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The Mystery Font That Took Over New York (nytimes.com)
How did Choc, a quirky calligraphic typeface drawn by a French graphic designer in the 1950s, end up on storefronts everywhere? From a report: Stand just about anywhere on Broadway, or on Canal Street with its sprightly neon and overstuffed souvenir shops, or the long stretch of restaurants, hardware stores, pharmacies, bars, realtors, barber shops, groceries and auto shops that extends through Fifth Avenue in South Brooklyn, and you'll find a surplus of vibrant and overstated signage -- a cacophony of typography. Steven Heller, a co-chairman at the School of Visual Arts' M.F.A. program, sees it somewhat differently. "You say 'cacophony,'" he said. "I call it chaos." But amid all of this chaos there is the occasional beacon. Choc, for instance.
It's a typeface that draws the eye with its inherent contradictions. It seems to have been drawn improvisationally with a brush, and yet it's so hefty it looks like it could slip off a wall. It's both delicate and emphatic, a casual paradox, like a Nerf weapon. Choc is far from the most popular typeface on the storefronts of New York, but it can still be found everywhere and in every borough. It's strewn on fabric awnings and etched in frosted glass. It gleams in bright magenta or platinum lighting. It's used for beauty salons, Mexican restaurants, laundromats, bagel shops, numerous sushi bars. It may be distorted, stacked vertically, or shoehorned into a cluster of other typefaces. But even here Choc remains clear and articulate, its voice deep and friendly, its accent foreign, perhaps, yet endearing. You've already seen it, probably repeatedly, like a stranger you recognize from your morning commute.
It's a typeface that draws the eye with its inherent contradictions. It seems to have been drawn improvisationally with a brush, and yet it's so hefty it looks like it could slip off a wall. It's both delicate and emphatic, a casual paradox, like a Nerf weapon. Choc is far from the most popular typeface on the storefronts of New York, but it can still be found everywhere and in every borough. It's strewn on fabric awnings and etched in frosted glass. It gleams in bright magenta or platinum lighting. It's used for beauty salons, Mexican restaurants, laundromats, bagel shops, numerous sushi bars. It may be distorted, stacked vertically, or shoehorned into a cluster of other typefaces. But even here Choc remains clear and articulate, its voice deep and friendly, its accent foreign, perhaps, yet endearing. You've already seen it, probably repeatedly, like a stranger you recognize from your morning commute.
I'm not fond of it.
New York City is a place where people are obsessed by status. Someone noticed that trendy new places were using something to signal the fact that they were trendy to everyone. This time it was a font. Everyone suddenly wanted that same status, so they all followed the leader, like so many chimpanzees piling into the fruit cart. Presto, you now resemble others with status.
What they forgot was to set barriers to entry. High costs, restricted invitation-only events, social media full of virtue signaling posts, required letters of recommendation from high status individuals, . Fonts are too easy to copy. Now that all the deplorables have the font too, it's going to go out of fashion fast. Look for it to resurface 20 years from now as a "retro" font.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
That, and it doesn't seem that common judging by the pictures the author chose...
God, I hate fluff pieces like this.
TL:DR; Some crappy looking font becomes popular because "it bears a resemblance to the calligraphic forms of Asian writing systems." No Shit, Sherlock. News at 11.
Here is a texture atlas (picture) of all the glyphs in this shitty font since the author was too fucking lazy.
1. You have crap like this:
Uh. how about SHOWING us the glyphs instead of textually describing them and making us look them up so we can understand what the fuck you are going on about???
2. The popularity of Comic Sans and Choc "proves" that the general populace doesn't give a fuck about well designed fonts. Why is this news?
3. So it is "everywhere" in New York. No one gives a fuck about this font except some pretentious stuck-up typographer.
Talk about a slow-news day at the NY Times.
Font nerds are almost as bad as cosplay enthusiasts.
As far as I'm concerned there are two kinds of fonts: ones that are easy to read and ones that aren't.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That, and it doesn't seem that common judging by the pictures the author chose...
Indeed. In every picture the majority of the signs are in a different font. Most of the examples in Choc were Asian restaurants. In East Asia, calligraphy is often done with a brush rather than a pen, so the appeal of a font that looks "brushed" makes sense.
Can we get a rule which auto-bans anyone who submits an article behind a paywall?