Today, I came across a funny post regarding churches and fonts. It’s a broad covering of my topic, but hey, it’s good to smile and share a laugh.
First, since it’s sort of an industry joke, a few words of explanation:
There are two fonts graphic designers love to hate: Papyrus and Comic Sans. Snobbish as we are—we don’t even call them fonts, by the way, we pretentiously refer to them as typefaces—designers cringe at the sight both.
Actually, there’s nothing wrong with either Papyrus or Comic Sans. They both are types beautifully crafted for their purposes by highly skilled designers. The only sin they’re guilty of is overuse. And use in the wrong setting. This, of course, makes it user error, not type error.
That said, here’s the tongue-in-cheek posting: New Barna Study: Overused Typeface Gains Foothold in U.S. Churches.
Enjoy!
I produce a weekly church bulletin and would like advice on which fonts to use. I am having more luck finding which ones to avoid. Any thoughts?
The key idea for a newsletter font is legibility. It must be easy to read and encourage continued eye movement.
Serif fonts are good for this and are often used for the story content. Fonts such as Times New Roman, Caslon, Garamond, Adobe Jensen are commonly used serif fonts.
Nowadays, because of the internet, we’ve become accustomed to reading large amounts of text in san serif, as well. Gill Sans, Goudy Sans, and Optima are san serif fonts that are good for story content.
If your newsletter is going online, use Georgia for serif, and Verdana for san serif. These fonts were specifically designed for the web.