May 11, 2023 • 47 mins
From serif to san, from kerning to Krueger, it turns out people have some pretty extreme opinions about fonts. In part two of this special two-part episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore the nature of print. Papyrus, New Times Roman, Wingdings -- if you can name a font, it turns out there's a story behind it.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Histories, the production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
(00:27):
show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. This is part two of a special series
on fonts that a lot of people hate. Please listen
to part one where you can hear some vim and vinegar,
not only from our super producer, mister Max Williams, but
(00:49):
from mister Noel Brown and from me as well. They
call me Ben Noel. You remember how in a different
show we talked a bit about out the frequency illusion,
which is when you maybe you hear a word and
all of a sudden you feel like you hear that
word all the time, or you buy a car you
(01:11):
feel like you see that car all the time.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
For that phenom it.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, just so, it's bader Minehoff and sometimes called frequency illusion.
And that happened to me with papyrus uh after part
one of our fonts episode, I remember thinking, wow, papyrus
is everywhere and it really does seem to damage the
credibility of what's being communicated.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Were you compelled to go and watch the uh, the
the avatar films after that? I was not. I was not.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I I was.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
It's funny because on our On another show we do
called stuff they Don't Want you to Know. We recently
recorded an episode about a mysterious bridge in Scotland, uh
called the Dog Suicide Bridge. And I didn't mention that
on that show, and I probably won't. But the one
book that is written about it is leans more into
(02:11):
supernatural explanations and folks, the the cover font is in papyrus.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
No it's not.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
It is published.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Does that not just screen side published though?
Speaker 1 (02:25):
But you know, research is important, so I had to
do the due diligence of read it. But but we
in the interim, folks, we found so many other strange
fonts such that we might have to return in another
installment to talk about controversial fonts in non Western languages.
(02:47):
But but for now, with some help from our research
associate Jeff Bartlett, I don't know, man, let's let's dive
into Times New Roman.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Why not Times New Roman?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Indeed, this is a font we kind of talked about
some of the more let's call them credible fonts. You
know how Vetica came up as sort of like end
all be all for designers in terms of just the
right amount of thinning of the of the joints between
the letters and all of that stuff, just the right
amount of Sarah for lack of Sarah and all that,
(03:22):
and Times New Roman sort of has earned, I guess
itsself a place in the history of fonts. It's a
little bit divisive because it's sort of what you would
consider like a templatized sort of standard font, and for
that reason alone, I think it may have also earned
itself a bit of a place on the shit list.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Let's call it, you know, a fonts Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Oh, and also we talked about curning in part one,
but I don't think we defined it. Curning is the
way spacing between characters works. The Times New Roman dates
back to the original Roman Type in fourteen seventy. This
guy named Nicholas Jensen creates Roman Type, and he is
(04:08):
inspired by the text on ancient Roman buildings, and it
catches on pretty quickly. Chances are if you pull up
a word process or whether that's Microsoft Word or what
have you, you're probably going to look at Times New
Roman rather than Roman Type, which you don't see so
(04:29):
much today.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yeah, and it's you know, it's a font that does
a really good job of displaying Roman numerals for good reason,
you know, I mean, it really is that kind of traditional,
the kind of font that you might think of as
being etched, you know, the product of some sort of
artisanal stone cutting. And as we said, this font has
(04:52):
historically been kind of the standard, you know, set font
for word processors, you know, like Microsoft Word or note
Pad or whatever. It's the kind of the one that
comes up by default. But it actually started with a
bit of a spirit of competition, sort of similar to similar,
but very different to the story behind comic sans Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, it's a real hold my beer moment in the
history of typeface. There's this guy, Stanley Morrison. He's already
got his bona fides. He is an esteemed type designer,
and he starts a beef with the famous London newspaper,
The Times, and he says, look, you all are a
(05:39):
bunch of stuffed shirts. You're elitist. You're out of touch
with the modern typographical trends, which you know, to be fair,
most of the public probably didn't care about. So the
Time says, okay, stan you talk so big, why don't
you make something better? And he says, well I will.
He gets a draft named Victor Lardent to start brainstorming
(06:03):
with him, and they land on two goals. We're going
to be efficient and we're going to be easy on
the eyes. Efficient meaning we're going to maximize the amount
of type, the number of characters you can fit on
a line, and we're also going to make it easier
to read. We're getting a lot of this from a
(06:26):
great article on nypl dot org by Meredith Mann called
where did Times New Roman come from? And it's you know,
London Times New Roman. He was petty enough that he
put the name of the paper in the name of
the font.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
So in nineteen twenty six the British Medical Research Council
published a report diving into the legibility of print and
you know how this affects readers, and they issued some
guidelines or some recommendations right for what would achieve maximum legibility,
(07:08):
and Times New Roman attempted to really, you know, adhere
to these guidelines. There were some test pages that were
submitted to what is referred to in the article that
you cite had been as a distinguished ophthalmolic authority, right,
And so then it became, you know, once they kind
of got the thumbs up from said distinguished ophthalmolic authority.
(07:30):
They were able to kind of issue almost like a
three out of four doctors agree. You know, Times New
Roman is easy on the eyes.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, it's for your health. And they said, okay, we've
got some credibility, we've got scientific analysis that's pretty good,
but we need to see we need to drive this
around the block. Essentially, we need to see how it
works when you actually read it. So members for this team,
the Report on the Legibility of Print team spent a
(08:01):
long time reading this and they case tested it. They
read it out during nice afternoons in the sunlight, they
read it under artificial light. They tested and tested and
tested again, and they finally approved it. They called it
The Times New Broman, and on October third, nineteen thirty two,
(08:22):
The Times had their big reveal. They debuted it, and
all of the readers of the paper, The Times were
reminded daily of the importance of type and printing, at
least that's according to the monotype Recorder, which, as you
can tell, might be a bit of a bias source.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
This was also the first time ever that a newspaper
designed its own typeface.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Rightan, and that's a big deal, because as we know,
you know, the history of typography is one that kind
of begins with actual type setting and you know, creating
these sets of letters and characters that were designed by
you know, specific individuals that worked at printing presses. So
typically the printing press was sort of separate from the
(09:09):
publishing or the content creation right of the news. So
this really was kind of a big deal. This means though,
that the Times actually owned this font and they had
exclusive rights to it, but only for a year, which
is interesting. How does that work?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Ben?
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Is this like why was there such a clock put
on it as opposed to what would normally be a
longer period for copywriting or a trademarking of something.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Yeah, I mean I'm guessing it's someone with pen laws.
But it's like, you know, how quickly does it becomes
kind of universal like thing? That's kind of a lot
of times how that stuff goes, like i know, with
trademarks or stuff like that, especially like brand names. Once
it becomes universal, like calling something a search engine googling
it is like an example of.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Sure proprietary, right, Yeah, Yeah, It's it's tough to know
for sure. We we can speculate on a couple of things. One,
it may have been part of the agreement the Times pitched.
Two it may have been part of the negotiations between
(10:15):
Stanley and the Times because he might have known he
had lightning in a bottle, and the price that they
would have to pay for exclusivity may have been pretty prohibitive.
But also to your point, Max, it would be difficult
to enforce rights after a certain amount of time. But
they it turned out they didn't really have a lot
(10:37):
to worry about in terms of exclusivity for the immediate
future because after those rights laps, publishers over in the
United States, especially newspaper publishers, aren't champion at the bit,
and it is champion at the bit, not chomping. They're
not champing at the bit to a adopt this new
(11:00):
font because they're being cheapskates. It needs more ink and
it needs a better quality of paper. And so essentially
the William Randolph Hearsts of the world across the pond
are saying no, we're not nah pass. So we see
(11:21):
Times New Roaming come out, not first in newspapers in
the US, but in books and magazines, notably Woman's Home
Companion in December nineteen forty one precisely.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
So you're starting to see this wide adoption of this font,
which is a big deal, and a lot of the
stems from the fact that it really was incredibly legible,
you know, and in small print. As we know, newspapers
and magazines are trying their best to shove as much
content into as small a space as possible to maximize
(11:54):
what they can put in their publications, the amount of
stuff that they can cover.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So this was a big deal.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
This is still a time where this is not a
computerized process at all. You know, this is in the
nineteen forties and fifties where these you know, type sets
were still part of the process of printing, you know,
physical metal letters and characters, and these were There was
something called punches that actually helped create the molds for
(12:23):
casting these types. And they were created by a company
called the Monotype Corporation, and they collaborated with the Linotype Company,
and I believe Monotype and Linotype are still you know,
names that resonate within the typography community to this day.
