Watch Ryan Gosling act out every graphic designer’s real angst about Papyrus font

It’s in menus, wedding invitations, shop signs church flyers and heavens, even in résumés. Since becoming a system font in Microsoft Office ’97, Papyrus, a cheesy calligraphic font inspired by Egyptian writing has been a blight in the visual landscape. Along with the reviled Comic Sans, Papyrus was for desktop publishing dabblers a casual alternative from the serious sans serif and serif fonts. It’s the stand-in font to convey “primitive,” “natural” or “ancient.”

Since 1982, Papyrus has made professional graphic designers cringe—especially when used with effects like drop shadows (yuck) or 3D embossing (gross). So loathed is the font created by American illustrator Chris Costello that several dedicated design blogs have emerged to lampoon it. For font sophisticates, the only good use of Papyrus is as a punchline for jokes, and arguably the most epic Papyrus parody was was aired this weekend, on Saturday Night Live.

Playing a brooding insomniac haunted by the memory of seeing Papyrus in James Cameron’s blockbuster film Avatar, Ryan Gosling brilliantly mirrors the levels of angst font sophisticates feel when they see Papyrus in the wild.

oh man, we were going on about this one yesterday in the designers slack channel at work… fucking awesome…

papyrus!!! it wasn’t enough…

#chuckle