Papyrus: The World's 2nd Most Hated Font

The villain origin story of Papyrus, the world's second most reviled font. Perhaps the hate is not so deserved? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Featuring the voice talents of:
@munecat @NotJustBikes @nativemediatheory @PhilEdwardsInc

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00:00 I know what you DIDDD!!
00:58 John Roshell, designing a custom Avatar font
01:51 The designer of Papyrus, Chris Costello
02:40 The 1980s, pasteup and Letraset
04:37 Letragraphica and the creation of Papyrus
05:59 The "Instant Lettering" production process
07:32 The 1990s - Office 97, Publisher 98, Papryus goes mainstream
08:22 The power of software bundling
09:04 Mismatched upper and lowercase details
10:41 Two sets of capitals. One awful digital conversion.
12:07 The mainstream appeal of Papyrus
12:49 Sponsor - Envato Elements
14:06 The 2000s and hitting Papyrus saturation
15:10 Organic food, yoga and wellness
16:06 Papyrus and Avatar. Problem 1 - expensive film, cheap font.
16:40 Papyrus and Avatar. Problem 2 - careless or quite fitting?
18:09 An Indigenous stereotype, imperialist tropes
20:13 A catchall stereotype for otherness and "natural"
21:02 The artificial patina of Papyrus
22:59 Life after Peak Papyrus
23:39 Does it deserve its bad reputation?
24:47 A milestone video and call for collaborators!
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Music from Streambeats and Epidemic Sound

[treacherous-doctor]

Ah yes, papyrus, the official font of everyone’s fifth grade PowerPoint presentations on ancient Egypt

[GuitarSlayer]

Undertale did more PR for Comic Sans and Papyrus then designers have in the last 20 years.

[Dalenthas]

Papyrus is great, one of the best characters in Undertale.

[thecianinator]

I think the problem is that Papyrus and Comic Sans are actually too good. At least, too good at their objectives. They try to uniquely evoke hand lettering associated with specific formats in specific eras. They both succeed with flying colors, and that makes them stand out when you're looking through a font list in Microsoft Word. They stand out not only as unique, but as uniquely competent in communicating what their design is meant to evoke. As a result, every single uncultured non-graphic-design-educated swine uses one of those two fonts in every single fucking thing that they do, and that leads to oversaturation. It's that oversaturation that attracts the hate, not the fonts themselves. These fonts would be loved if everyone weren't so tired of looking at them.

[ColinHuth]

A decade ago I began a list cataloging every theme we saw Papyrus used for, as a family running joke.
*It currently sits at 593 entries.*

What began simply with “Ancient Egyptian, “ “Italian, ” and “Pirate“ soon ballooned to everything from “Cheerleading” to “National Hot Sauce Competition” and “Bacon Inspirational Quote.”

Literally yesterday my mother sent me a new one she saw. Recent entries include “Swordfishing, ” “New-Age Cat Food, ” and “Weight-Loss Voodoo Doll.”

Comic Sans might have the ubiquity, but the Papyrus treasure hunt just keeps on giving.

[CGFillertext]

Papyrus: A very hated font but a very beloved skeleton

[dio]

I think the fact that it's both quirky and highly legible actually makes it a good font. Yes, it's absolutely one of the most badly applied fonts of all time, but that's a user issue. One of the terms we use in IT is PEBKAC - problem exists between keyboard and chair - and I think that's the case with Papyrus. You make something good readily available to a mass audience and it will inevitably be misused.

[harrytodhunter]

I honestly dont think as many people hate Papyrus as they say they do, I think they just know its a meme to hate it so they joined in. Most people are probably indifferent to it. Same for Comic Sans.

[dominicgamboa]

Funny to see how they used it in the new Avatar film despite scrubbing it entirely from the marketing.

[robertkendzie]

Papyrus and many other "exaggerated patina" fonts have been and continue to be a godsend to anyone who plays D&D, where that kind of thing is perfect for handouts that look "ancient" but still need to be legible.

[hawkohakker]

"Breaking with SNL tradition, Gosling is genuinely funny" AMAZING line.

