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 signage

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.

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.

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.

Shoppiug Ceutre Lambton Square got the ns and us right with part of the name, so we know the person doing the signage had access to both letters. Why, then, did they employ an upside-down u for the two ns in Shopping Centre?

Shoppiug Ceutre Lambton Square got the ns and us right with part of the name, so we know the person doing the signage had access to both letters. Why, then, did they employ an upside-down u for the two ns in Shopping Centre?

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.

The Christmas Font Police entry This is a very poor use of Antique Olive Compact, especially when other weights exist. Merry Christmas to all readers and thank you for your support this year!

The Christmas Font Police entry This is a very poor use of Antique Olive Compact, especially when other weights exist.

Merry Christmas to all readers and thank you for your support this year!

(Source: iconic88)

Hyphens, hyphens everywhere This is a bad use of the hyphen, in place of both a dot (or colon) and an en dash in the times. Were those keys missing from the signmaker’s keyboard?

Hyphens, hyphens everywhere This is a bad use of the hyphen, in place of both a dot (or colon) and an en dash in the times. Were those keys missing from the signmaker’s keyboard?