These were manufacturers of machines that would do type setting,
(12:47):
so they really were very very important organizations, you know,
for creating mass produced media. Both companies made sets of
these letters that were available for purchase. The monotype version
was known as Times New Roman. The linotype version was
just Times Roman. So if we move forward a little bit,
(13:12):
quite a bit actually into the I guess more like
the eighties, into the computer era, where we start to
see selectable fonts being used in word processing programs, like
you know, those created by Apple computers. Because remember, early on,
before computers could do all of the crazy things that
we know and love today, they were essentially bespoke typewriters,
(13:35):
you know. So Apple licensed the linotype version and Microsoft
licensed the monotype version. That is why the way the
appearance of these fonts to this day between Apple and
Windows machines look a little bit different.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Thanks, Can I get the more? You know, close enough
to not get a suit? That's a true story. It's
a weird historical footnote. We should also footnote that the
Times was not was not super on board with people
(14:17):
using their font in books in any long form writing.
They said, quote, it is a newspaper type and hardly
a book type, for it is strictly appointed for use
in short lines, i e. In columns. And they went
back and later developed a wider version of times New
(14:39):
Roman to fit the longer lines of text in a book,
and the idea that the use of a typeface affects
its form struck our writer man that we mentioned earlier
as incredibly relevant still in the modern day. You know,
a lot of books are entirely published electronically. A lot
(15:00):
of the stuff that the average person reads is not
a book. It's an article on the on the phone,
it's an article on a web page somewhere. And that's
why the ideas that Stanley had originally efficiency and ease
of reading, right, these are still incredibly crucial today. That's
(15:23):
why you see the newer kids on the printing block. No,
keep it up. It's folks like folks like Ariel and Calibri.
How do you guys pronounce it?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I guess maybe Calibri. Calibri sounds good. I think it's
potato potato.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Your pronunciation sounded better than how I've ever said it.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
How do you say it? I don't know. Calibri.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
You say Calibri with like four eyes at the end.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
I see it selected and immediately change it.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
There you go, okay, all right?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So, uh, the these typefaces are quite competitive nowadays because
if you're reading on a screen, the lack of seahs.
Remember our technical definition from part one. Seraffs are those
little dally bops at the end at the industry, the
little dongles, you know, the little hangars. Yeah, the little
(16:19):
weness bumps there. If you don't have seraphs, then for
most people it's easier to read a word on a screen.
But Times New Roman is almost a century old, and
it made the jump from print to digital. I think
maybe maybe nol we talk about the idea that fonts
(16:43):
without seraphs are easier to read. Why is that or
do we have any specifics on that?
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah, for sure, I mean the idea being that, I
think it's just a little bit less distracting. It is
a little faster to process. Sands Sarah of fonts, you know,
like you mentioned stuff like Tahoma ver Donna Ariel and
Paula Peters on Medium points out that, you know, these
(17:09):
days we're kind of blasting through text. You know, the
average viewer or the average reader only spends about eleven
seconds reading an email and around sixty seconds reading a
twenty page proposal of some sort. She cites sales proposals
so you know, since we're kind of living in a
culture of scanning, the more legible the better. But as
(17:33):
we mentioned at the top of the show, I think
Times New Roman, while very effective at communicating because of
its wide adoption in books, you know, magazines, newspapers, publications
of all kinds, because of this study that we talked
about that cited its incredible legibility, I think people just
got bored with it, you know, like like anything that
(17:54):
you kind of get inundated with. So while it was
an effective tool, you know, and accomplished exactly what it
was set out to do, when you start getting into
like design communities and folks that are maybe looking to
have things, you know, have a little bit more of
an aesthetic flare, it starts to become so overly recognizable
to the point of being cliche.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Another comparison would be the fashion of business suits, right,
like double breasted suits. When you see them, you know
what I'm talking about, they scream seventies, eighties. There's still
a suit, there's still the reason that person is not
naked in front of you. They get the job done,
but you know, there's something aesthetic about it, and this
(18:40):
leads Paula Peters to say that modern audiences love a
font without a seraph. If you pay attention, you'll start
seeing this everywhere. We don't want to get in your
head too far, folks, but look around. Odds are you
will I'll not be far away from something written right.
(19:03):
And if you are reading Latin based language, then you
are probably going to notice there's a lack of saraph
in most of the things you're seeing now, Sarah. Fonts
are easy to read if you have a really big monitor,
you know what I mean, Like if you play World
of Warcraft and you're reading something on that same monitor,
(19:26):
times New Roman Chef Kiss beautiful. But if you're reading
on a mobile phone, like so many people these days,
then you're gonna see that it's a little bit more difficult.
And as Peters points out, nowadays, almost sixty two percent
of all emails are opened on a smartphone. And if
(19:51):
you look at the millennial generation in particular, which we
are apart, then you'll see that number goes up to
eighty eight percent. No one tell our bosses, but a
lot of times, a lot of times we're like in
bed or we're walking somewhere.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Sure, yeah, multitasking, yeah, listening to other stuff, perhaps watch
researching on a computer, while looking at emails on the phone,
you know, all of that stuff. It's definitely part of
the equation for sure. I think one of the biggest
issues though, is just the kind of dated vibe of
(20:30):
Times New Roman and what it communicates about your brand
or your company, you know, as like philosophically speaking, you know,
everyone kind of does.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
No.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
One wants to be considered old fashion nowadays, like everyone
wants to feel like they're in some way on the
cutting edge, and design is a big part of that,
you know.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Like you said, the medium is the message.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
So what you put out there, whether it be your
style guide for communications within a company, you know, your
signature file, for example, companies even like ours, have a
very lized and uniform way of formatting those signature files,
including the fought choice mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
If you, for instance, think about it this way. If
you are considering putting money into a new or bleeding
edge industry and you go to their website and it's
in Times New Roman, then you're going to think they
don't get it. I don't know if these are the
people I trust for this investment, So we have to
(21:30):
be conscious of this. You know, it's often said by
great communicators that how you say something matters as much
as what you are saying.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
A great deal of information in in person conversations is
conveyed via intonation and body language, which is why it's
easy to misread a text.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
The same holds true with fonts. To some degree. The
thought you choose will influence the way your message is
interpreted by the readers, and that's why you see things
like multiple graphic designers have written their own diatribes. Dare
I say manifestos about Times New Roman. They say things
(22:13):
like it's corny and boring. Avoid it when you can.
It's bad, it's ugly. One person said. It makes me
nervous when I see it.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Yeah, we are here, we are with the poster out,
you know, the the reviews are in for Times New Romans,
like we did with with Comic Sands. Again, Yeah, I mean,
especially when you're looking at things through the lens of
a designer, this is something that's absolutely going to make
them cringe for all the reasons. The outline, it's dated,
(22:42):
it's not maybe as easy to read as some kind
of updated versions of the quote unquote more legible fonts,
and it really does say a lot about kind of
your attitude towards aesthetics and towards kind of being seen
as a little bit more on the cutting edge.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Which led some people to say, I want a font
that makes an impact. Hey, Impact, Impact, Impact Sunday, Sunday Sunday.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Exactly, Impact being like one of the more aggressive thoughts.
It's a fund that you want a font that smacks
you in the head like a stack of bricks.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Impact is for you.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Impact invented in nineteen sixty five by Jeffrey Lee. It
is easy to read. It is sansera. It does grab
your attention, but it is in the world of zime
people think it's often a little too thin in the strokes.
It's amateurish. It's most commonly used on documents that have
(23:46):
been quote designed by people who don't know what they're
doing when it comes to typefaces, and as such it
should be avoided. That is coming to us from vandalaiddesign
dot com in an article by Steven Snell.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Exactly, it's the kind of font that you might see
if you highlight something in a like let's say you're
using notes like on an iPhone, and then you highlight
it and just select heading. That's what it's going to
present you with, something with kind of a large amount
of space in between the letters, which arguably does make
it a little easier to read, and a kind of
(24:23):
inherent boldness to it. But again it's just a little
bit cliche, you know. It's like sort of almost mimicking
the headlines of yesteryear, in the same way that comic
Sands was trying to mimic the way text was designed
for speech bubbles and cartoons.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, exactly. And imagine reading an official like an official
government document or a paper of note in impact thought,
after the headline, you make a great point about the headline.
After the headline, it would start to feel off somehow.
