The 3 Worst Fonts. Ever.

When good designs go bad.

I love fonts. My absolute favorite class in college was typography. And yes, I am a font snob. I don't mean to be, really.... but some fonts are just so very hard to love.

"But Nathan!!" you may say "there are no bad fonts, only bad designers!!!" Well, first I would say stop using so many exclamation points. Secondly, while a "bad"font is often contextual, these 3 fonts are very rarely the right choice. In fact, I would say you should just stop using them all together. Sure raw chicken wont always kill you, but I am still not making drumstick sashimi.

There are a ton of great fonts out there, some even for free, so there is no longer any excuse for a funeral announcement to look like a child’s birthday invitation. See which fonts made our list and why, and tell me in the comments below if you agree or disagree.

I'm sure in the beginning Bradley Hand was a cool little handwritten font, and then the 80s came along. Bradley hand is the biggest offender in the fake looking “if computers could hold pencils” handwritten font category. This is probably what Johnny 5's signature looks like. While handwritten fonts tend to be overused and hard to read, there are some very good ones out there. Bradley Hand is not one of them.

There's only two reasons you should ever use Papyrus; you are James Cameron and you can somehow get away with it or you are making a PowerPoint presentation about Egyptian culture for 3rd graders. Papyrus is the quintessential “I need a cool grungy font, but am writing this in the windows 95 text editor” font. I am glad you are trying to spice up you designs, I really am. Which is why I have to tell you this. Papyrus isn’t cool. It wants to be, but it just isn’t. Papyrus graduated high school 2 years ago but still hangs out in the school cafeteria.

Was there any doubt. It's the GOAT of bad fonts. Its not so much that Comic Sans is a terrible font, and its not so much that it's overused, its that Comic Sans ends up in the worst places possible.

Here are a few places NOT to use Comic Sans

-A termination notice

-A warning for a dangerous snake

-A resume

-A funeral bulletin

-A church bulletin.

-Anything called a bulletin.