: How do typefaces become taboo? I'm watching a live Adobe UX design webinar right now and they're taking community submissions. One of the submissions used Lobster for their title typeface and
I'm watching a live Adobe UX design webinar right now and they're taking community submissions. One of the submissions used Lobster for their title typeface and the presenters froze, zoomed in on it and basically said "who dared to use this typeface. We need to talk about your font choices".
Included the video title in case anyone wants to watch it on Youtube. Here's where they point out (and complain about) the Lobster font 44:35.
So, I haven't heard anything about Lobster being a taboo font choice (although it's not my style so I don't use it anyway).
Is it becoming the new comic sans? Why? How does this happen to what appears to be a decent typeface?
I found this article that seems to claim that "font abuse" is to blame for the designers' negative association with this font. I've looked through this question about comic sans, but it seems to me that Lobster is a well-designed font so why is it experiencing similar hatred?
TL;DR Version
What is it about a font that causes designers (or others) to have adverse reactions to it?
Arial and Helvetica can easily be labelled as overused, yet I haven't seen people complain about them. At least not to the extent that people complain about Comic Sans and now Lobster.
More posts by @Michele215
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In the world of graphic design everyone has an opinion. Same with fonts. All it takes is a couple of designers speaking negatively about a font and all of a sudden a conga line begins to form and everyone gets onboard. If I'm looking at specific fonts for a specific project, it's my decision initially. Eventually the client will decide if he wants to use your choices or not...and he/she pays the bills.
I think its several different issues that make designers "hate" a font, and they often get clumped together
Bad quality. If a font is badly designed, then it will stick out. Amateur designers often do not recognize that a font might be badly designed and use it anyways. In this regard, Comic Sans has many design flaws (it's not terrible, though), but Lobster is a very well designed typeface.
Overuse. Especially in the case of free fonts or fonts that come bundled with the OS, they tend to get overused quickly and people get tired of them. The lose all originality and impact, and get associated with unprofessional design. Both Comic Sans and Lobster suffer from this phenomenon.
Inappropriate use. Designers know when to use what kind of font, but when fonts are used in contexts that don't fit (a comic font for a business letter, a sci-fi font for a wedding invitation) it makes it look cheap and jarring. Both Comic Sans and Lobster are often used in context where they don't really fit.
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