The St. Petersburg Times: not an Impact affiliate

A casual look at the St. Petersburg Times's website, tampabay.com, suggests the newspaper may be using Impact in its online masthead.

But upon closer inspection, it fails the Impact test. Check out the discrepancies between tampabay.com's typeface (top), and the real Impact:

The big difference is in the width, height and roundedness of the counters, or white spaces, in enclosed or partially enclosed letters like p, b, m and o. Impact's counters are skinnier, taller and rounder than tampabay's typeface. They also differ in their 'a' bowls (the part that sticks out to the left): While Impact's 'a' bowl rigidly lines up with the a's finial, tampabay's curves beyond, coming dangerously close to touching the preceding letter (look how close the 'p' and 'a' in 'tampa' come to grazing each other).

Verdict: Not Impact

Impact, sharply dressed

Comedy troupe Stella used Impact in the opening credits to its tragically short-lived Comedy Central show, and stellafans.com uses the typeface extensively. 

I'll never forget the time they went turkey hunting, in camouflaged suits and ties, of course.

Impact in the news

Nice to see the classic Courier New Bold employed in the word "Toxic." 


I'm curious as to what typeface is used at the bottom. It's much more modern than Stencil, evidenced by the lack of serifs and more uniform letter thinness. 


The most important use of Stencil in my world:

Also, T.J. looks eerily like a professional ticket scalper.

Impact goes prime time

Tittle not included.

Power to the 'pacters

And for fun, count the uses of Impact on the company's website!

Save 50 cents in style

Near miss in Montreal

I thought this Montreal Canadiens fan was boasting an Impactful towel during Thursday's N.H.L. Eastern Conference Finals game against the Philadelphia Flyers. But upon closer inspection, the capital Gs lack the descending hash and the Os are octagonal rather than rounded. Close call in a not-so-close game. 

Impact in South Park

The typeface appeared at another point in the show as well, but it was in the message "YOU'RE FAGS!" written on tiny flags planted in Eric Cartman's turd, and that's not the message I.O.I. is trying to send the children.


I objected to the episode, and not because of the liberal use of the word "fag." I acknowledge the point the writers made: several different groups have been targeted with the word "fag" throughout time, and to today's youth, "fag" doesn't mean gay person as much as at it means loud annoying douche bag. But they lost me at the part when the characters tried to persuade dictionary writers to change the formal definition of the word. 


As if a change in the dictionary definition would somehow magically change everyone's use of the word. Changes in definition follow widespread shifts in usage, not the other way around. A word means whatever the people who use it say it means. So even if the characters all understood "fag" to mean a Harley-riding douche, the majority of people who would use the word would still have a different understanding of it.


If you want to change a word's meaning, don't call up the dictionary editors, just start using the word differently, and the world may or may not catch on. 


To put it simply: The dictionary doesn't determine our speech. Our speech determines the dictionary.


/gets off high horse

Even silver-chested magicians in trench coats are doing it

Am I right, ladies?

Impact in the Big Apple

Moments before I boarded the subway car, a boisterously forthcoming banner caught my eye through the railing.

This week in typos

In what was almost an epic use of 11th-grade vocab words, Isabella embarrasses her family by misspelling "transcends" and "picturesque" in her guestbook comment.

Still a pretty formidable string of words. Although I have a sneaking suspicion she's really using her comment to satirize the inanity and pretentiousness of art criticism. Make your own judgment.

Papyrus in Asheville

What really caught me off guard was the use of Papyrus throughout the town, especially in its art galleries. Apparently, what Impact is  to snarky placard designers, Papyrus is to artists.

Impact in Asheville

My trip to Asheville, NC, provided me with plenty of Impact sightings. It also provided my cousin Evan, visiting from Bogotá, Colombia, a firsthand peek into the American typeface subculture. 

After a few minutes in a bookstore, he really started to get a feel for it. 

Head shops are Impact's bread and butter, though (case in point). Luckily for us, Asheville had 2,000 of them. Impact enthusiasts the world over can rejoice.