Five Worst Fonts to Use for Display
January 6, 2011
•IADT Sacramento, IADT General, Graphic Design
• 0 Comments
Nothing can make you feel more like a designer than using a fancy font. And there's no better place to showcase your fancy font than in a headline. Whether you're designing a flyer for your charity's fundraiser or writing a headline for your company's newsletter, there are several fonts that you should never ever think about touching.
Dated Fonts
One of the worst things you can do as a designer is use "yesterday's" font. Comic Sans, for instance, tops many designers' lists of most-hated fonts. There's even a website dedicated to banning it. Why the hatred? Ever since it was introduced in the 1990s it has been used on everything from application forms to company logos, even though it was originally designed for comic strip speech bubbles. While it is supposed to look fun, today it comes across as tacky.
Stay away from this font and others that had their heyday in the 1980s and ‘90s. If you are considering a font you remember from a commercial you saw in 1989, be safe. Reconsider.
Cute Fonts
Thousands of free "cute" fonts are available online that beckon designers with their adorable little curls and delightful squiggles. Avoid the temptation, and skip Jokerman and Curlz at all costs. They make your publication look cheap and even unreadable. If you are designing a flyer for a fun event like a block party or a child's birthday bash, most people will not appreciate trying to decipher your font. Use pictures or graphics to make a flyer look fun in lieu of frilly lettering.
Serif Fonts
It is usually a good idea to stay away from serif fonts for headlines. A serif font like Times New Roman has small extensions at the ends of the letters. Sans serif fonts like Arial or Helvetica do not have these extensions.
As a general rule, use sans serif fonts for display and serif fonts for copy. Serif fonts are easier to read in large blocks, while sans serif is better for catching attention. If you are writing an article, for example, you would typically use a sans serif type for the headline and a serif type for the body. But don't shy away from a serif font for headlines if you have a good reason for using it. Just stay away from Times New Roman – it's the default font on most computers, and headlines in Times New Roman show that the designer was too lazy to look for an appropriate font.
Wrong Fonts
Many fonts are fine to use in a very limited context. Papyrus, for instance, brings to mind Egyptian pyramids. And that's about it. It's not peaceful or scholarly or fancy. Don't use fonts that are dripping with blood or look like a digital clock unless you have a specific purpose in mind. It is usually a good idea to avoid these "novelty" fonts all together, as they usually cheapen the look of a publication instead of adding value to it.
Unreadable Fonts
Nothing is more frustrating than trying to read a headline, or even worse, a block of text, written in an unreadable font. Handwritten fonts like Bradley Hand or cursive fonts like Vivaldi have been responsible for thousands of headaches. Remember, a font's first job is to communicate. And when a font's "V" looks like toddler's scrawl, it can't really do its job.
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