Jeffery Lee designed this font because he was in the
(25:04):
midst of the nineteen sixties, and the mid nineteen sixties,
as we know, experienced a renaissance for bold condensed type
faces that, according to designers, probably came about through other
cut up prints and art of the day, specifically something
called the Schmalfett grotesque font, which had been drawn by
(25:29):
Volter Hottenschweiler Hottenschweiler, and because Impact was less condensed than
this other font. To your point about Kerning, designers often
use these two fonts together, and you could use Impact
for you know, Impact man maximum.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
I love the idea of a font being grotesque, though
I think some designers might consider all of these fonts
that we're talking about, you know, in these episodes, to
be grotesque.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Shout out to small fet.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yes, shout out this small efet And developers. Oh, here's
where you see Impact the most nowadays, fellow ridiculous historians.
You see it in memes. It's the default font for
things like caption meme. It's the default font for a
lot of those macros you can make your own. And
developers use Impact because it's super readable, it's ubiquitous, it's
(26:26):
available at every computer. You don't have to download a
new font pack, and you don't have to read a
lot for a meme usually, right, a meme is hopefully
I don't want to sound pretentious. You can hate or
love memes or as they're called sometimes shit posts, but
(26:46):
you have to admit there's an art and beauty to
the economy of language, no question.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
And you know, as is the case for a lot
of Internet culture, you know, and kind of like stuff
that might have found its origins on forums, you know,
like something Awful or Penny Arcade or some of these
you know forums that sort of kind of got condensed
since now what we know has read it. I guess,
I mean all these other There are, of course forums
that still exist that are more under the radar, but
(27:15):
now Reddit has kind of become the more like mainstream
version of a lot of this type of Internet communication.
Dated fonts and kind of you know, Internet relics are
like a big part of the presentation for these kinds
of things.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
And our pal, Jeff Bartlett, not Jeffrey Lee, Jeff Bartlett
research associate, wants everyone to know that he has only
one tattoo and it is sapere aude Latin for dare
to know, and an old school like motto of the
Age of Enlightenment. Says it's on his forearm, it is
(27:49):
in impact fonts, and he has no regrets.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
All right, you heard it here first. Oh man, I'm
so excited. I'm so excs for this next one. We've
been teasing it from the start, good old Papyrus, you know,
if we're talking about fonts that are trying to invoke
(28:15):
a certain feeling, you know, a certain like you know,
we said comic Sands was trying to evoke whimsy or
sort of creativity or you know, like a lightness to
their communications. I'm not quite sure what Papyrus is supposed
to communicate in that respect.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Is it mysticism? Is it the age, the wisdom of
the ancient?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Like you're reading a scroll, you know, Max, give us
some like D and D Renaissance festival music, you know,
dungeons and dragons. Sw I mean by D and.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
D not do not disturb.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
So here here's our certa intrue, maybe a fife, the flute,
a bit of elup. There's an American. His name is
Chris Costello. He creates Papyrus in nineteen eighty three. This
is also Yeah, this reminds me. I associate Papyrus with
the early oh, the early computer games. I used to
(29:08):
play by Sierra Entertainment. So shout out to anyone who
remembers King's Quest. But he Chris says, this is one
of my proudest accomplishments. He's also Chris has his stripes.
He's a graphic designer, illustrator, web designer, and he says
similar to the creation of comic sands. He says that
(29:29):
Papyrus was made with certain intent and it was never
meant to be used on the logos of big businesses,
on mortgage companies, construction logos, just like our Times New
Roman example. You wouldn't trust, say, a cryptocurrency outfit that
had their website in Times New Roman. You would you
(29:50):
trust a mortgage company in papyrus like their font ism Papyrus.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
I wouldn't trust a mortgage company general funds, but no,
definitely not. Or perhaps a realtor you know who's who's
whose yard signs have their name emblazoned in papyrus. Yeah,
it has kind of taken on the reputation of being
the most maligned font on the planet.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, the Pepsi to the Coca Cola of comic sans.
Papyrus is famous for being misused. You see it in
business cards, letterheads, signs, et cetera. There are a lot
of websites that exist just to make fun of Papyrus.
It gets featured ironically and all kinds of things in
(30:37):
television shows, in sketch comedy. If you want to sort
of undercut the character who is being cartoonish in the sketch.
Then you have them without explanation, use Papyrus and shout
out to Snell's sketch. We mentioned shout out to the
McSweeney's article, which I'd love to read in full, the
(30:59):
Comics's articles just oh, it's so good.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Chris Costello sold the rights to his font, and he
regrets it a little bit. He says, there have definitely
been days I wish I'd never sold the rights, and
I get that there are a lot of critics, but
hate if you must. Papyrus is on over a billion
computers around the world. It's a font you can choose
(31:23):
right now.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
You can definitely choose it, as we saw a designer
choosing it from the list of drop Town available fonts
in that amazing SNL short about you know, Papyrus being
the logo for Avatar, a multi billion dollar grossing you know,
fantasy science fiction franchise. Watch that if you get a
(31:47):
chance with Ryan Gosley. It puts a lot of context
around this, but you know, with you if you look
at the font though on its own, and you saw
it like as a singular work, maybe before the ubiquity
of it, like on the cover of a comic book
or something. It does evoke kind of like a biblical,
kind of Middle Eastern mystical kind of vibe, you know,
And that's exactly what Costello was trying to do when
(32:10):
he was messing around with a calligraphy pen on a
literal piece of parchment paper, and he, you know, was
kind of fooling around and created these sort of ornate
sort of capital letters that had these brushstrokes or kind
of pen strokes, you know, on the edges. And he
also claims that he got to this place because he
(32:32):
was on a bit of a biblical journey himself.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Reading a lot of history, spiritual and geographical about the
Middle East. And then he also said he dove into
the Biblical times. That's a quote from him, and he
was drawing a lot of ligatures and letters with these
hairlined arrangements, and this struck a chord internally for Chris Costello,
(32:57):
and over the course of just a few days, worked
on these letters until he had generated an entire Roman
alphabet in all caps, and he was pretty happy with it.
He said, you know what, I'm gonna call this papyrus.
I'm gonna see if I can turn it into a
font and get this ridiculous historians. This was the very
(33:18):
first typeface he ever worked on. This is a lot
like going into a studio and saying, I play a
little guitar, I've never recorded anything, and then boom, you've
created you know, what's a what's a hated pop song? Macharena?
You know?
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Oh absolutely maybe you know, let's say the instrument was
maybe more of like a cowbell or something. Right, you
make the most cow the most.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Noted cow bell song of all time. Right, that then
becomes something of a trope.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
And the thing is he sent this out. I wanted
to sell it, and he said, everybody rejected me. The
big names, the small names and type distribution, which is
an industry, honestly, folks, I had never thought about until
he talks to one company, a small outfit called Letra
Set British company, and he believes they may have been
(34:13):
the creators of louram ipsum. And you guys know everybody
knows lauram ipsum, right, it's the famous placeholder text.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Well that yeah, or like the the whatever what like
a font is missing?
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Right?
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Or that isn't that what comes up by default the content. Yeah,
it's it's like a mock. Oh no, it's to demonstrates. Yeah,
it's to demonstrate a font because I think it has
or it's sort of like the quick brown fox jumps over.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
The lazy dog.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
I think it demonstrates a good number of characters in
a font set. So it's used to kind of showcase,
like you know, the letters, the style of the letters
in a particular font.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
The I feel, Yeah, that makes sense, right, How do
my eyes feel looking at this in this font? Yeah,
that's smart too. So like Comic Sands, if there's a
villain in the story for people who hate Comic Sands
and Papyrus, then it's Microsoft, right, because those those fonts
(35:15):
may not have caught on if they weren't pre installed
on Microsoft Office starting with Office ninety seven. Actually, behind
the scenes, I don't know if we want to keep
this in, but I was looking through the fonts on
the shared docs we use that I was gonna see
if I could put it in put virus, but I
decided not.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
We've got a show to do.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Well. That's the thing though, right, Like it's no longer
that you know, ubiquitously pre installed font that it used
to be. And a lot of the history that we're
talking about has exactly to do with what you're saying.
