Font Police is patrolling the world for bad typography. We issue misdemeanours for spelling mistakes and lengthy sentences in our criticisms.

This is a light-hearted humour site, with no offence intended. Send ideas to submissions@ followed by fontpolice.org.

Canada Be very careful when setting a word all in uppercase, as obscuring certain glyphs can give it a very different meaning.

Canada Be very careful when setting a word all in uppercase, as obscuring certain glyphs can give it a very different meaning.

(Source: theamericankid, via integers)

Exam time Bad letterspacing. The S in the last School appears to be upside-down. We’re not convinced any of those Ms aren’t Ws. Oh, and the I in Final appears to be at a strange angle, which could cause a serious misinterpretation of the intended message.

Exam time Bad letterspacing. The S in the last School appears to be upside-down. We’re not convinced any of those Ms aren’t Ws. Oh, and the I in Final appears to be at a strange angle, which could cause a serious misinterpretation of the intended message.

Comic Sans skin care Emily W. caught this when watching Shark Tank on ABC. Now, the designer of Comic Sans is a friend of ours so we don’t object to his typeface existing, especially as he only ever designed it to be used in one program. But when it’s used this badly, it qualifies for inclusion in the Font Police files. An oversized cap. Bad letterspacing between the first cap and the next letter. One line squashed and another line stretched electronically—with that first N squashed more. And no, organic skin care is not really a Comic Sans sort of a product. As Emily writes, ‘Maybe if they knew enough to hire a proper designer, they would have gotten a better deal!’

Comic Sans skin care Emily W. caught this when watching Shark Tank on ABC. Now, the designer of Comic Sans is a friend of ours so we don’t object to his typeface existing, especially as he only ever designed it to be used in one program. But when it’s used this badly, it qualifies for inclusion in the Font Police files. An oversized cap. Bad letterspacing between the first cap and the next letter. One line squashed and another line stretched electronically—with that first N squashed more. And no, organic skin care is not really a Comic Sans sort of a product. As Emily writes, ‘Maybe if they knew enough to hire a proper designer, they would have gotten a better deal!’

Quit school The New Zealand Government embarks on a campaign to lighten the load on the education budget. (Via oneandiwatson on Instagram.)

Quit school The New Zealand Government embarks on a campaign to lighten the load on the education budget. (Via oneandiwatson on Instagram.)

Make it count When printing large-format posters, make sure you know where the frames are. Via Stephen Fry’s blog, found on Facebook.

Make it count When printing large-format posters, make sure you know where the frames are. Via Stephen Fry’s blog, found on Facebook.

Grave retouching From a display at Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand. This should have been done better, since it is for the gravestone of a fallen soldier, from a real-life photograph (where the other gravestones have their original engravings). Problem: Helvetica was not around in the 1910s.

Grave retouching From a display at Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand. This should have been done better, since it is for the gravestone of a fallen soldier, from a real-life photograph (where the other gravestones have their original engravings). Problem: Helvetica was not around in the 1910s.


Posted at 7.16 am

Thank goodness it’s temporary No matter how hard you try, someone is going to use the stencil upside-down and backwards.

Thank goodness it’s temporary No matter how hard you try, someone is going to use the stencil upside-down and backwards.

The worst offender so far at Font Police Found by Conrad Johnston in Whitby. Where do we begin? The W and y in Whitby in the first photo are at weird angles. The dots are missing from the is. Whitby is in Baskerville and Sections is in Times New Roman. To match the cap and x-height proportion of the first word, the S in Sections has had to be enlarged. We haven’t even looked at the capitalization of the words in the text in the window, but we will note that that text has been expanded artificially, while Whitby Sections has been condensed.

On to the second photo: the second s in sales is upside-down. It’s more apparent here that the o in Sections is not upright. The centring of the text in the window sucks. Smart quotes are not used, and why are quotes there anyway? Why is Experts capitalized—or is it meant to be ironic, since whomever put the signage up was not an expert?

Some serious Font Police charges are going to be laid against this typographic disaster.

No solicitors, etc. Photographed in Newark, California, in September 2000. We already know it’s bad to artificially expand type (‘All trucks prohibited’) but why expand a condensed typeface (‘From using this entrance’)? If you expand a condensed typeface, you’d wind up at the normal width, so wouldn’t it just make sense to use the normal one to begin with? This is a lesson in how to make Helvetica look ugly.

No solicitors, etc. Photographed in Newark, California, in September 2000. We already know it’s bad to artificially expand type (‘All trucks prohibited’) but why expand a condensed typeface (‘From using this entrance’)? If you expand a condensed typeface, you’d wind up at the normal width, so wouldn’t it just make sense to use the normal one to begin with? This is a lesson in how to make Helvetica look ugly.