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Never say never.
It’s true that you should avoid spraying fonts
willy-nilly around your newspaper. (You should also avoid fonts
with silly names like Willy-Nilly.) After all, you don’t want your paper
looking like a circus poster.
Or do you? Suppose
you’re running a feature story on clowns, for instance.
Which of these headlines is most appropriate?
Now, suppose this headline uses our
standard news headline font. Sure, it’s more refined and
respectable. But how dull would our paper be if no headline
could ever be more exciting than this?
Yes, this headline uses circus type to
illustrate a circus story. But is that necessarily bad?
Wouldn’t this be a successful way to draw readers into
the story?
Most of us might agree that this font is
junky and the colors are garish. A handful of headlines like
this make a paper noisy and amateurish.
Bottom line:
Yes, “gimmicky” fonts can look ugly, sloppy
and clichéd. But with the right topic and the right
style, they can look fresh and appropriate. It’s often a
matter of taste. So don’t fault the fonts. And
don’t outlaw typographic creativity.
Most papers work
their standard fonts everywhere they can, but they make
allowances for special cases. Try to establish guidelines to
define what’s “special.”
