Font fussbudgets fume over use of Papyrus in Avatar subtitles

Allan Haley at the Fonts.com blog, on Avatar: "[W]hy are the sub titles for the Na'vi people, the alien protagonists of the film, set in Papyrus?" (via @shellen)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Griffin

To the poster who commented about how lazy the movie was and used wheelchairs as an example – They kind of explained in the movie that of COURSE they have the technology to make him better! But its ungodly expensive and he’d spend the rest of his life in debt. That’s the whole point of the generals promise that he’ll make sure the main character can walk again if things go well.

Of course, what do I know – I actually like papyrus (and didn’t even notice the font used anyways).
Azurain

I can understand finding this vaguely humorous. “Oh, haha, look, they used a font which is much maligned in typographic circles; that’s a cute little gaffe.” But that’s it. Anyone who is experiencing any genuinely negative emotion because of this is taking the issue of fonts too seriously and dramatically overestimating the magnitude of the effect which a poor font choice will have on a movie.

I *like* Papyrus. It’s not that I have immature, unrefined aesthetic sensibilities. It’s that it’s a nice-looking font which is a little, but not excessively, evocative of a more primitive time. Who cares if it’s been used poorly in the past or if there are fonts which graphic designers and typography geeks (I don’t mean the word ‘geek’ pejoratively) are convinced do the same thing only better?

Heck. If I were making a billion-dollar film, I’d be half-inclined to use a font which is unpopular in typographic circles just to thumb my nose at a bunch of people who clearly don’t understand just how seriously the majority of humanity doesn’t take matters of fonts.

[/rant]
- oheso
  
  Papyrus sucked even before it was used in wildly inappropriate contexts. It has the worst kerning of any font I’ve ever seen. Period. Any font that makes me nostalgic for Arial has got to go.
Anonymous

Half the point is that Papyrus is not an instantly-easy-to-read font. It’s a display font. It’s not meant to be read in book format, barely even in sentence format. That’s because it’s difficult to read quickly, even if that “difficulty” only ends up being .5 seconds of your time more (and for dyslexics, I can see how it would be very hard)

On top of my brain screaming “PAPYRUS, PAPYRUS, PAPYRUS, FUCK THEY USED PAPYRUS!” I then have to read the words in time to understand what they’re saying. When subtitles can be on the screen for seconds at a time, it’s crucial to have a VERY legible font so that nobody feels like they’re “struggling” to keep up. That’s my serious gripe about using Papyrus in the subtitles. I didn’t mind it much in the title since it was appropriate and slightly modified.
Faustus

I also noticed this, and during the film it really annoyed me. Papyrus is a bad font and they should feel bad.
Antinous / Moderator

I did a website with all the headings in Papyrus. About a week before the rest of the world discovered it.
- Stooge
  
  Antinous, is this your truck?
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    No. My own bad experience with Papyrus has made me extra-allergic to it.
    
    In related news, I know someone who’s about to launch a career as a professional web designer. He uses FrontPage. I’m not making this up.
    - oheso
      
      I have encountered any number of web “professionals” using FrontPage. Some have the temerity to claim they bill $1,000/hour. (It’s never a credible claim.)
      
      The analogy is apt.
cymk

I can tell you why they used Papyrus for the subtitles, the same reason “newagey”-”I’m in touch with nature”-”give me your money” stores use it; to sell you shit you don’t really need.

Don’t even get me started on this damn font. If I had a time machine I would go back and kick < a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_(typeface)">Chris Costello and Vincent Connare both in the balls for crimes against humanity.
Anonymous

What do you think they should have used? I’m not a Papyrus fan by any means, but Helvetica wouldn’t have worked either. ;)
jeligula

The humanoidy humanoids looked a little too human, so they did the subtitles in Papyrus in order to make them seem a little more other. Why it had to be in a crappy font shipped with every PC is beyond me. Helvetica would have made them seem too roboty. Yes, I just discovered that you can create an adjective by sticking a Y onto the end of a noun.
- Anonymous
  
  but you should double the final consonant: robotty, (like crappy, shitty, and crummy)
  
  http://www.say-it-in-english.com/SomeRules.html
jimkirk

I’m no font expert, but I typed out “AVATAR” in Papyrus in a Pages document, and yes, it’s similar, but I don’t think it’s the same. Maybe it’s closely based on Papyrus.

