I reluctantly spent a year investigating Papyrus. And what I discovered shook my world.

You see, I have a bit of a past with notorious fonts. My post, “Why You Hate Comic Sans,” consistently ranks as one of the top results for Google searches for “comic sans.”I told myself that I had retired from the world of font snobbery. I had said what I wanted to say in one book about typography. I had moved on to other things.But like Gosling’s character in the skit, I couldn’t shake what I had seen.It’s one thing for Papyrus to be used on the sign of a strip-mall bakery. It’s another thing entirely for it to be used to represent what would become the top-grossing movie of all time.So, I set about the arduous task of breaking down Why You Hate Papyrus. I spent over a year writing a novel’s worth of words trying to untangle the mess. (I wish I was kidding.) I’ve edited it down to this long blog post.There were things I learned about Papyrus that deepened my dislike of the font, but there were other things that helped me appreciate it. The most surprising finding of all was that Papyrus could potentially be the perfect font for the film Avatar. And no, not necessarily because of any aesthetic quality the font has.I believe that James Cameron’s use of Papyrus was an artistic choice. One that sends an important message about the potential downfall of civilization.

The surprisingly solid typographic fundamentals of Papyrus

To start off, let’s look at Papyrus’s fundamentals as a typeface. If it’s so hated, clearly it must be lacking in fundamentals. Surprisingly, I didn’t find this to be true.If Papyrus is the second-most hated font, next to Comic Sans, it makes sense to define Papyrus’s “bad”-ness in comparison with Comic Sans. So, I set out to compare and contrast the qualities of Comic Sans and Papyrus with the qualities of the most beloved typeface - Garamond.Here I’ve set blocks of body copy in Papyrus, Garamond, and Comic Sans. Keep in mind that Papyrus is what you would call a “display” font, which means it was never intended to be used in blocks of body copy in the first place - not that that has stopped anyone from using it for their term paper on ancient Mesopotamian economics.Even though Papyrus is a display font, seeing it set in body copy still helps us analyze how well it balances visual weight.

Papyrus has an even “texture”

One of the most important fundamentals by which to analyze a typeface is that of texture. I don’t mean the “texture” in the sense of the various nicks or scratches on the edges of Papyrus letters. Instead, I mean the “texture” of an overall block of te...

Papyrus manages visual weight well

One of the things that makes Comic Sans a “bad” font is that it poorly manages the visual weight within each letter. This makes it impossible for Comic Sans to have an even texture when set in body copy. I was surprised to find that Papyrus didn’t ha...

Papyrus has consistency amongst letterforms

Next, I analyzed the consistency of Papyrus’s letterforms. Good typefaces are made up of a series of shapes, which are repeated from one letter to another. This helps balance the visual weight consistently from one letter to the next, thus contributing to...

Papyrus has good kerning tables and letterfit

Kerning and letterfit help a typeface balance the weight between various letter combinations. Electronic fonts have data within them called kerning tables. (By the way, font snobs love to point out that a “font” displays a “typeface,” and that the tw...

Papyrus presents an even texture in body copy

Below, I’ve blurred the body copy samples of Papyrus, Garamond, and Comic Sans. This simulates what these might look like as you squint your eyes to try to analyze the textures created by each of these three typefaces. Notice that there are many very dark areas within the block of Comic Sans, contrasted with some relatively light areas. This level of inconsistency is a large part of what makes Comic Sans a bad font. You don’t see so much inconsistency in the block of Garamond. Surprisingly, thanks to well-managed visual weight within the letterforms, consistency amongst letterforms, and solid kerning and letterfit, you don’t see so much inconsistency in the block of Papyrus.After examining Papyrus’s solid type fundamentals, I began to wonder Why You (still) Hate Papyrus. As a former type snob, I have to admit that some of the appeal of such snobbery is a need to feel superior. I don’t get that pleasure out of type analysis anymore. Something was still off. Something deeper than the fundamentals. Or, to be more accurate, something more on the surface than the fundamentals.

Okay, so Papyrus has solid fundamentals. But Papyrus is “materially dishonest”

One day, I found myself in a shopping mall, searching for jeans. Maybe it was from all of the pacing back in forth in my apartment, thinking about Papyrus. Whatever the cause, I had worn a hole in my jeans - and not in a place that looks cool.Little did I kno...