You know, you have like a sort of taste maker
or like a company like Microsoft that determines what goes
on these machines that are widely adopted, and then it's
(35:57):
ultimately up to creators to kind of proliferate which fonts
become the thing, you know, but then they sort of
create the palletts at the tones that were available to
designers and obviously non designers alike. Not to mention, you
remember back in the day when like web pages would
be in weird fonts, you know, but you were limited
to what fonts were installed, whether you were a Mac
(36:19):
user or a PC user. And now web pages and
various designs don't necessarily depend on you having that font
installed unless you want to actually create something. You know,
things are generated into like vector images or whatever, you know,
like high quality JPEGs. You don't have to have that
thuon installed, so you can get all kinds of design
elements that don't rely on the user having that. But
(36:42):
back in the day, it was literally sourcing what fonts
you had on your computer. And then recreating that with
those characters that were actually installed on your physical machines.
So yeah, I mean Microsoft Office starting in ninety seven,
like you said, is really to blame for, at the
very least, giving folks the options that, some of which
(37:03):
became these hated fonts.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Yeah, he nailed it, man. And it's strange because none
of these font creators, these designers, they're not bad guys.
They're not Bond level villains. They made something really cool
and it's just in the way people used it.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Now.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Of course, when you're learning about the creator of Papyrus,
if you hate Papyrus, you may be tempted to think
of this guy as some kind of Bond level graphic
design supervillain. But believe it or not, folks, he only
got the equivalent of about two five hundred dollars for
selling the rights, so he probably lost out on millions
(37:47):
of dollars, given that one in seven people on the
planet has access to Papyrus on their computer.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
But that's the thing too, You know, a font that
comes pre installed like that is sort of like having
back to our discussion on sampling, you know, not the
cheese cubes, but like sampling of music. You know, if
you buy a keyboard like a synthesizer or a you know,
a sampler or whatever, and it has presets on it,
(38:13):
those are available to be used without concern over copyright clearance. Point.
So the you know, the idea of who's making money
off of Papyrus, the answer is probably no one really,
you know, after that initial deal, you know, selling the
rights to it, and then it sort of gets lumped
in with this list of presets. As we know, fancy
(38:35):
er font sets are quite expensive because you are paying
for the rights to be able to use that font
in whatever commercial designs you might you know, want to.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Use it in.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
But since Papyra has already pre installed on your system
and it comes with quote unquote you know, your software
that you already have, you can use it however you want.
So it's not like every time someone, you know, I
don't think that anyone got paid for Papyro is being
used in the Avatar logo. I would also argue that
it's possible, I don't know specifically, but that the version
(39:07):
of Papyrus on the Avatar logo was adjusted or tweaked
in some way. You can you can you can make
tweaks to like font sets and stuff and then kind
of make it your own. But I don't know, Max,
what do you think, like, do you think if someone
is using one of these fonts, is there anyone getting
a check? Are there like font residuals? I'd like to
answer as well, after you mix, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
Probably maybe, But to the thing, it's like, do you
if you make it just slightly different? So side note,
I watched the Papiates sketch right before we came on,
and it Chris Read is playing I guess Ryan Goslin's friend,
and he's like, hey man, it might have started with Papyrus,
but it's like slightly different. So I mean, I'm guessing
(39:48):
that's probably a tricky thing where if you make it
just different enough and it's probably it's probably just very
much soaked in minutia.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
I also like to think that maybe their budget was
just so close that they said we have to use
one of the pre installed thoughts. It's down between Papyrus
and comic Sands. But you know, shout out to Costello.
It sounds like a really cool guy. He says, I'm
not embarrassed about this. You know the fact that it's
(40:18):
one of the world's most widely recognizable fonts. Even if
that means it's overused, it means there's just as many
people out there who love it as who hate it.
And he also says stay humble. I mean, Chris feels
like a good guy to hang out with, you guys.
He also says telling people I created Papyrus is always
(40:39):
a good topic for humorous conversation. It always gets a laugh.
How can you put a price on that? That's nice, man,
that's very well adjusted.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I think excellent conversation starter for sure.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
You know what an interesting thing to Hey, I mean,
did this guy go on to design any other fonts?
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Is his first one out of the gate? Right?
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Did he try to you know, like, I guess repair
his repute? I mean, I thought he feels like it's
a bad reputation. But you know, it seemed like he
was just sort of a dabbler in font design. I
gotta wonder, like, is this guy what's he up to now?
Speaker 1 (41:14):
He's got a website Chriscostello dot design, and you can
see his collection of fonts, which include Blackstone. He also
has Mirage, letter Press text and Papyrus, and then he
has one called virus. This is this is a rabbit
hole to link into, and I think we've we've hit
(41:37):
some of the big one. Snow will doubtlessly hear from
our fellow ridiculous historians who have pet peeve fonts of
their own. But I believe we have to mention, just
just at least the once, we have to mention how
wing Dings came about. As as we're wrapping.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Up this series.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Wing Dings is the thing that looks like a bunch
of strange nonsense. You know, it looks like the computer
is taken over and it doesn't speak your language. But
according to a great article by Phil Edwards over in Vox,
why the wing Dings font exists, there are multiple versions
of wing dings. It's one of the early days of emoji.
(42:20):
It could give you an image and scale it.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
Yeah, at the very least like clip art, right like
it was a way. We talked about this a little
bit in the last episode that it was. Yeah, to
your point, fonts are also scalable. That's that's a very
important distinction that you made there, Bend, Because you can
blow up a font to a massive size and it's
not going to have any pixelation, right, I mean depending
(42:45):
on how you are outputting it, like in whatever you know,
design software you're using. But a font is essentially like
information telling a computer how to recreate something that is scalable,
whether it's tiny or whether it's massive. It's not the
same as like blowing up a low resolution JPEG, which
of course is going to cause all kinds of you know,
horrible blurring and pixelation and all that. This is neat
(43:09):
because these are little individual images. Some of the ones
that they pull on the vox article or like a
little hand or a little disc drive, you know, or
like a floppy disc. Some of them are just little
symbols like like an X, you know in a circle,
or you know, certain kind of characters that might be
look look like runs or something like that. Right, There
(43:32):
were multiple iterations of wing dings as well. We had
the og wing dings.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Which would have like, you know, there's like a OM
symbol in there.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
There's you know, like a little redical or whatever you
call it, sort of like the way the Zodiac Killer
signed you know, his missives to the press. Then you
had wing dings, two, wingedings three. Then of course, who
could forget web dings, and then something called zapp ding bats,
which I'm not familiar with, but that's where you start.
(44:02):
They do start to resemble like the emojis that we
know today, like a peace sign, explosions like a little
you know, kind of a firecracker pop, or things like snowflakes.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
And of course flowers. Charles Bigelow, who's one of the
co creators of wing dings in its various forms, says
that his personal favorite will be the floral designs. And
we want to to squeeze in just a little explanation
about wing dings.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
What a ride this has been.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
We may have to return to fonts in the future
because this addresses so many things that we find ridiculous
about history, right, social dynamics, human psychology, How small things
can have such an outsized influence. A great time with
this one, and thanks to super producer mister Max Williams,
(44:56):
thanks to research associate Jeff I didn't know about the
impact tattoo.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Oh I did neither.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
And I just have to add one last little thing
because I questioned what the deal was with wing ding dingbats.
Apparently dingbats are actually refer to a particular.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Type of tool that was used in printing.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
They were small pieces of reusable shapes that could be
slotted into texts and used like to kind of add
a little bit of flair to a book printing, think
about maybe something that might be used in chapter headings,
or even like page numbers or little kind of bespoke
like frames on the edge of pages.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Things like that. They were called dingbats.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
So, you know, the more you know, I love how
a lot of this stuff, or most of this stuff
does have references to you know, antiquity into like the
age that's even pre printing press. And then obviously the
printing press becomes the earliest form of type setting, and
then it you know, trans decisions into the computer aid.
So yeah, now I'm with you, man. This is a
really really fun topic. And I don't know some of
(46:07):
these fonts. I think maybe you're a little unfairly maligned.
I don't hate comic sands. Maybe as much as the
design community might, none of these really inspire that much
like ire from me personally. I'm more interested in the
history and the question of like why certain people hate these,
So I hope we did a decent job in answering those.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
I don't know if y'all have noticed this, but I
have been returning emails and comic fans.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Since I see you.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Yeah, I saw it.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
I saw it.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
And also thanks to you guys for let me include
what was going to be a wing Ding's Dia tribe.