The horizontal stroke on top of a “T” in Papyrus is more curved, sort of like a tilde (~). In the movie poster it’s straighter with a serif on the left side.

The right leg of the “R” descends below the base line in the poster, not in Papyrus. That may just be a bit of a flourish, but the movie poster “R” has more of a serif on the top left than Papyrus.

The movie poster “V” has a distinct serif on the top right, and the two strokes meet at the bottom differently from Papyrus.

The diagonal strokes in the last two “A”s don’t touch in the movie poster. They do in Papyrus.

That said, many of the little knock-outs and details in the strokes do line up closely with Papyrus, so maybe there was some creative laziness involved.

So how close to a font can one get before they’re the same? I’ve seen different fonts with the only noticeable different being a slight change in the angle in which strokes terminate.

In the four letters used in AVATAR, the only difference I see between, say, Bell Gothic and Consolas (changing the point size so they match on the page) is the curve on the leg of the “R” and the angle of the diagonal strokes in the “A” & “V” differ by maybe one degree. Less difference than between Papyrus and the font AVATAR used.
Anonymous

because it looked a lot like the font on the Dances With Wolves poster.
Reverend Loki

I didn’t really consider myself a font snob, until I noticed the same thing right off the bat. Looks like the title is in the same font. Luckily, I was able to rise above it and still enjoy the film.

I went through the same annoyance with Firefly/Serenity too…
Bucket

Nothin says “Space Hippies” like a font with crackly little cracks in it.

Though I think they should have used Hobo – it’s much more hippie than Papyrus.
Anonymous

What would the movie be like with this as the font?
http://www.fontscape.com/large/itc/DataSeventy.gif
angusm

Because they couldn’t get authorization to use Comic Sans?
- gnawlej
  
  Brilliant, angusm, brilliant.
  
  Papyrus is the non-creative person’s go-to typeface when he or she is attempting to be creative. That’s exactly why it was used in this hackneyed film. That being said, the 3-D technology was absolutely amazing.
KaiBeezy

.
it’s not like someone didn’t try – fascinating analysis here:
.
http://www.girvin.com/blog/?p=3570
.
… “To my thinking, this treatment simply didnâ€™t push the conceptual dimensions of the possibility as far as it could, with the enlightened â€” and paleographically denser â€” foundational roots of ancient (and otherworldly alphabet treatments) ranging back thousands of years. It might be suggested that the alphabet, occurring many millennia back, could be traced into the mists of time and even be drawn with the tools of the era, to suggest another parallel world.

These ancient symbolic scratching forms could be the heart of the storyâ€™s telling in visible form. What Iâ€™d suggested is that Avatar could live in that world â€” could come from that collectively unconscious range of markings, to evoke the spirit of the brand.”
.
Anonymous

Yes I haven’t been able to sleep a wink since I found I saw this. A complete travesty. I wish someone would have told me about this before I went to see the movie. I would have stayed home and stared at my Arial font instead.
Anonymous

yeah i hate to be a “fussbudget” but whoever used Papyrus should have known better. Glad to know i wasn’t the only one cringing- even if for a very dumb reason :) Not saying they should have used Helvetica…. but perhaps they could have gone with a font that isn’t so well known. (Not to mention openly scorned by most graphic designers….)
andygates

Papyrus! Thank you! That’s been bugging me ever since I saw the first caption in the movie: “Hey, they’re using the font I used for LARP handouts in 1990! What was that called again? ARGH!”
jpixl

Hilarious open thank you letter to James Cameron written by the actual Papyrus font itself: http://prttyshttydesign.blogspot.com/2010/01/open-letter-to-james-cameron-from.html
Gloria

I think it just looked silly because it was obviously trying to evoke for the audience a kind of old, exotic world even though, hello, *subtitles.* Subtitles are a convention that by nature pulls the audience out of a picture; they remind us we’re watching a movie, a deliberate product. No amount of styling can ever change that. The fact they’re in a much derided and decidedly *not* alien font (because we all recognized it right away!) compounded the problem. I thought it felt kind of juvenile.

