The Mystery Font That Took Over New York (nytimes.com) 72
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.
Mystery font (Score:3)
I'm not fond of it.
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Re:Mystery font (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I think it is harder to read that Comic Sans. Out of context, individual letters can be confusing: https://cdn.myfonts.net/s/aw/7... [myfonts.net] . Imagine it as the font for the code you're trying to debug, and you'll be begging to have Comic Sans back (if that's your only other choice).
OTOH unlike the ubiquitous sans-serif used here on slashdot and half the rest of the web, you can distinguish I and l, so debugging your code is at least theoretically possible. l'II give it a bonus point for that. (Comic Sans also gets that bonus point.)
Re:Mystery font (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not fond of it.
That’s really chocing.
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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.
Because they're lemmings? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: Because they're lemmings? (Score:1)
The article says it was included under a different name with Corel Draw in the 90s. Probably Corel Draw 3.0.
The deplorables have has it a long time.
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the shape of a font is not copyrightable.
Not in America, but typefaces are protected in many other countries, including the UK, France, and Germany.
In America, typefaces can be protected by design patents, but that is much harder to get than a copyright. The name of a font can be trademarked.
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I read the article "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 youâ(TM)ll find a surplus of vibrant and overstated signage â" a cacophony of typography. Steven Heller, a co-chairman at the School of Visual Artsâ(TM) M.F.A. program, sees it somewhat
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status
I'm not convinced that French comic sans counts as status.
you now resemble others with status.
If this is the cargo they want, they should just buy some finger paints.
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Someone noticed that trendy new places were using something to signal the fact that they were trendy to everyone.
None of the photos in TFA are of trendy places. They small mom-and-pop Asian and Mexican family restaurants in what look like normal urban neighborhoods.
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The places in the photos all look like the owner put very little effort into the sign. Like Comic Sans, it appears to be the default that the sign-maker selects when you tell them you want a painted/oriental/wild-west effect.
And newspapers wonder (Score:2, Flamebait)
Newspapers wonder why nobody seems to want to pay for them anymore. Curious.
Also, do you think the author was wearing pants while writing that description of a font?
Groupthinkers: (Score:1)
How did Choc... end up on storefronts everywhere?
Groupthinkers: the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes.
How about a picture of the fucking glyphs? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [identifont.com] (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.
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And that "everywhere" seems to be exclusively on Asian restaurants!
"Asian brush-caligraphy lookalike font used on many asian restaurants" would have been a more fitting headline.
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Exactly. It's an English font which bears a stylistic resemblance to many of the different asian character sets. And almost every use in there is some clearly Chinese, Japanese, Thai, or Korean establishments. There are a few possible exceptions. A beauty salon (though often those are staffed entirely by asian workers) and a Mexican restaraunt (ok, that's the one outlier). A 60 second scan of the images and I decided there was no mystery, and thus no reason to read even a single sentence of the story.
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Sorry if I wasn't clear. I didn't mean the origin of the artwork or the character set. I meant that it was sufficient to recreate all characters in the English language, which is predominantly used in New York. Which was point....for all these Asian business it somewhat conveys the style of traditional Asian writing but is readable by nearly everyone in New York.
Re:How about a picture of the fucking glyphs? (Score:4, Interesting)
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???
When you are writing an advertisement for a font that the copyright holder wishes to sell, a bad move would be to include the font glyphs for free.
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Thanks. I should have scrolled down before saying, "WTF is this shit?" and clicking. You nailed it.
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The second paragraph of that summary was nothing less than an assault upon the English language.
I haven't seen such pure bloviating drivel as "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." or "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
font nerds (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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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.
Comic Sans is easy to read.
What about Papyrus!?!? (Score:2)
Where's the exposé on the use Papyrus at Middle Eastern restaurants?
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What about ... (Score:2)
Article has a hidden purpose (Score:2)
On the surface the article is about a font that is more-or-less widely used in New York City signage, but that's not its true purpose. Its true purpose is to identify stuck-up asshole font nerds on /.
So far I'd say that it's doing a pretty good job at it.
Autobans For Paywalls? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's actually a pretty nice and good font. (Score:2)
I've got some arty blood in my veins and like typography and layout and all things designy and I think this font isn't half bad. It's way better than using comic sans for everything, that's for sure. Choc is bold, heavy, unusual but still compareatively easy to read. And it's improvised notion makes it usable for just about everything. You really *can* just slap this one on the wall and it will work, because it isn't pretentious and really just does look like brushstrokes.
Bottom line: This is really an impr
I already knew it.... (Score:1)
As soon as I read the headline I was seeing the font in my head without even knowing what it had been called or even that is was associated with Asian businesses. I just knew.
Uh..... Asian type script (Score:2)
Every single example shown in the photos was for businesses with a foreign flare - the vast majority of them were Asian, with a couple Mexican businesses in there too. It's pretty obvious to me that the font is expressing the brush type strokes used in Chinese and Japanese (Shodo) calligraphy, but in English letters. The font is being used to convey a very specific meaning, and the reason you see it so often is there are simply that many foreign themed businesses in New York.
Uh, it didn't. (Score:2)
Only some things have that font. Very specific things. Almost all of those signs are for Asian things. There was one Mexican place I saw. All the rest looked Asian. Traditional Asian script is painted with a brush. It looks brushed, therefore it looks Asian. Mystery solved.
choc = CHALK (Score:2)
nice one