But after I had found and read that box article,
I just really enjoyed the history of it like you
guys are saying. And thanks of course to Jonathan Strickly
and aka the Quister Christopher hasiotis here in spirit, Eve's
Jeff Coat, Gabe Luzier who is killing it over on
(46:57):
this day in history.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Class, and of course research Associate extraordinary Jeff Bartlett. Thank
you for being our sharpa on this font journey. Uh
and you Ben It's it's been a it's been a
wild ride.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Mm hmm. San Seraph all the way. We'll see you
next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Histories, the production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
(00:27):
show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. This is part two of a special series
on fonts that a lot of people hate. Please listen
to part one where you can hear some vim and vinegar,
not only from our super producer, mister Max Williams, but
(00:49):
from mister Noel Brown and from me as well. They
call me Ben Noel. You remember how in a different
show we talked a bit about out the frequency illusion,
which is when you maybe you hear a word and
all of a sudden you feel like you hear that
word all the time, or you buy a car you
(01:11):
feel like you see that car all the time.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
For that phenom it.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, just so, it's bader Minehoff and sometimes called frequency illusion.
And that happened to me with papyrus uh after part
one of our fonts episode, I remember thinking, wow, papyrus
is everywhere and it really does seem to damage the
credibility of what's being communicated.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Were you compelled to go and watch the uh, the
the avatar films after that? I was not. I was not.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I I was.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
It's funny because on our On another show we do
called stuff they Don't Want you to Know. We recently
recorded an episode about a mysterious bridge in Scotland, uh
called the Dog Suicide Bridge. And I didn't mention that
on that show, and I probably won't. But the one
book that is written about it is leans more into
(02:11):
supernatural explanations and folks, the the cover font is in papyrus.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
No it's not.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
It is published.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Does that not just screen side published though?
Speaker 1 (02:25):
But you know, research is important, so I had to
do the due diligence of read it. But but we
in the interim, folks, we found so many other strange
fonts such that we might have to return in another
installment to talk about controversial fonts in non Western languages.
(02:47):
But but for now, with some help from our research
associate Jeff Bartlett, I don't know, man, let's let's dive
into Times New Roman.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Why not Times New Roman?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Indeed, this is a font we kind of talked about
some of the more let's call them credible fonts. You
know how Vetica came up as sort of like end
all be all for designers in terms of just the
right amount of thinning of the of the joints between
the letters and all of that stuff, just the right
amount of Sarah for lack of Sarah and all that,
(03:22):
and Times New Roman sort of has earned, I guess
itsself a place in the history of fonts. It's a
little bit divisive because it's sort of what you would
consider like a templatized sort of standard font, and for
that reason alone, I think it may have also earned
itself a bit of a place on the shit list.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Let's call it, you know, a fonts Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Oh, and also we talked about curning in part one,
but I don't think we defined it. Curning is the
way spacing between characters works. The Times New Roman dates
back to the original Roman Type in fourteen seventy. This
guy named Nicholas Jensen creates Roman Type, and he is
(04:08):
inspired by the text on ancient Roman buildings, and it
catches on pretty quickly. Chances are if you pull up
a word process or whether that's Microsoft Word or what
have you, you're probably going to look at Times New
Roman rather than Roman Type, which you don't see so
(04:29):
much today.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yeah, and it's you know, it's a font that does
a really good job of displaying Roman numerals for good reason,
you know, I mean, it really is that kind of traditional,
the kind of font that you might think of as
being etched, you know, the product of some sort of
artisanal stone cutting. And as we said, this font has
(04:52):
historically been kind of the standard, you know, set font
for word processors, you know, like Microsoft Word or note
Pad or whatever. It's the kind of the one that
comes up by default. But it actually started with a
bit of a spirit of competition, sort of similar to similar,
but very different to the story behind comic sans Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, it's a real hold my beer moment in the
history of typeface. There's this guy, Stanley Morrison. He's already
got his bona fides. He is an esteemed type designer,
and he starts a beef with the famous London newspaper,
The Times, and he says, look, you all are a
(05:39):
bunch of stuffed shirts. You're elitist. You're out of touch
with the modern typographical trends, which you know, to be fair,
most of the public probably didn't care about. So the
Time says, okay, stan you talk so big, why don't
you make something better? And he says, well I will.
He gets a draft named Victor Lardent to start brainstorming
(06:03):
with him, and they land on two goals. We're going
to be efficient and we're going to be easy on
the eyes. Efficient meaning we're going to maximize the amount
of type, the number of characters you can fit on
a line, and we're also going to make it easier
to read. We're getting a lot of this from a
(06:26):
great article on nypl dot org by Meredith Mann called
where did Times New Roman come from? And it's you know,
London Times New Roman. He was petty enough that he
put the name of the paper in the name of
the font.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
So in nineteen twenty six the British Medical Research Council
published a report diving into the legibility of print and
you know how this affects readers, and they issued some
guidelines or some recommendations right for what would achieve maximum legibility,
(07:08):
and Times New Roman attempted to really, you know, adhere
to these guidelines. There were some test pages that were
submitted to what is referred to in the article that
you cite had been as a distinguished ophthalmolic authority, right,
And so then it became, you know, once they kind
of got the thumbs up from said distinguished ophthalmolic authority.
(07:30):
They were able to kind of issue almost like a
three out of four doctors agree. You know, Times New
Roman is easy on the eyes.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, it's for your health. And they said, okay, we've
got some credibility, we've got scientific analysis that's pretty good,
but we need to see we need to drive this
around the block. Essentially, we need to see how it
works when you actually read it. So members for this team,
the Report on the Legibility of Print team spent a
(08:01):
long time reading this and they case tested it. They
read it out during nice afternoons in the sunlight, they
read it under artificial light. They tested and tested and
tested again, and they finally approved it. They called it
The Times New Broman, and on October third, nineteen thirty two,
(08:22):
The Times had their big reveal. They debuted it, and
all of the readers of the paper, The Times were
reminded daily of the importance of type and printing, at
least that's according to the monotype Recorder, which, as you
can tell, might be a bit of a bias source.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
This was also the first time ever that a newspaper
designed its own typeface.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Rightan, and that's a big deal, because as we know,
you know, the history of typography is one that kind
of begins with actual type setting and you know, creating
these sets of letters and characters that were designed by
you know, specific individuals that worked at printing presses. So
typically the printing press was sort of separate from the
(09:09):
publishing or the content creation right of the news. So
this really was kind of a big deal. This means though,
that the Times actually owned this font and they had
exclusive rights to it, but only for a year, which
is interesting. How does that work?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Ben?
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Is this like why was there such a clock put
on it as opposed to what would normally be a
longer period for copywriting or a trademarking of something.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Yeah, I mean I'm guessing it's someone with pen laws.
But it's like, you know, how quickly does it becomes
kind of universal like thing? That's kind of a lot
of times how that stuff goes, like i know, with
trademarks or stuff like that, especially like brand names. Once
it becomes universal, like calling something a search engine googling
it is like an example of.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Sure proprietary, right, Yeah, Yeah, It's it's tough to know
for sure. We we can speculate on a couple of things. One,
it may have been part of the agreement the Times pitched.
Two it may have been part of the negotiations between
(10:15):
Stanley and the Times because he might have known he
had lightning in a bottle, and the price that they
would have to pay for exclusivity may have been pretty prohibitive.
But also to your point, Max, it would be difficult
to enforce rights after a certain amount of time. But
they it turned out they didn't really have a lot
(10:37):
to worry about in terms of exclusivity for the immediate
future because after those rights laps, publishers over in the
United States, especially newspaper publishers, aren't champion at the bit,
and it is champion at the bit, not chomping. They're
not champing at the bit to a adopt this new
(11:00):
font because they're being cheapskates. It needs more ink and
it needs a better quality of paper. And so essentially
the William Randolph Hearsts of the world across the pond
are saying no, we're not nah pass. So we see
(11:21):
Times New Roaming come out, not first in newspapers in
the US, but in books and magazines, notably Woman's Home
Companion in December nineteen forty one precisely.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
So you're starting to see this wide adoption of this font,
which is a big deal, and a lot of the
stems from the fact that it really was incredibly legible,
you know, and in small print. As we know, newspapers
and magazines are trying their best to shove as much
content into as small a space as possible to maximize
(11:54):
what they can put in their publications, the amount of
stuff that they can cover.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So this was a big deal.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
This is still a time where this is not a
computerized process at all. You know, this is in the
nineteen forties and fifties where these you know, type sets
were still part of the process of printing, you know,
physical metal letters and characters, and these were There was
something called punches that actually helped create the molds for
(12:23):
casting these types. And they were created by a company
called the Monotype Corporation, and they collaborated with the Linotype Company,
and I believe Monotype and Linotype are still you know,
names that resonate within the typography community to this day.