Papyrus’s material dishonesty makes it a dead giveaway

Even though, as the character played by SNL cast member Chris Redd points out, “they clearly modified” Papyrus in creating the Avatar logo, it’s still a dead giveaway, because of Papyrus’s material dishonesty.Just look at the stem of the “R” on the Avatar logo, as compared to a standard Papyrus “R.” The most obvious similarities are the two giant chunks taken out of the stem.These chunks are there to suggest that these aren’t your average, everyday letters. These chunks suggest that the letters were in fact hand-calligraphed on papyrus, the ancient paper made from smashing together thin strips cut from the pith of the papyrus plant.As the nib of the theoretical pen traveled over the theoretical paper, it encountered peaks and valleys. Those peaks and valleys caused the nib to occasionally break contact with the paper, thus creating these rough edges. That’s what you’re supposed to believe anyway.In reality, Papyrus isn’t hand-calligraphed on papyrus. It’s simply a list of instructions that tell a computer how to draw it: turn forty degrees to the left here, curve this much over there, now turn twenty degrees to the right, etc. The computer then uses these instructions to draw Papyrus on a computer screen, to print it on paper, or to project it on a movie screen.Papyrus isn’t hand-calligraphed on paper. It’s merely the suggestion of letters hand-calligraphed on paper. Papyrus is the fake-destroyed-column of fonts.

Material dishonesty is all too common today

If you didn’t know about the principle of material honesty before, I apologize in advance for what you’re about to experience. When I shared the above picture on Instagram, with a short introduction to the concept of material honesty, a commenter said they weren’t able to sleep.As Gosling’s character can attest to, learning about design has a way of making you lose sleep. That’s because when you learn the difference between good and bad design you notice bad design everywhere.And material dishonesty really is everywhere. It’s on the fake wood grain of your car’s dashboard. It’s on the wood grain of your IKEA furniture. It’s on the “bricks” of many suburban McMansions - cinder-block walls with brick-like tiles adhered to them.Shortly after seeing this column, I noticed material dishonesty in my bathroom tiles. They’re supposed to look like marble - something they don’t do convincingly. And if you look really closely, you can even see the dot pattern of the printer that printed the “marble” pattern onto them.You might be wondering why it matters whether a font or a bathroom tile is materially dishonest. I’ll get to that, but first, let’s look at why it turns out that Papyrus might be the perfect font for the movie Avatar.

Papyrus is the perfect font for the movie Avatar (& it’s not what you think)

In my quest to understand Why You Hate Papyrus, I figured I should see Avatar before I could comment on the use of Papyrus in the movie.Friends I told were shocked that I had never seen the Avatar. In fact, before Gosling’s SNL skit, I didn’t know that Papyrus had been used in this blockbuster. A quick search on Google showed me that this was a hot topic on the “blogosphere” when the movie debuted in 2009. I guess the same bookishness that makes you a font snob makes you miss it when the purveyors of pop culture commit type crimes.The opening of the movie showed me the Avatar logo that was the subject of the SNL skit. Chris Redd was right, there were a number of modifications made to the font for the sake of the logo.With these modifications, it didn’t bother me so much that Papyrus was used for the Avatar logo. These modifications washed away its most egregious signs of material dishonesty.I realize that for comedic effect Gosling’s character had to claim that the designer “randomly selected Papyrus” directly from the drop-down menu. But it’s not true.But then I almost choked on my Topo Chico when I noticed that Papyrus was used for the subtitles of the movie.

Avatar’s Papyrus subtitles bring Papyrus’s worst qualities to the surface (& it’s perfect)

The problem with Papyrus being used in the subtitles of this film is that it brings the material dishonesty of Papyrus to the surface.Each iteration of each letter of Papyrus has the same fake nicks and scratches as the previous one. See?Again, an SNL skit wouldn’t have the same bite to it if Gosling’s character had been so distraught over the use of Papyrus in the subtitles of a movie.Just imagine it:RYAN GOSLING (V.O.) I forgot about it for years, but then I remembered that Avatar, the giant international blockbuster, used the Papyrus font in its SUBTITLES.Huh?! No. “Logo” is objectively a funnier word than “subtitles.”Still, Papyrus’s use in the subtitles appears to be a type crime of the highest order. Especially with the resources James Cameron had at his disposal.

The technology existed to make Papyrus materially honest in Avatar

Many type snobs have pointed out the irony that a system font that comes standard on almost every computer in the world is used in a movie with a $280 million budget.But even more ironic is the fact that James Cameron delayed the production of Avatar by ten years, all because the technology didn’t yet exist to carry out his vision.And even as Cameron was inventing new cameras and rendering technology to make Avatar a reality, the technology already existed to address the material dishonesty of Papyrus.

A materially-honest Papyrus is possible with OpenType contextual alternates

OpenType started being developed at Microsoft in 1994. Adobe then began contributing to the project in 1996. OpenType is a technology that allows a single font file to cover a bunch of different variations of the same letters.For example, with a simple drop-down menu in an application, you can choose real small caps (no, proper small caps aren’t simply smaller versions of the capital letters of a typeface).In 2001, OpenType started supporting a feature called “contextual alternates.” This made it so that you could have several different versions of the same letter in a single font.The first font to use contextual alternates was Caflisch Script Pro. To be a convincing “script”-style font, Caflisch needed to have different variations of the same letters. Sometimes one letter needs to connect to the next letter up high, near the x-height. Other times, it needs to do so down low, near the baseline.