I find subtitles in a simple and elegant but easily legible font is the best — they linger the least in your mind after a while so they’re about as natural as subtitles can get.

Helvetica perhaps is too much tied to a modern sensibility; a simple serif font works fine a lot of the time.
- Xopher
  
  I think you’re overgeneralizing here. Subtitles pull YOU out of a picture; they have no such effect on me. The font didn’t bother me, either, in fact I barely noticed it, and only at first. I stayed with the story the whole time, except when a 3D object came too “close” and I flinched.
  
  I do agree that it’s probably best for most viewers to keep the subtitles simple visually. And I DETEST Helvetica.
  - Gloria
    
    I’m just saying that by nature, they’re one of the most conspicuous things on screen — one of the things that actually say “hey this is a movie, a production, something staged, something artful.” Because in real life, you *never* get little words scrolling at the bottom of your vision to translate what people are saying. (YMMV … maybe I don’t, but maybe YOU do?)
    
    “Pull you out of” is probably putting it strongly. I don’t actually have any problem with subtitles; I’m in the camp that vastly prefers subtitles to dubbing. I’m only trying to describe how they’re inherently a conceit and can never have that 100% convincing faked naturalness like a perfectly staged set or a brilliant actor.
    
    Yeah, you stop consciously noticing them but they’re still at 99% of reality because again … little words scrolling at the bottom of your vision magically translating a language you don’t actually understand.
Daemon

Maybe they did it just to drive anal-retentive fontophiles around the bend?

Seriously, if this bothers you, you need to get off the net for a while, and maybe read a book or something.
Brainspore

I knew that I share the same form of OCD that plagues all graphic designers but until today I had never thought to call myself a “font fussbudget.” Thanks Xeni!
- Xeni Jardin
  
  “graphic designer” wasn’t inflammatory enough and didn’t begin with the letter “F.”
alphagirl

yep, there’s an xkcd for that http://xkcd.com/590/

The problem isn’t that graphic designers are fussy and elitist (although we often are), it’s that a prominent, frequently occuring visual element in this hugely expensive eye-candy-fest comes across as having as much thought put into it as someone making a bake sale flyer in MS Word. How can something so visually illiterate end up in a movie like this? (I guess I should go read the girvin.com link now)

It annoyed me in Serenity, but at least it wasn’t throughout the movie over and over.
Stewf

Now? Weâ€™ve been discussing this for a week at the FontFeed.
mgfarrelly

It’s bad design because you notice it.

Good font design (or any production design) disappears into the whole of the project.

Best subtitles in a modern film? “Man on Fire” where the subtitles manage to become an art object and a story-telling device all their own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzyGxZA03TI
(a rather violent scene in the rather violent movie)
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Nochnoy dozor has quite interesting subtitles. Besides the occasional blood drip or evaporating title, once in a while a character will walk in front of one of the subtitles.
  - lewis stoole
    
    nice, i have never seen that movie. i am going to rent it (but not for the font)>
monkey

As someone who is only slightly dyslexic, i understand now why my moderatly dyslexic friend had to walk out of the film because he could not read the subtitles.
Anonymous

The problem is not the use of Papyrus per say but rather, of the thousands of terrific font designs out there (some literally ancient classics or contemporary adaptations of classics and some very new), the (very rich and smart) filmmaker picks a font that comes on your computer for free! And it is a font that has been used repeatedly by hacks and amateurs and first year graphic design students in the wrong context over and over and over.
Basically, most filmmakers and the film industry don’t know a damn thing about good typography or the typefaces that will work with a film or the period or style is takes place in. Kubrick and those that used Saul Bass and firms like Imaginary Forces, etc. for on screen type/titles, being the exception.
Anonymous

That movie has so much more wrong with it than the fonts.

Why was the lead character in what was essentially a 20th Century wheelchair when the humans in the film have advanced technology capable of interstellar space travel and synthesis of alien and human DNA?

They couldn’t use some of that technology to get that guy back up and walking?

