On beating the Heat

Factoid of the day: this year's NBA finals, between the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder, is the first major-sports championship to feature teams whose names are mass nouns rather than plurals. The significance of this milestone is not lost on newspaper copy editors, who are now struggling to determine which sounds better: "Thunder beats Heat" or "Thunder beat Heat."

Read a fascinating post about the issue here.

Fuck you, Tomato Jake's

Right when we thought Tomato Jake's was charming its way into our hearts, it goes and fucks everything up with some Comic Sans.

Something to that effect

As far as frequently misused words go, "affect" and "effect" might just be the most misused-est. Typically, people err by using "effect" as a verb, but the creator of this sign pulls the ultra-rare "affect"-as-a-noun switcheroo.

This guy would have something to say about the phrase "open mic."

Welcome, Tomato Jake's

Tomato Jake's Pizzeria replaced Franklin Street Pizza and Pasta earlier this spring, and in the process became the third downtown Chapel Hill business to employ Impact in its logo. The others — Pita Pit and GameStop —  are national franchises.

Italian lesson

It's over. Jack Sprat wins. Toasty turkey panino.

Conflicting ideologies

Gotta respect J Street U for promoting a pro-peace dialogue when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But mixing Helvetica and Arial? That shit is indefensible.

Organic Impact

A pint of Impact

Brought to you by North Carolina's Aviator Brewing Company, whose logo, as you can see on the opposite side of the glass, is also in Impact.

Don't stare too long at this typeface

Reader Daniel directs us to this migraine-inducing typeface, in which every character is an object that would be impossible to recreate three-dimensionally. M.C. Escher would be proud.

Poker (Type)Face

COMIC SANS IN RUSSIAN

That sound you hear is the universe exploding.

The signs of Skagway

A single stroll through Skagway, Alaska, will make you feel as if you traveled back in time. Nearly everything about the town, from the architecture to the signage to the fascination with gold, seems undisturbed since the days of the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s.

However, Skagway isn't exactly "the town that time forgot," as one friend likes to say. The old-fashioned look is very much intentional and is a result of residents taking their history so seriously. In fact, Skagway has a seven-member commission who oversees and regulates the aesthetics of any new construction projects downtown.

The goal is to make Skagway's storefronts as similar to the ones in pictures like this (click to view entire photo):

No name, no problem

'The following generic-brand line of goods was observed in Real Canadian Superstore. It deserves credit for the clever and minimalist look of its products. (In Canada, products are labeled in both English and French.) Take a look:

An even meaner Comic Sans, somehow

I take it back. Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert's whiny open letter to Cleveland fans no longer holds the title of Most Ridiculously Out-of-Place Usage of Comic Sans of All Time. That honor now belongs to Museo de Armas (Weapons Museum) in Buenos Aires, where, beyond the rooms full of samurai swords and assault rifles, I spotted this gem:

Machetes. Comic Sans. Together. Oh, the humanity.

Cooper Black in Colonia

Cooper Black was among the last 12 typefaces I expected to find in the dusty cobblestone back roads of ultraquaint Colonia, Uruguay. But then this happened:

Sighting Cooper and its friendly bold serifs made me reflect on some of the more notable uses of the typeface in its almost 90-year history.

And there are no signs of stopping.

Evita in Impact

I observed the following signs at the July 26 march in Buenos Aires, in which members from various labor unions took to the streets in honor of the anniversary of Eva Perón's death. In a sea of signs, a few stood out:

Look to the right of the faces

Impactville, USA: Chapel Hill

I submit the following evidence in my nomination of Chapel Hill as Impactville, USA.

Outside a Walgreens

A sticker opposing Greenbridge, a controversial development

Back-to-back UNC sports books in Impact

On the other hand...

In a follow-up to yesterday's post, check out the front page of The Morning Journal from Lorain, Ohio. What's up, Impact?! You are considerably more professional than Comic Sans.

The New York Post gets in on the fun too:

The meanest Comic Sans you'll ever see

Comic Sans, the dinky typeface that is inexplicably one of the Core Fonts for the Web, has never looked more menacing. Cleveland Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert used the typeface Thursday night in his sour grapes open letter to Cavs fans shortly after LeBron James announced he was signing with Miami. 

Perhaps no font has inspired more ire and contempt than Comic Sans. As explained in the video below from Ban Comic Sans, a typeface should be like a crystal glass and not a golden, bejeweled goblet. In other words, it should be invisible and let its contents speak for themselves. When a typeface draws attention to itself, the writer has already lost. Comic Sans has done exactly that, and being one of the most recognizable fonts out there, it has easily become the most hated.


Comic Sans from Sam and Anita on Vimeo.

Typically Comic Sans is reserved for playful text and anything written by a 9-year-old, which makes Gilbert's use of the typeface all the more perplexing. Coupled with the fact that, as Deadspin put it, the letter contains "prose you normally find wrapped around a brick," this could be the oddest and most unjustifiable use of Comic Sans in its 16-year history. 

Rifling through

A baseball player strikes the ball with great force down the left field line. Using baseball lingo, you could say the player drove it, or lined it. But is it acceptable to say he "rifled" it?

I'm hearing more and more sports announcers using rifle as a verb meaning "to strike with great power (like a rifle shot)." It has made its way to soccer, as evidenced by Sunday's Galaxy-Sounders game. 

Dictionaries are split on the matter but tend not to favor the newer meaning. Most just stick to the traditional definitions of the verb, "to search" and "to ransack." (I even learned a new one: you are rifling when you are cutting grooves into a gun barrel.)

Last year, The New York Times criticized TBS announcer Chip Carey for his usage of "rifled" in a baseball playoff game, but it is unclear whether they objected to the verb in general or just in that situation. If the writer was against the definition, he should probably get used to hearing it more.