I have a hatred of type squeezed or stretched out of its normal proportions. The hatred gets really intense when the squeezing or stretching is applied to a uniform stroke sans serif typeface such as Gotham.
If anyone wants a
sign design to give off an amateur-quality, garbage look one of the quickest ways to make it happen is squeezing or stretching the type. Distorted type is a very very common trait in bad graphic design and ugly
signs. If a customer asks for the type to be whacked out of its normal native proportions I'll ask him how many major brands he has seen do that with their logos and advertising materials. Squeezed/stretched type on
signs is very small time looking.
I also have a pretty intense hatred of Arial. It is
the go-to font for hack-level
computer jockeys, probably because it begins with "A" and is always near the top of the font menu. Arial is ugly. It doesn't have many weights to it. There are only two widths, normal and narrow. Because of those limitations the hacks will squeeze and stretch the $#!+ out of it to make Arial fit anywhere.
When a
sign designer sets lettering in Arial and then distorts it he is doing two things: 1. taking a visual dump on the commercial landscape with his sewage signage and 2. stating very clearly he doesn't care at all about the job he is doing. Just crank the stuff out
FAST..
Clearly there is no shortage of "
sign designers,"
sign companies and signage customers who don't care how a
sign will look next to the street or on a building, even if the ugly
sign is visible to the public for 10 years or more. That fast, cheap attitude is one of the very things that inspires sweeping anti-
signs codes. Eventually the general public gets sick and tired of looking at the toxic clutter. It's impossible to legislate good taste. So the city government just bans the #@!! out of everything.
30 years ago I could understand someone squeezing or stretching type in an early version of Adobe Illustrator. Fonts were not plentiful then. Today there are many thousands of typeface families available, quite a few even for free. Some typefaces have super families loaded with many weights and widths. Many new typeface releases can be bought at huge discounts. Adobe's Typekit service has thousands of foundry quality faces available to sync. The OpenType Variable format is resurrecting the Multiple Master Concept, allowing users to alter width axis values of a typeface without ruining the balance of the strokes.
This place is only good for which printer should I buy, what font is this and where can I get the cheapest ink.