These were manufacturers of machines that would do type setting,
(12:47):
so they really were very very important organizations, you know,
for creating mass produced media. Both companies made sets of
these letters that were available for purchase. The monotype version
was known as Times New Roman. The linotype version was
just Times Roman. So if we move forward a little bit,
(13:12):
quite a bit actually into the I guess more like
the eighties, into the computer era, where we start to
see selectable fonts being used in word processing programs, like
you know, those created by Apple computers. Because remember, early on,
before computers could do all of the crazy things that
we know and love today, they were essentially bespoke typewriters,
(13:35):
you know. So Apple licensed the linotype version and Microsoft
licensed the monotype version. That is why the way the
appearance of these fonts to this day between Apple and
Windows machines look a little bit different.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Thanks, Can I get the more? You know, close enough
to not get a suit? That's a true story. It's
a weird historical footnote. We should also footnote that the
Times was not was not super on board with people
(14:17):
using their font in books in any long form writing.
They said, quote, it is a newspaper type and hardly
a book type, for it is strictly appointed for use
in short lines, i e. In columns. And they went
back and later developed a wider version of times New
(14:39):
Roman to fit the longer lines of text in a book,
and the idea that the use of a typeface affects
its form struck our writer man that we mentioned earlier
as incredibly relevant still in the modern day. You know,
a lot of books are entirely published electronically. A lot
(15:00):
of the stuff that the average person reads is not
a book. It's an article on the on the phone,
it's an article on a web page somewhere. And that's
why the ideas that Stanley had originally efficiency and ease
of reading, right, these are still incredibly crucial today. That's
(15:23):
why you see the newer kids on the printing block. No,
keep it up. It's folks like folks like Ariel and Calibri.
How do you guys pronounce it?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I guess maybe Calibri. Calibri sounds good. I think it's
potato potato.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Your pronunciation sounded better than how I've ever said it.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
How do you say it? I don't know. Calibri.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
You say Calibri with like four eyes at the end.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
I see it selected and immediately change it.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
There you go, okay, all right?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So, uh, the these typefaces are quite competitive nowadays because
if you're reading on a screen, the lack of seahs.
Remember our technical definition from part one. Seraffs are those
little dally bops at the end at the industry, the
little dongles, you know, the little hangars. Yeah, the little
(16:19):
weness bumps there. If you don't have seraphs, then for
most people it's easier to read a word on a screen.
But Times New Roman is almost a century old, and
it made the jump from print to digital. I think
maybe maybe nol we talk about the idea that fonts
(16:43):
without seraphs are easier to read. Why is that or
do we have any specifics on that?
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah, for sure, I mean the idea being that, I
think it's just a little bit less distracting. It is
a little faster to process. Sands Sarah of fonts, you know,
like you mentioned stuff like Tahoma ver Donna Ariel and
Paula Peters on Medium points out that, you know, these
(17:09):
days we're kind of blasting through text. You know, the
average viewer or the average reader only spends about eleven
seconds reading an email and around sixty seconds reading a
twenty page proposal of some sort. She cites sales proposals
so you know, since we're kind of living in a
culture of scanning, the more legible the better. But as
(17:33):
we mentioned at the top of the show, I think
Times New Roman, while very effective at communicating because of
its wide adoption in books, you know, magazines, newspapers, publications
of all kinds, because of this study that we talked
about that cited its incredible legibility, I think people just
got bored with it, you know, like like anything that
(17:54):
you kind of get inundated with. So while it was
an effective tool, you know, and accomplished exactly what it
was set out to do, when you start getting into
like design communities and folks that are maybe looking to
have things, you know, have a little bit more of
an aesthetic flare, it starts to become so overly recognizable
to the point of being cliche.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Another comparison would be the fashion of business suits, right,
like double breasted suits. When you see them, you know
what I'm talking about, they scream seventies, eighties. There's still
a suit, there's still the reason that person is not
naked in front of you. They get the job done,
but you know, there's something aesthetic about it, and this
(18:40):
leads Paula Peters to say that modern audiences love a
font without a seraph. If you pay attention, you'll start
seeing this everywhere. We don't want to get in your
head too far, folks, but look around. Odds are you
will I'll not be far away from something written right.
(19:03):
And if you are reading Latin based language, then you
are probably going to notice there's a lack of saraph
in most of the things you're seeing now, Sarah. Fonts
are easy to read if you have a really big monitor,
you know what I mean, Like if you play World
of Warcraft and you're reading something on that same monitor,
(19:26):
times New Roman Chef Kiss beautiful. But if you're reading
on a mobile phone, like so many people these days,
then you're gonna see that it's a little bit more difficult.
And as Peters points out, nowadays, almost sixty two percent
of all emails are opened on a smartphone. And if
(19:51):
you look at the millennial generation in particular, which we
are apart, then you'll see that number goes up to
eighty eight percent. No one tell our bosses, but a
lot of times, a lot of times we're like in
bed or we're walking somewhere.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Sure, yeah, multitasking, yeah, listening to other stuff, perhaps watch
researching on a computer, while looking at emails on the phone,
you know, all of that stuff. It's definitely part of
the equation for sure. I think one of the biggest
issues though, is just the kind of dated vibe of
(20:30):
Times New Roman and what it communicates about your brand
or your company, you know, as like philosophically speaking, you know,
everyone kind of does.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
No.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
One wants to be considered old fashion nowadays, like everyone
wants to feel like they're in some way on the
cutting edge, and design is a big part of that,
you know.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Like you said, the medium is the message.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
So what you put out there, whether it be your
style guide for communications within a company, you know, your
signature file, for example, companies even like ours, have a
very lized and uniform way of formatting those signature files,
including the fought choice mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
If you, for instance, think about it this way. If
you are considering putting money into a new or bleeding
edge industry and you go to their website and it's
in Times New Roman, then you're going to think they
don't get it. I don't know if these are the
people I trust for this investment, So we have to
(21:30):
be conscious of this. You know, it's often said by
great communicators that how you say something matters as much
as what you are saying.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
A great deal of information in in person conversations is
conveyed via intonation and body language, which is why it's
easy to misread a text.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
The same holds true with fonts. To some degree. The
thought you choose will influence the way your message is
interpreted by the readers, and that's why you see things
like multiple graphic designers have written their own diatribes. Dare
I say manifestos about Times New Roman. They say things
(22:13):
like it's corny and boring. Avoid it when you can.
It's bad, it's ugly. One person said. It makes me
nervous when I see it.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Yeah, we are here, we are with the poster out,
you know, the the reviews are in for Times New Romans,
like we did with with Comic Sands. Again, Yeah, I mean,
especially when you're looking at things through the lens of
a designer, this is something that's absolutely going to make
them cringe for all the reasons. The outline, it's dated,
(22:42):
it's not maybe as easy to read as some kind
of updated versions of the quote unquote more legible fonts,
and it really does say a lot about kind of
your attitude towards aesthetics and towards kind of being seen
as a little bit more on the cutting edge.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Which led some people to say, I want a font
that makes an impact. Hey, Impact, Impact, Impact Sunday, Sunday Sunday.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Exactly, Impact being like one of the more aggressive thoughts.
It's a fund that you want a font that smacks
you in the head like a stack of bricks.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Impact is for you.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Impact invented in nineteen sixty five by Jeffrey Lee. It
is easy to read. It is sansera. It does grab
your attention, but it is in the world of zime
people think it's often a little too thin in the strokes.
It's amateurish. It's most commonly used on documents that have
(23:46):
been quote designed by people who don't know what they're
doing when it comes to typefaces, and as such it
should be avoided. That is coming to us from vandalaiddesign
dot com in an article by Steven Snell.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Exactly, it's the kind of font that you might see
if you highlight something in a like let's say you're
using notes like on an iPhone, and then you highlight
it and just select heading. That's what it's going to
present you with, something with kind of a large amount
of space in between the letters, which arguably does make
it a little easier to read, and a kind of
(24:23):
inherent boldness to it. But again it's just a little
bit cliche, you know. It's like sort of almost mimicking
the headlines of yesteryear, in the same way that comic
Sands was trying to mimic the way text was designed
for speech bubbles and cartoons.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, exactly. And imagine reading an official like an official
government document or a paper of note in impact thought,
after the headline, you make a great point about the headline.
After the headline, it would start to feel off somehow.
