Discussion 4: Are there fonts that should be avoided at all costs?

Lets start with the first question. Go to DaFont.com. Gaze over to the right-hand side, where it says “Holiday”. Click it. I nominate every singular font within this category to be fonts used within reason. You may be wondering why, but I’d like to answer the question with a follow up question; Would you ever consider using a font called “Santa’s Air Mail” in mid-july? Id be more willing to put my college fund on slots in Vegas over you saying yes to that.

But that leads us to the next question, when is it appropriate? What makes a font like Santa’s Air Mail important? Besides just Christmas, fonts like that one remind me of 90s and early 00s video games when graphics innovations were more about how hardware could parse polygons instead of how realistic the dirt looks in Far Cry 6. Fonts like that would be perfect for a retro game with a seasonal flare, or any other retro styled project. They establish an overreaching vibe for the whole project, one that almost forced the design to match it in most cases. Picking a poor font can turn off a potential customer or even completely kill a project. A perfect example of this is… whatever this is: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

Besides this website being a time capsule precursor to web events like r/place or suckers that bought online land, it’s a great example of why having tons of fonts mixed together don’t add up. You need to pick one, solid font. And then you need to run with it, carry it, and either form it to a design or form a design to it. But what if you didn’t? You'd end up with Lings Cars: https://www.lingscars.com/

To wrap it up; fonts are a glue that hold a design together. You need a strong yet cohesive glue to fit what you are making, and it needs to be applied evenly and intelligently. So don’t use “Santa’s Air Mail” in mid-july.