As my professor began his PowerPoint lecture on Visual Stereotypes I couldn't help but notice his font choice on the title slide. It was composed in that most famous, perilously overused, wheatgerm-esque font, Papyrus. Which, after a short trip to Wikipedia, I now know was conceived of in 1982 and has plagued the design community to greater and lesser degrees ever since.
What is it about that font? There is the vague suggestion that the letters are meant to transcend their rigid, digital existence and evoke the mealy, organic process of dipping a brush into ink. It must have been a revelation at the moment of its arrival on the scene, but by the end of the 1990's its ubiquitous usage by amateur designers and, let's face it, a few professional design hacks, had rendered it a cliche in the same gaudy bin as Comic Sans, Brush Script, Mistral and Trajan.
If you want to look sage and mystic--while also coming off as utterly lazy and unoriginal--select Papyrus for the cover of your next New Age publication or self-published fantasy novel. You can almost hear the wind in the grass just looking at it...
Personally, I'd like to see a top-tier Fortune 500 company's next annual report set entirely in this font. The stereotype might just be strong enough to put a crack in their horrid mask of corporate efficiency. Maybe.
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