Srsly?

Do I seriously need to add a comment on this?

Click to enlarge for full horribleness.

Fonts: A HUGE Pet Peeve

Here are three fonts that just need to die and never be used ever again. They are: Brush Script MT, Comic Sans MS, and Papyrus. There are a whole lot more that I can add to this list, but these are the main 3 that yank my chain. If you don't know what they are, see below:

1.) Brush Script MT. Over used. This was the font that I used a lot of for "Under new management" and "Coming soon" and anything else that is supposed to stand out, or look "fancy". This was used usually in red, had an arch, and was angled. Sometimes stretched taller.

2.) Comic Sans MS. Pretty much ugly and over used. Back in the hay day of the interwebs this was a commonly used font. Everybody who has a computer has this font. The font was usually used on a brightly colored, or animated star background, and set in yellow or some other color choice that made you want to vomit. To this day, it seems like 13 year old girls use it for their MySpace pages and in the grown up world it is used to add some "flair" or a "casual" look to what ever the creator is putting to gether.

3.) Papyrus. Just bad in general. This is used to make things appear antique, elegant, rustic, exotic, but is generally misused. A local graphic designer uses this font as their logo... the WHOLE logo.

There are a slew of other fonts that I think should die, but I won't get into them now. Maybe another post, another day.

For alternative fonts to use instead of these listed above, look through your computer's font library and if nothing comes of that, check out DaFont.com. They have many free fonts that you can use. Just check the description on them. Some are labled as "Free for personal use", those are the ones that you cannot use for anything that you are selling or for your business. DaFont also lists where the font came from, so if you have questions about how you can use it, you can contact the creator.

About Me/ Why?

About Me:
My name is Dave and I am a graphic designer. I have been studying graphic design for the last 8 years starting in high school . To this day, I try to learn new things about design every day.

I am by no means an expert on graphic design.

I studied at my high school's career and technical center for the full 3 year program, and attended college for multimedia and web design then went on to study digital recording arts focusing on graphics. During my schooling I participated in the Skills USA VICA regional, state, and national competitions for Advertising Design. In high school, I won state level secondary (high school) competition in 2003, 2004, 2005 and went to the national level competition in 2005 where I came in 5th. In college I competed again, went to the nationals and came in 11th place in the post-secondary (college) level of the same competition.

After college, I worked part time in a screen printing and vinyl sign shop where I had to "un learn" every thing that I was taught. Here I developed a deeper hatred for certain fonts, out lines/ strokes, and text warp effects. One of the popular things I did that the boss wanted was for me to "stretch" this and "squash" that and slap a nice big stroke on it with a solid drop shadow. Then at times I was told to "use my creativity and what I learned" and create something, then the boss would look at it, make changes and it wound up looking like a tired old template from a 1983 clip art catalog. Sadly, and thankfully I did not take any of the work I created there with me for my portfolio when I left.

From there I found a full time job doing what I was taught to do and love. It is an international company that produces exercise equipment and I am in charge of designing and maintaining all the print material for the 9 different languages we cater to, as well as updating and maintaining the website. There are some thing that I don't like about it (like not being allowed to use a serif type face), but there are things in all jobs that we don't like.

After I work here for a while, I plan on going back to art school and becoming a teacher of sorts, to follow in the footprints of my high school graphic design teacher who taught me so much about the industry, and life.

Why this blog:
After working at the t-shirt shop and creating those erm... lovely graphics, I have really opened my eyes further and noticed how much of this "quality" design work is around. Also I am constantly searching the web, my city, and anything else I can get my hands on for examples of good design that I like and can use as an inspiration to help me learn and better my self.

This blog is supposed to serve as a some what humorous way of showing what others what not to do, and to give suggestions as to how to improve.

I will be posting images found on the internet, photos I have taken, reader submissions and comments as well as what ever else examples of bad graphic design I can get my hands on.

I will not post links to the original artist/ designer's website to be fair to them, and so nobody here flames them.