Papyrus Patrol

By JoshPetersel in Josh surfs the Internet 0 Comment

I hate it when people use Papyrus font because they think it looks artsy.

I don’t consider myself a visual design elitist, by any means.  I’ve learned a little about the subtle art through my work with Eleven, particularly during epic layout sessions with Strom.  I can pretty effectively tell the difference now between Helvetica font and Arial, though I wouldn’t look down on you for not being able to do so.

But still, Papyrus abuse is egregious.  It’s stupid awful, and it shows me that you really just half-assed your brand image.  Which, naturally (and for once, not sarcastically), leads me to believe that you’re half-assing and cutting corners everywhere else in your business.  I’ve declined to eat at restaurants before because the place used a Papyrus typeface on its banner.

Moral of the story is, if you want to be unique, do it right and be unique.  Using a glitzy font that’s available for free in every single package ever of Microsoft Office won’t get you there.

This brings me to two easy points.

1) Here’s a page of awesome fonts that are still free, but will make you look like a bad ass.  Not Layout Editor of a magazine bad ass, but ass enough.

2) Someone is apparently even more enfuriated by Papyrus than I am, and made an entire blog devoted to it.  As per the title of this post, it’s called Papyrus Patrol.  It’s worth a quick sift-through if you’re an aggravated fontophile like me.

Frustration-Free Packaging

By JoshPetersel in Josh for Business, Josh surfs the Internet 0 Comment

Well hell, it’s about time somebody did this.  From Amazon,

So long, blisterpack.

So long, blisterpack.

The blisterpack, ironically, was implemented with the purpose of making packages ridiculously difficult to open.  Blame guys like Best Buy, who like to make cutesy little devices that cost over a hundred dollars but you can fit them in your back pocket once they’re out of the pack.  I think I still have a small scar on my left hand from when I wanted to use my brand new laptop mouse but the packaging had different feelings.

Good for Amazon for realizing “uh, no, people aren’t stealing our crap this is stupid”, and getting rid of all the packaging garbage.  And they’re even cutting costs in doing this.  Everybody wins, except maybe the Band-Aid companies.

Don’t [not] Vote

By JoshPetersel in Josh surfs the Internet 0 Comment

I saw a couple of solid videos online featuring a bunch of celebrities with the message “Don’t [not] Vote.”  You can watch them here and here.

I thought about this whole voting thing for a little bit.

Know what the best way would be to convince people to vote?  Change the constitution: “If you don’t vote this year, you lose your right to vote forever.”  Granted, there are oodles of legal and moral hazard “well I had a Doctor appointment” problems here, but run with me for a second.

What does this do to all the people who take their right to vote for granted?  Gives them a huge kick in the ass.  As lazy as Americans are, and for how much we take our rights for granted, we’ll put up a hell of a good fight for anyone who tries to overtly take away our rights.  That’s why we’re semi-quasi-okay with the american military going into dictatorial regimes to instill democracy and give people rights, and that’s why whenever the government decides to take our rights away they do so under facades with names like “The Patriot Act.”

But if you had to vote if you wanted to keep your right to do it?  That’s some real motivation.  That’s American.

If you haven’t heard it enough already, go out and vote on Tuesday.  All the patriotic people are doing it.