That entire film was over-hyped trash. The animation was not even that impressive. Hardly a step above the recent crappy Star Wars films.
porcelainduck

The title font definitely started as Papyrus as was altered, but there are just too many similarities:

http://www.papyruswatch.com/2009/08/avatar-really.html

Subtitles are just straight.

The thing is not so much a bad font, but the fat that it’s so overused and a default system font and the decision just doesn’t make sense.
alisong76

To paraphrase James Cameron himself:

“That movie’s grossed 600 billion dollars so far. Imagine how much more it could have made if they’d gotten the font right.”
Xopher

Actually, Gloria, just as I can get into a story that’s ALL words (a novel, say), if subtitles are done right they don’t change my perception of the story at all. They’re jarring when done wrong, I admit. But I remember one movie…the English title was Sorceress; it was in French with English subtitles, and the subs were done so well, were so perfectly timed with the dialogue, that I had the distinct illusion that I was understanding the French dialogue itself. That was the best I’ve ever seen.

The human brain is a marvel of adaptability, and story immersion can be a powerful thing.
- Gloria
  
  I guess I’ve never seen subtitles that way. I always see them as subtitles; I always wonder whether they’re actually capturing all the nuance, what words belong where in the spoken sentence.
  
  There have been *very* few experiences where subtitles have been jarring for me (Avatar is the only one almost as far as I can remember that actually threw me out of a movie) but I’ve never come out of a movie thinking I spoke another language I didn’t actually speak. It’s not like I have a problem with story immersion; I’ve read plenty of novels where I was completely lost in the world, and closing the book was like emerging from a very deep pool of water.
  
  Just for curiosity’s sake, do you speak a language other than English? I speak both English and Cantonese, so maybe this affects my perception somehow — that I’m always aware of languages and some of the irreconcilable differences between them.
  - Xopher
    
    A little German, a little Russian, greetings and sample sentences in other languages. Nothing really fluent any more.
    
    The illusion only lasted while I was in the movie. I didn’t walk out of the theatre trying to speak French or anything.
  - oheso
    
    Subtitles almost never capture the original, owing to their medium. First there’s the issue of translation (never perfect) and then there’s making stuff that can be read at a pace that keeps up with the dialog itself. And read by (as my friend likes to point out) the lowest-common-denominator reading in the theatre.
    
    Because I am such an avid reader, subtitles distract me from a movie. I’ll go to an English movie and try to make out the Japanese subtitles (and sometimes laugh at the differences). But I agree with those who prefer subtitles to dubbing.
Rednaxel66

My FB post right after seeing the movie: 20 million dollars and they used papyrus?!
Anonymous

I recently watched Frau in mond. Does anybody know what the title cards were on in the english language release? Very pretty IMHO.
invisibelle

Didn’t want to be reminded of that annoying college roommate who used Papyrus as her instant messenger font. Thanks, Avatar.
Zan

Now all you graphic designers know how we engineers felt about the use of “unobtanium” in Avatar.
zapgunner

Lovely how people can get all up in arms about a font used in a movie that rips off Dances With Wolves and Pocahontas all the while shoving the very marketable “green” crap right down every sucker who shells out $15 to ogle a CGI puppet show.

In the movie’s defense, though, I enjoyed it while I watched it. And I never noticed the font. Even if I did, it would be the last thing I complained about.
Anonymous

Well what a lot of complaining, without much in the way of constructive suggestion. What font should they have used? Or were they supposed to design one just for this? What would its characteristics need to be?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Or were they supposed to design one just for this?
  
  You’ve cottoned on. We do indeed think that they should have designed a custom font for a film that was predicted to rake in a billion dollars. Instead of using one that’s so hackneyed that it was an object of derision for several years before the film was made.
Anonymous

Subtitles aren’t generally handled by the creative staff that works on the movie, so it’s not entirely fair to pin this one on Cameron hackery (the script, though, is all his).
The request for a fancy subtitle font definitely came from Cameron or his branding experts or whoever, but the actual decision to use Papyrus may have been made by the third-party post-production company who put the subtitles together. They have concerns more practical than artistic value when picking fonts, such as compatibility with other alphabets (those subs are going worldwide) and subtitling standards for the deaf and hearing impaired, conversion issues (they’re going in different formats, too), legibility at different resolutions, etc.