Jeffery Lee designed this font because he was in the
(25:04):
midst of the nineteen sixties, and the mid nineteen sixties,
as we know, experienced a renaissance for bold condensed type
faces that, according to designers, probably came about through other
cut up prints and art of the day, specifically something
called the Schmalfett grotesque font, which had been drawn by
(25:29):
Volter Hottenschweiler Hottenschweiler, and because Impact was less condensed than
this other font. To your point about Kerning, designers often
use these two fonts together, and you could use Impact
for you know, Impact man maximum.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
I love the idea of a font being grotesque, though
I think some designers might consider all of these fonts
that we're talking about, you know, in these episodes, to
be grotesque.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Shout out to small fet.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yes, shout out this small efet And developers. Oh, here's
where you see Impact the most nowadays, fellow ridiculous historians.
You see it in memes. It's the default font for
things like caption meme. It's the default font for a
lot of those macros you can make your own. And
developers use Impact because it's super readable, it's ubiquitous, it's
(26:26):
available at every computer. You don't have to download a
new font pack, and you don't have to read a
lot for a meme usually, right, a meme is hopefully
I don't want to sound pretentious. You can hate or
love memes or as they're called sometimes shit posts, but
(26:46):
you have to admit there's an art and beauty to
the economy of language, no question.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
And you know, as is the case for a lot
of Internet culture, you know, and kind of like stuff
that might have found its origins on forums, you know,
like something Awful or Penny Arcade or some of these
you know forums that sort of kind of got condensed
since now what we know has read it. I guess,
I mean all these other There are, of course forums
that still exist that are more under the radar, but
(27:15):
now Reddit has kind of become the more like mainstream
version of a lot of this type of Internet communication.
Dated fonts and kind of you know, Internet relics are
like a big part of the presentation for these kinds
of things.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
And our pal, Jeff Bartlett, not Jeffrey Lee, Jeff Bartlett
research associate, wants everyone to know that he has only
one tattoo and it is sapere aude Latin for dare
to know, and an old school like motto of the
Age of Enlightenment. Says it's on his forearm, it is
(27:49):
in impact fonts, and he has no regrets.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
All right, you heard it here first. Oh man, I'm
so excited. I'm so excs for this next one. We've
been teasing it from the start, good old Papyrus, you know,
if we're talking about fonts that are trying to invoke
(28:15):
a certain feeling, you know, a certain like you know,
we said comic Sands was trying to evoke whimsy or
sort of creativity or you know, like a lightness to
their communications. I'm not quite sure what Papyrus is supposed
to communicate in that respect.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Is it mysticism? Is it the age, the wisdom of
the ancient?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Like you're reading a scroll, you know, Max, give us
some like D and D Renaissance festival music, you know,
dungeons and dragons. Sw I mean by D and.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
D not do not disturb.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
So here here's our certa intrue, maybe a fife, the flute,
a bit of elup. There's an American. His name is
Chris Costello. He creates Papyrus in nineteen eighty three. This
is also Yeah, this reminds me. I associate Papyrus with
the early oh, the early computer games. I used to
(29:08):
play by Sierra Entertainment. So shout out to anyone who
remembers King's Quest. But he Chris says, this is one
of my proudest accomplishments. He's also Chris has his stripes.
He's a graphic designer, illustrator, web designer, and he says
similar to the creation of comic sands. He says that
(29:29):
Papyrus was made with certain intent and it was never
meant to be used on the logos of big businesses,
on mortgage companies, construction logos, just like our Times New
Roman example. You wouldn't trust, say, a cryptocurrency outfit that
had their website in Times New Roman. You would you
(29:50):
trust a mortgage company in papyrus like their font ism Papyrus.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
I wouldn't trust a mortgage company general funds, but no,
definitely not. Or perhaps a realtor you know who's who's
whose yard signs have their name emblazoned in papyrus. Yeah,
it has kind of taken on the reputation of being
the most maligned font on the planet.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, the Pepsi to the Coca Cola of comic sans.
Papyrus is famous for being misused. You see it in
business cards, letterheads, signs, et cetera. There are a lot
of websites that exist just to make fun of Papyrus.
It gets featured ironically and all kinds of things in
(30:37):
television shows, in sketch comedy. If you want to sort
of undercut the character who is being cartoonish in the sketch.
Then you have them without explanation, use Papyrus and shout
out to Snell's sketch. We mentioned shout out to the
McSweeney's article, which I'd love to read in full, the
(30:59):
Comics's articles just oh, it's so good.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Chris Costello sold the rights to his font, and he
regrets it a little bit. He says, there have definitely
been days I wish I'd never sold the rights, and
I get that there are a lot of critics, but
hate if you must. Papyrus is on over a billion
computers around the world. It's a font you can choose
(31:23):
right now.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
You can definitely choose it, as we saw a designer
choosing it from the list of drop Town available fonts
in that amazing SNL short about you know, Papyrus being
the logo for Avatar, a multi billion dollar grossing you know,
fantasy science fiction franchise. Watch that if you get a
(31:47):
chance with Ryan Gosley. It puts a lot of context
around this, but you know, with you if you look
at the font though on its own, and you saw
it like as a singular work, maybe before the ubiquity
of it, like on the cover of a comic book
or something. It does evoke kind of like a biblical,
kind of Middle Eastern mystical kind of vibe, you know,
And that's exactly what Costello was trying to do when
(32:10):
he was messing around with a calligraphy pen on a
literal piece of parchment paper, and he, you know, was
kind of fooling around and created these sort of ornate
sort of capital letters that had these brushstrokes or kind
of pen strokes, you know, on the edges. And he
also claims that he got to this place because he
(32:32):
was on a bit of a biblical journey himself.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Reading a lot of history, spiritual and geographical about the
Middle East. And then he also said he dove into
the Biblical times. That's a quote from him, and he
was drawing a lot of ligatures and letters with these
hairlined arrangements, and this struck a chord internally for Chris Costello,
(32:57):
and over the course of just a few days, worked
on these letters until he had generated an entire Roman
alphabet in all caps, and he was pretty happy with it.
He said, you know what, I'm gonna call this papyrus.
I'm gonna see if I can turn it into a
font and get this ridiculous historians. This was the very
(33:18):
first typeface he ever worked on. This is a lot
like going into a studio and saying, I play a
little guitar, I've never recorded anything, and then boom, you've
created you know, what's a what's a hated pop song? Macharena?
You know?
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Oh absolutely maybe you know, let's say the instrument was
maybe more of like a cowbell or something. Right, you
make the most cow the most.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Noted cow bell song of all time. Right, that then
becomes something of a trope.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
And the thing is he sent this out. I wanted
to sell it, and he said, everybody rejected me. The
big names, the small names and type distribution, which is
an industry, honestly, folks, I had never thought about until
he talks to one company, a small outfit called Letra
Set British company, and he believes they may have been
(34:13):
the creators of louram ipsum. And you guys know everybody
knows lauram ipsum, right, it's the famous placeholder text.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Well that yeah, or like the the whatever what like
a font is missing?
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Right?
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Or that isn't that what comes up by default the content. Yeah,
it's it's like a mock. Oh no, it's to demonstrates. Yeah,
it's to demonstrate a font because I think it has
or it's sort of like the quick brown fox jumps over.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
The lazy dog.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
I think it demonstrates a good number of characters in
a font set. So it's used to kind of showcase,
like you know, the letters, the style of the letters
in a particular font.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
The I feel, Yeah, that makes sense, right, How do
my eyes feel looking at this in this font? Yeah,
that's smart too. So like Comic Sands, if there's a
villain in the story for people who hate Comic Sands
and Papyrus, then it's Microsoft, right, because those those fonts
(35:15):
may not have caught on if they weren't pre installed
on Microsoft Office starting with Office ninety seven. Actually, behind
the scenes, I don't know if we want to keep
this in, but I was looking through the fonts on
the shared docs we use that I was gonna see
if I could put it in put virus, but I
decided not.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
We've got a show to do.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Well. That's the thing though, right, Like it's no longer
that you know, ubiquitously pre installed font that it used
to be. And a lot of the history that we're
talking about has exactly to do with what you're saying.
You know, you have like a sort of taste maker
or like a company like Microsoft that determines what goes
on these machines that are widely adopted, and then it's
(35:57):
ultimately up to creators to kind of proliferate which fonts
become the thing, you know, but then they sort of
create the palletts at the tones that were available to
designers and obviously non designers alike. Not to mention, you
remember back in the day when like web pages would
be in weird fonts, you know, but you were limited
to what fonts were installed, whether you were a Mac
(36:19):
user or a PC user. And now web pages and
various designs don't necessarily depend on you having that font
installed unless you want to actually create something. You know,
things are generated into like vector images or whatever, you know,
like high quality JPEGs. You don't have to have that
thuon installed, so you can get all kinds of design
elements that don't rely on the user having that. But
(36:42):
back in the day, it was literally sourcing what fonts
you had on your computer. And then recreating that with
those characters that were actually installed on your physical machines.