James Cameron delayed the production of Avatar by a decade, to improve the technology. But he didn’t bother improving Papyrus.

James Cameron originally conceived of Avatar the same year that OpenType was developed, in 1994. He first announced his intention to make the film in 1996, slated for a 1999 release. But he halted production because he didn’t feel existing technology could make his vision a reality.By the time Avatar was released in 2009, the technology to develop a materially-honest version of Papyrus had been around for eight years. OpenType’s contextual alternates made it possible to have several variations of each letter in the font. The nicks and scratches in one lowercase “l” would be different from the nicks and scratches in the next one.A Papyrus with contextual alternates would still not have the areas of subtle transparency that you would see in letters actually scribed on Papyrus, but even if there were only a few versions of each letter, that would be a big step forward. A step toward material honesty.If Cameron could work with linguists to invent an entirely new, real and learnable language for the Na’vi, I’m sure he could have found a way to make some modifications to a font.That is, unless there was a good reason not to improve the font.

The material dishonesty of Papyrus is a deftly-crafted allegory for Avatar’s message

As I watched Avatar for the first time, and I got pulled into the story, I started to believe that Papyrus may have been the perfect choice for the movie - and not because of the aesthetics that SNL cast member Heidi Gardner described as “tribal, yet futuristic.”Avatar is about a military operation on the planet Pandora. Pandora is a planet full of stunning biodiversity - plants and animals that Cameron and team spent years developing.The Na’vi are human-like creatures who live in perfect harmony with nature. The Na’vi use the neural network that connects all living creatures on the planet Pandora to connect to flying animals, for example.Humans from Earth have been sent to Pandora to mine unobtanium, an extremely valuable material, (not to be confused with the differently-spelled-but conceptually-identical “unobtainium.”) But the humans have a problem. The main stash of unobtanium on Pandora lies beneath a gigantic tree in the midst of the Na’vi’s territory, called the Tree of Souls.The humans can’t simply go in and get the unobtanium. They have to learn about the Na’vi culture. And to infiltrate that culture, they become fake Na’vi by inhabiting genetically-engineered Na’vi bodies that the humans then control with their brains.Unfortunately, the humans succeed. It’s disastrous for the Tree of Souls, the Na’vi, and the planet of Pandora.

Papyrus is a warning call: Material dishonesty is everywhere, & we must stop it

Are you starting to see a connection here? Papyrus is a false representation of an organic form. You could call it an “avatar.” An “avatar,” in the movie Avatar is a false representation of a Na’vi.The movie Avatar explores the theme of a conflict between h...

Where do you draw the line on material honesty?

It’s hard to know exactly where to draw the line on material honesty. I know some of you are thinking, doesn’t it make things more efficient?So you didn’t deface another mountain quarrying marble for the retaining wall next to your driveway - so what...

What does the Avatar design team think?

I tried to track down the designer of the Avatar logo, but I was unsuccessful. When I emailed Zachary Fannin, a graphic designer who worked on the film, he said he didn’t know who designed the logo, adding “believe me, I’ve asked around,” and that “It wasn’t me. Although I’d happily own it if I did.”Zachary didn’t seem that bothered by the logo, but he, too, took issue with the subtitles. “My strongest memory is when [Papyrus] showed up as the subtitle text in the movie. I might have let out an ‘ooof.’ My snarky graphic designer take at the time was definitely in line with the general consensus.”The real reason Papyrus was chosen for the logo and subtitles in Avatar remains a mystery. Not even Zachary knows. But I like to think that the use of Papyrus in the movie Avatar was an intentional and brilliantly subtle message. As the movie is warning us not to lose touch with authenticity, it’s doing so by displaying a materially-dishonest typeface in the logo and the subtitles.It’s telling us: Wake up. Don’t lose your soul in pursuit of a reductionist representation of success.

Finally, I called Papyrus’s designer, & you won’t believe what he designs now

Chris Costello was only twenty-three years old when he scribed onto paper the letters that would one day become the world’s second-most hated font. “It was pen and ink,” he told me over the phone. “[I was] dipping the pen [in an] inkwell. Writing it on...

They urged Papyrus’s designer not to use Papyrus

Then Costello told me something about one of his design gigs. When he was training to work with this client, they had already had a run-in with Papyrus. Perhaps because it didn’t go so well, they recommended against using Papyrus on any designs. It di...