[CinemaProjectionist]

They didn't get rid of the original Papyrus in the subtitles... The Swedish subbed version of "Avatar: The Way of Water" in cinemas uses Papyrus for the _entire_ film in 2D, and strangely both Arial (for english spoken) and Papyrus for Navi' dialogue in the 3D version.

And to add to the mess; the 2D subtitles follow the action with the text being all over the place, even in the middle of the screen at times. 🙈

[rattyeely]

I honestly think Papyrus might be more ubiquitous than comic sans. Comic Sans' silly look stops some people from choosing it for more serious subjects, but Papyrus looks just sober enough for it to be used for stuff like self-help books and movie logos, yet still silly enough for it to be used for lighthearted stuff as well.

[marsf]

An element I'm surprised you didn't mention in terms of why Papyrus became so popular and associated with what it is- the name. Simple as that. It's a font that looks handwritten and weathered, and it's named papyrus, something we associate with the ancient world, Egypt, etc. If it were named "Bible Font" it'd likely not have had the same history.

[Veles]

I like papyrus, as someone with dyslexia I actually find it easy to read. I think it might be to do with the noisyness of the edges. Perhaps it doesn't produce as much visual stress as the crisp lines you get on most fonts. It's a little thicker than most body text fonts but the visual noise makes it appear thinner than it actually is. As a font for headers or signage, it's not as bold as most but still has enough thickness to be seen, perhaps making it appear more elegant than a chunkier font.

As far as why it's used a lot with food and wellness, it looks like someone has hand written the sign. Someone with nice but slightly unusual handwriting, they've taken care to write it, but not done anything too fancy. It says home-made, care and skill, without being pretentious. Exactly what you look for when going for some honest food or attending some kind of wellness class or shop. It also doesn't look like a font that has come from the UK or US, it has a kind of non-descript foreignness about it that means it can be applied to anything to give a touch of the exotic.\

People might not like it but that doesn't take away how cool I felt when I found it when doing my year 8 poetry work in the computer room at school

[MedlifeCrisis]

Wellness! Does nothing escape its grubby paws?! Poor papyrus and comic sans, truly suffering from their success. Especially learning the reason it often looks bad is because everyone used the wrong caps! I still like you papyrus.
Congrats on 100k! 🎉

[sarakajira]

I feel I am the rare graphic designer who actually thinks it works for the Avatar font. Is it lazy? Yes. But sometimes recognition has its own brand appeal. I personally think the new typeface they are using is similar-enough to the original that is recalls the feel of Papyrus, but still has it's own uniqueness and therefor is better. But, that said, Papyrus does have its uses, although it's now been far overused. You touched on some of why it's appealing: it's legible and easy to read, but it's also decorative. One of the problems with a lot of decorative fonts, is that they are too decorative. Papyrus is interesting in that you could basically use it as a body copy font, and it'd still be legible at that small size. And yet it's still decorative enough that it's not a conservative sans serif font like Arial or Helvetica, or a serif font like Times New Roman or Bodoni. And it has that deteriorated look kind of like many grunge fonts, but is far more legible than many grunge fonts. It's just a clean font that looks good. But just like how Times New Roman and Arial, and so many other fonts bundled in MS Office get overused, I think people simply tired of Papyrus because it was one of the few decent legible decorative fonts that was bundled in Office. Overuse of anything makes something feel tired. It's like when an otherwise good song gets played over and over again on a top 40 radio station: you get sick of hearing it, no matter how good the song is by itself.

[unrulysue]

I worked as a paste-up compositor for a newspaper in the late '80's. This is the first time I've seen anyone talking about paste-up online. I try explaining this to younger people and they look at me like I'm nuts, especially when I try to explain the waxing machine.

[halbarroyzanty]

Surprised the only reference to Undertale in both these videos was that one meme

[LB_]

As a kid I loved the Papyrus font because it looked like my terrible handwriting, and I used it a lot for personal messing around on the computer purposes. I had no idea it was hated until the reaction to Avatar using it.