So yeah, I mean Microsoft Office starting in ninety seven,
like you said, is really to blame for, at the
very least, giving folks the options that, some of which
(37:03):
became these hated fonts.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Yeah, he nailed it, man. And it's strange because none
of these font creators, these designers, they're not bad guys.
They're not Bond level villains. They made something really cool
and it's just in the way people used it.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Now.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Of course, when you're learning about the creator of Papyrus,
if you hate Papyrus, you may be tempted to think
of this guy as some kind of Bond level graphic
design supervillain. But believe it or not, folks, he only
got the equivalent of about two five hundred dollars for
selling the rights, so he probably lost out on millions
(37:47):
of dollars, given that one in seven people on the
planet has access to Papyrus on their computer.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
But that's the thing too, You know, a font that
comes pre installed like that is sort of like having
back to our discussion on sampling, you know, not the
cheese cubes, but like sampling of music. You know, if
you buy a keyboard like a synthesizer or a you know,
a sampler or whatever, and it has presets on it,
(38:13):
those are available to be used without concern over copyright clearance. Point.
So the you know, the idea of who's making money
off of Papyrus, the answer is probably no one really,
you know, after that initial deal, you know, selling the
rights to it, and then it sort of gets lumped
in with this list of presets. As we know, fancy
(38:35):
er font sets are quite expensive because you are paying
for the rights to be able to use that font
in whatever commercial designs you might you know, want to.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Use it in.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
But since Papyra has already pre installed on your system
and it comes with quote unquote you know, your software
that you already have, you can use it however you want.
So it's not like every time someone, you know, I
don't think that anyone got paid for Papyro is being
used in the Avatar logo. I would also argue that
it's possible, I don't know specifically, but that the version
(39:07):
of Papyrus on the Avatar logo was adjusted or tweaked
in some way. You can you can you can make
tweaks to like font sets and stuff and then kind
of make it your own. But I don't know, Max,
what do you think, like, do you think if someone
is using one of these fonts, is there anyone getting
a check? Are there like font residuals? I'd like to
answer as well, after you mix, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
Probably maybe, But to the thing, it's like, do you
if you make it just slightly different? So side note,
I watched the Papiates sketch right before we came on,
and it Chris Read is playing I guess Ryan Goslin's friend,
and he's like, hey man, it might have started with Papyrus,
but it's like slightly different. So I mean, I'm guessing
(39:48):
that's probably a tricky thing where if you make it
just different enough and it's probably it's probably just very
much soaked in minutia.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
I also like to think that maybe their budget was
just so close that they said we have to use
one of the pre installed thoughts. It's down between Papyrus
and comic Sands. But you know, shout out to Costello.
It sounds like a really cool guy. He says, I'm
not embarrassed about this. You know the fact that it's
(40:18):
one of the world's most widely recognizable fonts. Even if
that means it's overused, it means there's just as many
people out there who love it as who hate it.
And he also says stay humble. I mean, Chris feels
like a good guy to hang out with, you guys.
He also says telling people I created Papyrus is always
(40:39):
a good topic for humorous conversation. It always gets a laugh.
How can you put a price on that? That's nice, man,
that's very well adjusted.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I think excellent conversation starter for sure.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
You know what an interesting thing to Hey, I mean,
did this guy go on to design any other fonts?
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Is his first one out of the gate? Right?
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Did he try to you know, like, I guess repair
his repute? I mean, I thought he feels like it's
a bad reputation. But you know, it seemed like he
was just sort of a dabbler in font design. I
gotta wonder, like, is this guy what's he up to now?
Speaker 1 (41:14):
He's got a website Chriscostello dot design, and you can
see his collection of fonts, which include Blackstone. He also
has Mirage, letter Press text and Papyrus, and then he
has one called virus. This is this is a rabbit
hole to link into, and I think we've we've hit
(41:37):
some of the big one. Snow will doubtlessly hear from
our fellow ridiculous historians who have pet peeve fonts of
their own. But I believe we have to mention, just
just at least the once, we have to mention how
wing Dings came about. As as we're wrapping.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Up this series.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Wing Dings is the thing that looks like a bunch
of strange nonsense. You know, it looks like the computer
is taken over and it doesn't speak your language. But
according to a great article by Phil Edwards over in Vox,
why the wing Dings font exists, there are multiple versions
of wing dings. It's one of the early days of emoji.
(42:20):
It could give you an image and scale it.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
Yeah, at the very least like clip art, right like
it was a way. We talked about this a little
bit in the last episode that it was. Yeah, to
your point, fonts are also scalable. That's that's a very
important distinction that you made there, Bend, Because you can
blow up a font to a massive size and it's
not going to have any pixelation, right, I mean depending
(42:45):
on how you are outputting it, like in whatever you know,
design software you're using. But a font is essentially like
information telling a computer how to recreate something that is scalable,
whether it's tiny or whether it's massive. It's not the
same as like blowing up a low resolution JPEG, which
of course is going to cause all kinds of you know,
horrible blurring and pixelation and all that. This is neat
(43:09):
because these are little individual images. Some of the ones
that they pull on the vox article or like a
little hand or a little disc drive, you know, or
like a floppy disc. Some of them are just little
symbols like like an X, you know in a circle,
or you know, certain kind of characters that might be
look look like runs or something like that. Right, There
(43:32):
were multiple iterations of wing dings as well. We had
the og wing dings.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Which would have like, you know, there's like a OM
symbol in there.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
There's you know, like a little redical or whatever you
call it, sort of like the way the Zodiac Killer
signed you know, his missives to the press. Then you
had wing dings, two, wingedings three. Then of course, who
could forget web dings, and then something called zapp ding bats,
which I'm not familiar with, but that's where you start.
(44:02):
They do start to resemble like the emojis that we
know today, like a peace sign, explosions like a little
you know, kind of a firecracker pop, or things like snowflakes.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
And of course flowers. Charles Bigelow, who's one of the
co creators of wing dings in its various forms, says
that his personal favorite will be the floral designs. And
we want to to squeeze in just a little explanation
about wing dings.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
What a ride this has been.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
We may have to return to fonts in the future
because this addresses so many things that we find ridiculous
about history, right, social dynamics, human psychology, How small things
can have such an outsized influence. A great time with
this one, and thanks to super producer mister Max Williams,
(44:56):
thanks to research associate Jeff I didn't know about the
impact tattoo.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Oh I did neither.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
And I just have to add one last little thing
because I questioned what the deal was with wing ding dingbats.
Apparently dingbats are actually refer to a particular.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Type of tool that was used in printing.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
They were small pieces of reusable shapes that could be
slotted into texts and used like to kind of add
a little bit of flair to a book printing, think
about maybe something that might be used in chapter headings,
or even like page numbers or little kind of bespoke
like frames on the edge of pages.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Things like that. They were called dingbats.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
So, you know, the more you know, I love how
a lot of this stuff, or most of this stuff
does have references to you know, antiquity into like the
age that's even pre printing press. And then obviously the
printing press becomes the earliest form of type setting, and
then it you know, trans decisions into the computer aid.
So yeah, now I'm with you, man. This is a
really really fun topic. And I don't know some of
(46:07):
these fonts. I think maybe you're a little unfairly maligned.
I don't hate comic sands. Maybe as much as the
design community might, none of these really inspire that much
like ire from me personally. I'm more interested in the
history and the question of like why certain people hate these,
So I hope we did a decent job in answering those.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
I don't know if y'all have noticed this, but I
have been returning emails and comic fans.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Since I see you.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Yeah, I saw it.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
I saw it.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
And also thanks to you guys for let me include
what was going to be a wing Ding's Dia tribe.
But after I had found and read that box article,
I just really enjoyed the history of it like you
guys are saying. And thanks of course to Jonathan Strickly
and aka the Quister Christopher hasiotis here in spirit, Eve's
Jeff Coat, Gabe Luzier who is killing it over on
(46:57):
this day in history.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Class, and of course research Associate extraordinary Jeff Bartlett. Thank
you for being our sharpa on this font journey. Uh
and you Ben It's it's been a it's been a
wild ride.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Mm hmm. San Seraph all the way. We'll see you
next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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