The Top Five Fonts To Never Ever Use

Step 1: Arial

Arial's been around so long, now, that it's comforting and familiar in the same way that makes middle-aged men trade in their wives for a younger, better looking model. Arial is therefore the pixel equivalent of a frumpy, disappointing housewife

Step 2: Times New Roman

Times New Roman is rarely appropriate in a futuristic web2.0-enabled society. It's clumsy, and has weird ugly sharp twisty bits coming off each of the letters. Ack, what a mess. Pick something properly classy like Verdana or Calibri, and let Times die.

Step 3: Papyrus

Papyrus makes everything you type look like it was written in Ancient Greece!, albeit by a ROBOT FROM THE FUTURE. That's not a good thing.
If you're using it, why not go whole hog and flip the colour to green and write “Save the trees! Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to...” in your email signature like any of your emails are worth printing off.

Step 4: Comic Sans

The granddaddy of all unusable fonts. Initially intended to be a quick comic book substitute, Comic Sans quickly found itself over used to the point of eye-bleeding saturation, and is now rarely seen outside the realm of ignorant passive aggressive office notes.

Step 5: Curlz

“Look at me!”, this font says. “Look at how what I write perfectly embodies the sort of person I am! I'm a bit crazy, and a bit different. I stand out!”

It doesn't matter that you can't actually read what they're writing, because the sort of person that chooses a nonsense font like this invariably hasn't got anything important to say anyway.

Invariably written in pink, and accompanied by acres of rubbishy clip art.

TRUE STORY: the email invite to last year's VideoJug Christmas Party was written entirely in red and green ‘Curlz' and the entire office was SICK BLOOD.


In short: be careful about which fonts you use, because the wrong one makes you look like a proper wally.