 | |
| 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 2000 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 2000 on all personal computers using a Mac or Microsoft operating system. [1] In any case, Costello claims "it was not my intent (for it) to be used for everything. It's way overused." [4]
Papyrus has been included in many Microsoft programs for Windows. [5] macOS includes Papyrus font as part of its basic installation (starting with version 10.3 Panther, released in 2003). [6]
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. [7] In 2008, a website named "Papyrus Watch" was created for documenting the typeface's ubiquity and misusage. [8]
In the webcomic XKCD a character annoys a "typography geek" by giving her a birthday card printed in Papyrus. [9]
In the movie Avatar , standard Papyrus is used in the subtitles, and a modified version is used for the film's title. [10] [11] Its use in the film was highlighted in a 2017 Saturday Night Live sketch titled "Papyrus," featuring Ryan Gosling, [1] [12] which also claimed that it was widely used for Shakira merchandise, hookah bars, and off-brand tea companies. [13] Jon Landau, the producer of both Avatar films, claims that the sketch helped to keep Avatar relevant during production of the second film. [14] 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; [14] Papyrus is still used for subtitles. [15] 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. [16]
Undertale features a skeleton named Papyrus, whose dialogue is written in the font.
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.
Hermann Zapf was a German type designer and calligrapher who lived in Darmstadt, Germany. He was married to the calligrapher and typeface designer Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse. Typefaces he designed include Palatino, Optima, and Zapfino. He is considered one of the greatest type designers of all time.
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.
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.
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 designed by Vincent Connare and released in 1994 by Microsoft Corporation. It is a non-connecting script inspired by comic book lettering, intended for use in cartoon speech bubbles, as well as in other casual environments, such as informal documents and children's materials.
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.
Zapfino is a calligraphic typeface designed for Linotype by typeface designer Hermann Zapf in 1998. It is based on an alphabet Zapf originally penned in 1944. As a font, it makes extensive use of ligatures and character variations.
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.
Segoe is a typeface, or family of fonts, that is best known for its use by Microsoft. The company uses Segoe in its online and printed marketing materials, including recent logos for a number of products. Additionally, the Segoe UI font sub-family is used by numerous Microsoft applications, and may be installed by applications. It was adopted as Microsoft's default operating system font, and is also used on Outlook.com, Microsoft's web-based email service. On August 23, 2012, Microsoft unveiled its new corporate logo typeset in Segoe, replacing the logo it had used for the previous 25 years.
DIN 1451 is a sans-serif typeface that is widely used for traffic, administrative and technical applications.
Algerian is a decorative serif digital font family, originally produced in the early 20th century by British foundry Stephenson, Blake and Co. The design for the typeface is owned by Linotype, while the name 'Algerian' is a trademark of the International Typeface Corporation.
Mike Russell Parker was a British-born American typographer and type designer.
Poetica is the name of a calligraphic, ornamental typeface designed by Robert Slimbach for Adobe Systems in 1992. As one of the first of the Adobe Originals family of typefaces including a swash version, it attained a wide usage in digital typography. Regarded as the first family of italic type in digital form, it is available in 21 weights to cater numerous design ideas in a single typeface family.
Kyle James Kozub Mooney is an American comedian and actor. He was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 2013 to 2022. Mooney co-wrote and starred in the 2017 film Brigsby Bear, in addition to co-creating, co-writing, producing, and starring in the adult animated television series Saturday Morning All Star Hits!
Freestyle Script is an informal display script typeface that was designed by Colin Brignall in 1969 and Martin Wait in 1981, by Letraset. Freestyle Script is famously used for commercials in 1980s, birthday cards, decorative, logos and many others. The bold version was designed in 1986. The publishers of this font are Adobe, ITC, Monotype Imaging, Elsner+Flake, Esselte Corporation, Scangraphic Type, Linotype, Image Club, and Letraset. This font has a few versions, namely Regular, Bold, LT, Plain, LET, EF, SB, SH, SH Reg Alt, and SB Reg Alt. Freestyle Script font supports up to 78 different languages for cursive (plain) and 33 different languages for other styles. The Cyrillic version of Freestyle Script was created in 1993, consisting of the glyphs in Latin supplement. The font has been included in MyFonts since 2000.
Simplified Arabic is a simplified Arabic font that allowed Arabic text to be composed using a Linotype machine. It was first announced in 1959 as Mrowa-Linotype Simplified Arabic. The font was developed by Kamel Mrowa, Nabih Jaroudi, and Linotype & Machinery Ltd. staff under the guidance of Walter Tracy.
I soon came up with what vernacular writing may have looked like if the English language existed 2000 years ago.
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