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.

Posts tagged with Helvetica

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.

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.

The big one One should never mix Arial with Helvetica. They are two different typeface families. Spotted at Auckland International Airport.

The big one One should never mix Arial with Helvetica. They are two different typeface families. Spotted at Auckland International Airport.

‘Desperate Ho, Use Wives’ Word breaks are important.

‘Desperate Ho, Use Wives’ Word breaks are important.

(Source: jmonster666, via sewaddled)

weirdinwellington: Panhandling made easy. (Courtesy Robyn Gallagher) Making it look worse than it has to be In a post-Letraset world, it should not be that hard to get the right characters, unless the sign is intentionally taking the piss and making the user look poorer than (s)he really is.

weirdinwellington:

Panhandling made easy. (Courtesy Robyn Gallagher)

Making it look worse than it has to be In a post-Letraset world, it should not be that hard to get the right characters, unless the sign is intentionally taking the piss and making the user look poorer than (s)he really is.

(via weirdinwellington)

(via fuckyeahhelvetica) Like a bad Letraset job While the grungy effects on this were most likely intentional, upside-down Ss trigger calls to the Font Police.

(via fuckyeahhelvetica)

Like a bad Letraset job While the grungy effects on this were most likely intentional, upside-down Ss trigger calls to the Font Police.

fuckyeahtypography: (via yertle83) At least it’s an em dash and not a hyphen This highlights why metric, as opposed to optical, centring of text is a bad idea, and a big em dash doesn’t help.

fuckyeahtypography:

(via yertle83)

At least it’s an em dash and not a hyphen This highlights why metric, as opposed to optical, centring of text is a bad idea, and a big em dash doesn’t help.

Climate change is an acute problem It is noble to head out and protest about climate change, especially to get myopic politicians realizing they need to act, and not talk. However, an acute accent doth not an apostrophe make. (From Rottin’ in Denmark’s blog.)

Climate change is an acute problem It is noble to head out and protest about climate change, especially to get myopic politicians realizing they need to act, and not talk. However, an acute accent doth not an apostrophe make. (From Rottin’ in Denmark’s blog.)

No excuse for this in 2008 Mixing Helvetica with Arial Narrow isn’t as big a sin as having a massive headline with strange capitalization and major typos. From the City Life newspaper in Wellington, New Zealand, October 28, 2008.

No excuse for this in 2008 Mixing Helvetica with Arial Narrow isn’t as big a sin as having a massive headline with strange capitalization and major typos. From the City Life newspaper in Wellington, New Zealand, October 28, 2008.