Why Print Design Matters: COTD

The average person probably doesn’t grow up thinking that font choice matters until they end up formatting their first resume in Comic Sans. It might seem silly how the shape and arrangement of letters can spell out success or failure, but hey, someone ended up owning a video rental store called “MEGAFLIX” in tight sans-serif font. That went viral in the days of ye olde internet.

Now, kerning alone can be a minefield. One false move, and you could cause a scene reminiscent of SNL’s Celebrity Jeopardy. That’s “Catch These Men,” not…anyway. Best-case, a little bit of a necessary fudge can make text a little annoying, sort-of like the badge on the back of a Mini Countryman.

However, every so often, font choice and kerning converge to give us a real gem, and that’s exactly how we’re kicking off today’s edition of Comment Of The Day.

Earlier today, The Bishop wrote about the time Pontiac tried to meet the surprisingly potent Ford Taurus SHO head-on with a warmed-over Grand Prix. While it couldn’t catch the fast Ford, it did look pretty swish with its vision of early ’90s futurism. Mind you, the font choice for Pontiac’s ad tagline of the day wasn’t so futuristic or even supremely legible, as Bronco2CombustionBoogaloo pointed out:

At first glance, I misread the funky script at the bottom of their ad as being “We build excrement”

That’s going to be a hard one to un-see. Also, bonus points to Griznant for mentioning the third hotted-up American midsize sedan of the early ’90s.

Then the Spirit R/T waltzed in, downed a beer, and punched them both in the back of the head.

“I got your torque-steer right here you MFrs!”

Ah, what a wonderfully silly car. If it could talk, it would indeed talk like this.

Meanwhile, Antti wrote about an estate agency that snubbed an applicant because she drove a perfectly serviceable 2014 Citroen C1 that didn’t fit their internal criteria for a car less than a decade old. While this seems to be a simple case of car discrimination, it’s not uncommon for companies to have age limits on business-use vehicles for insurance purposes and whatnot. Sometimes such policies come with a benefit of sorts, and Matthew Strachan showed how to game a car stipend to the max:

My old employer had a similar car-age policy. They would pay your car note up to $600 if the car was newer than 10 years old. So I bought a Jaguar F-Type and rode my bicycle to work.

Buying a sports car? Excellent. Getting your employer to pay for it? Simply genius.

You know how Ferrari’s option list is simply ridiculous? Jason recently shone a light on a stenciled emblem that takes 16 hours to lay on the car by hand and costs an insane $16,000. That’s a whole lot of money for something easily mistaken for a sticker at 15 yards, but thankfully, SlowCarFast has found a much quicker way of hand-painting a Ferrari:

(Sticks hand flat into a tray of paint. Presses it against car.)
There! Hand painted!

Circling back to the General, I recently found out that GM has an ideas submission portal and decided to let everyone know they could contact GM with ideas for improvement. While some ideas were gloriously unhinged, Lori Hille pointed out a GM-ism that always irked me:

Gauges. Not gages.

It’s about time that got fixed, yeah? They’re meters to gauge speed and revs and whatnot, not some guy named Gage stuck inside the dashboard.

Anyway, that’s all from me today. Have a wonderful evening, everyone.

Top graphic image: Pontiac