 | |
| Category | Fantasy |
|---|---|
| Designer(s) | Chris Costello |
| Foundry | Letraset |
| Date created | 1982 |
| Date released | 1983 |
| Re-issuing foundries | Linotype ITC |
 | |
| Sample | |
| Shown here | Papyrus EF Alternatives |
Papyrus is a typeface designed by Chris Costello, a graphic designer, illustrator, and web designer. Created in 1982 and released by Linotype, it has a number of distinctive characteristics, including rough edges, irregular curves, and high horizontal strokes in the capitals.
Costello created the font in 1982, when he was 23 years old and just out of college. He had been studying the Bible and came onto the idea of what a written font would have looked like in biblical times in the Middle East. [1] He hand-drew the font over a period of six months by means of calligraphy pen and textured paper. Costello described his goal as a font that would represent what English language texts would have looked like if written on papyrus 2,000 years ago. [2] The following year, Costello released the font alongside Letraset.
Papyrus has a number of distinctive characteristics, including rough edges, irregular curves, and high horizontal strokes in the capitals. ITC, the current owner of the typeface, describes it as an "unusual roman typeface [that] effectively merges the elegance of a traditional roman letterform with the hand-crafted look of highly skilled calligraphy". [3] Costello sold the rights for the font for $750 (equivalent to $2,400in 2023), and as of 2017, states he still receives "very low" royalty payments despite its inclusion since 1997 on all personal computers using a Mac or Microsoft operating system, or Microsoft Office. [1] [4] In any case, Costello claims "it was not my intent (for it) to be used for everything...it's way overused". [5]
Papyrus has been included in many Microsoft programs for Windows, including Microsoft Office. [6] macOS includes Papyrus font as part of its basic installation (starting with version 10.3 Panther, released in 2003). [7]
Over the years, Papyrus has gained infamy for its omnipresence in graphic design, usually in situations for which it was not intended. The criticism towards the typeface is similar to that of Comic Sans. [8] In 2008, a website named "Papyrus Watch" was created for documenting the typeface's ubiquity and misusage. [9]
In the webcomic XKCD a character annoys a "typography geek" by giving her a birthday card printed in Papyrus. [10]
In the movie Avatar , standard Papyrus is used in the subtitles, and a modified version is used for the film's title. [11] [12] Its use in the film was highlighted in a 2017 Saturday Night Live sketch titled "Papyrus," featuring Ryan Gosling, [1] [13] which also claimed that it was widely used for Shakira merchandise, hookah bars, and off-brand tea companies. [14] Jon Landau, the producer of both Avatar films, claims that the sketch helped to keep Avatar relevant during production of the second film. [15] In preparation for the expansion of the Avatar franchise, Avatar: The Way of Water saw the film series change to a proprietary font called Toruk; [15] Papyrus is still used for subtitles. [16] Following the release of The Way of Water, Gosling starred in a second Saturday Night Live short called "Papyrus 2" wherein he discovers that despite the sequel's enormous budget, the typeface has merely been changed to bold. [17]
Undertale features a skeleton named Papyrus, whose dialogue is written in the font. His brother Sans is written in a similarly infamous typeface, Comic Sans. [18]
Palatino is an old-style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf, initially released in 1949 by the Stempel foundry and later by other companies, most notably the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. Palatino is optimised for legitibility with open counters, balanced proportions, moderate stroke contrast and flared serifs.
Optima is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf and released by the D. Stempel AG foundry, Frankfurt, West Germany in 1958.
Helvetica, also known by its original name Neue Haas Grotesk, is a widely-used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.
Matthew Carter is a British type designer. A 2005 New Yorker profile described him as 'the most widely read man in the world' by considering the amount of text set in his commonly used typefaces.
Frutiger is a series of typefaces named after its Swiss designer, Adrian Frutiger. Frutiger is a humanist sans-serif typeface, intended to be clear and highly legible at a distance or at small text sizes. A popular design worldwide, type designer Steve Matteson described its structure as "the best choice for legibility in pretty much any situation" at small text sizes, while Erik Spiekermann named it as "the best general typeface ever".
Arial is a sans-serif typeface in the neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows after Windows 3.1, as well as in other Microsoft programs, Apple's macOS, and many PostScript 3 printers. In Office 2007, Arial was replaced by Calibri as the default typeface in PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook.
Univers is a sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteenth-century German typefaces such as Akzidenz-Grotesk, it was notable for its availability from the moment of its launch in a comprehensive range of weights and widths. The original marketing for Univers deliberately referenced the periodic table to emphasise its scope.
Adrian Johann Frutiger was a Swiss typeface designer who influenced the direction of type design in the second half of the 20th century. His career spanned the hot metal, phototypesetting and digital typesetting eras. Until his death, he lived in Bremgarten bei Bern.
Wingdings is a series of dingbat fonts that render letters as a variety of symbols. They were originally developed in 1990 by Microsoft by combining glyphs from Lucida Icons, Arrows, and Stars licensed from Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. Certain versions of the font's copyright string include attribution to Type Solutions, Inc., the maker of a tool used to hint the font.
Comic Sans MS is a sans-serif typeface created and designed by Vincent Connare and released by Microsoft Corporation in 1994. Designed as a non-connecting script, the typeface draws inspiration from comic book lettering, to emulate the informal and cartoonish tone of speech bubbles. It was originally developed for use in Microsofts software, and since then has become very widely recognized for its use in casual contexts such as children's books, personal documentation and in educational resources.
Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with consumer electronics devices. Based in Woburn, Massachusetts, the company has been responsible for many developments in printing technology—in particular the Monotype machine, which was a fully mechanical hot metal typesetter, that produced texts automatically, all single type. Monotype was involved in the design and production of many typefaces in the 20th century. Monotype developed many of the most widely used typeface designs, including Times New Roman, Gill Sans, Arial, Bembo and Albertus.
Eras is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Albert Boton and Albert Hollenstein and was released by the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) in 1976. Eras is licensed by the Linotype type foundry.
ITC Kristen is a casual script typeface consisting of two weights designed by George Ryan for the International Typeface Corporation (ITC). It was inspired by a handwritten menu at a Cambridge, Massachusetts restaurant, and has an asymmetric structure suggesting a child's handwriting.
Vincent Connare is an American type designer and former Microsoft employee. Among his creations are the fonts Comic Sans and Trebuchet MS, as well as the Man in Business Suit Levitating emoji. Besides text typefaces, he finalized and hinted the font Marlett which has been used for scalable User Interface icons in Microsoft Windows since 1995 and created portions of the font Webdings that was first shipped with Internet Explorer.
Kris Holmes is an American typeface designer, calligrapher, type design educator and animator. She, with Charles Bigelow, is the co-creator of the Lucida and Wingdings font families, among many other typeface designs. She is President and Co-Founder of Bigelow & Holmes Inc., a typeface design studio.
DIN 1451 is a sans-serif typeface that is widely used for traffic, administrative and technical applications.
Bank Gothic is a rectilinear geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders and released in 1930. The design has become popular from the late twentieth century to suggest a science-fiction, military, corporate, or sports aesthetic.
Nokia Pure is a typeface designed by London-based type foundry Dalton Maag for Nokia. It was designed primarily for use in digital media, in Nokia devices, and mobile environments. It has been the company's main typeface since its introduction. Its designers include Vincent Connare, creator of the classic font Comic Sans.
I soon came up with what vernacular writing may have looked like if the English language existed 2,000 years ago.
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| Latin, Greek, Cyrillic |
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