Sometimes just walking around hurts. Not physically, but visually. Everywhere, everyone is bombarded with imagery. Sometimes this imagery is accompanied with text; regular, italic, bold, all kinds in all of different shapes and weights. And with all this type flooding our space and with the finite number of typefaces ever designed, you tend to notice the same typefaces over and over and over. That’s what this is article is all about. Fonts. Dead fonts, or at least fonts that should be dead; dead and buried six feet under.

5) Brooklyn Kid — 4/10

My first pet peeve in the font world is Brooklyn Kid. The quintessential graffiti font for the 14 year-old MySpacer who wants to give off that “I’ve got street cred” feeling. I enjoy nothing more than seeing graffiti writing where each use of a particular letter is exactly the same as the time before, where that handwritten feel is completely gone.

4) Mini7 – 4/10

How many Flash websites have you seen in your life? A lot more than likely, which means you’ve probably had your fair share of Mini7. The font is tiny, not that it’s a bad thing, but it definitely sucks having to read large blocks of Mini7 text. Eat it Mini7 and all the eyestrain and headaches you’ve caused!

3) Papyrus – 3/10

Overused much? It seems this font is used in every other restaurant menu and handout known to man. Food Industry: Find another font.

2) Zapfino – 2/10

If anything is more over-used than Papyrus, it’s Zapfino. I’ll give it this, it’s a well designed font with multiple variations for pretty much every character, but I’ve seen it too many times; it’s everywhere. Every dinner/party/formal gathering invitation seems to use Zapfino. Enough already.

And the #1 worst font…

1) Comic Sans – 1/10

Surprised? Thought not. It’s everywhere. It’s ugly. Why anyone would use it outside of a comic book related project (and why even then?) is beyond me. BanComicSans.com

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 30th, 2006 at 5:42 PM and is filed under Design, Typography.