the greater good insert end of video Spiel here what

Channel: gabi belle

Views: 205,824

Keywords: gabi belle, commentary, ryan gosling, chris costello, papyrus font, papyrus snl, papyrus avatar, avatar logo

Id: cJBhstYj_ak

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/ample_suite]

OH MY GOD FOR YEARS IVE WANTED TO MAKE A “r/papyrus-spotted” SUBREDDIT. LO AND BEHOLD IT FUCKING EXISTS!!!!!!!!

[u/redditgorlbellaa]

i came to here from that!