I’m not sure if you pay attention to fonts, but I sure do. And one of my favorite fonts, Papyrus, has become the font of the new millennium. This year I have started to see it all over the place — on billboards, in magazines, on business cards… everywhere! If any font is more unique, identifiable and pervasive I’ll eat a sandwich.

I consider the Papyrus font a friend, and would use her sparingly and graciously, and only in a setting and stage that would enhance it’s natural beauty. But now everyone seems to be using her and she has become the cheap and tawdry hoar of the font world.

Last weekend I was in Saint George, Utah and I saw that font on buildings, add banners, bumperstickers, gated communities, golf courses, and the list goes on and on! It’s really a shame. I can see the graphic designers now “Hey, how about we make your company logo using this hip new font called Papyrus! Yeah! Everyone is doing it! It’s very hip!”

It’s really too bad. There are so many fonts out there — thousands if not tens of thousands but everyone has to use Papyrus. Now I’m not saying people can’t or shouldn’t use the same font all the time because fonts like Ariel and Times New Roman and Courrier are used everywhere all the time. They are so everywhere people don’t notice… they kind of disappear into the background. But fonts that stand out, like Papyrus, are more noticable for people and less usefull for general reading.

I wish I had a camera phone becuase I would like to take pictures of all the crazy places using Papyrus. And if I did take those pictures, I would make a photo gallery dedicated to it’s use.

And so, because of its ubiquitous usage, I pronounce Papyrus the font of the new millennium!

P.S. The font was developed by Chris Costello in 1983 then later sold it to International Typeface Corporation. I believe Apple aquired the rights to distribute the font as part of OS X — whenever that was.