Typography Design: 8 Free Papyrus Alternatives
For three months, I lived on an island. A retirement island, with marshy sweetgrass vistas and bike trails dominated by socially-appropriate metaphors for poo (PLEASE REMOVE ANY DOG LEAVINGS AND DISPOSE OF HORSE EXCRETIONS).
Oh, and Papyrus, the web designer’s nightmare. Papyrus in every coffee table bookshop window, on every photo gallery awning, and on the logo of every locally-grown bag of backwater pecans. We turned it into a snarky scavenger hunt. “Look, honey – pralines. From ancient Egypt.”
I used to think that in-jokes and ideas like that were custom-tailored for me to have while doing unique, eccentric things like wearing Wellies with shorts in the middle of summer and taking pictures of abandoned shopping carts. But as I discovered that every indie girl worth her bowling shoes had 7 bajillion shots of her own feet on her hard drive, so I also found that however original my idea, there’s an overwhelming likelihood that someone else has had it first, fleshed it out with a thoroughness I can only flail at, and started a blog about it.
Exhibit A:Papyrus Watch, a blog which – and I love this – “sets out to document and expose the overuse of the Papyrus font.” And overused it most certainly is. I don’t blame the designers; we all need an old-world, distressed-edge font to fall back on. Especially when the world is full of hippy cat ladies starting lines of organic, botanical, natural, eco-friendly, green, environmentally-conscious bath products. But Papyrus has had its day, and if you simply must reach for the old school font, these are, if not better designed, at the very least, more original. And if I couldn’t picture it on a bottle of said cat lady juice, it wasn’t included in the collection.
Squint, and Film Cryptic could pass fairly well.
Caliph shares a certain aesthetic with Papyrus.
Licinia Aged is, to me, vaguely reminiscent of post-Gutenberg typeface.
Pompeji Petit doesn’t particularly sing, but mess with the type spacing or pull it into Illustrator, and I see possibilities.
Carolus Roman see’s Papyrus’ elegance and raises it a sharper curve.
A classic, with a slightly distressed edge.
I see grunge brushes in your future.
Happy Thanksgiving.
