Recently we were working on a project in which we were asked to use the font “Licious Script” by Baseline. Now if you know anything about us, you know that we absolutely LOVE working with type and lettering, so we’re up for any project that requires the creative usage of a font. The unfortunate side to this project is that Licious Script is by far one of the worst fonts I have ever seen. Forget about the technical aspects of tracking, kerning, leading, and the like…let’s focus more on the fact that it appears to have been run through Illustrator’s “live trace” function about ten times. How could a font be sold at such poor quality? If you examine the font a little bit more closely, you’re able to see exactly where the problems lie.

Take this sample of RS. It doesn’t take much to notice how poor the curves are on a face like this. If you view the entire character set it will be quite obvious that the font is intended to be silky smooth; the name is “Licious” for God’s sake. Why would the creators of this font not put in the extra hour or so to correct these paths?

What bothers us is not the fact that a cheap font is treated as such, it’s the fact that this is just another example of people losing respect for the craft of type design. Obviously we’re not the only ones out there that still care about quality, there are plenty of companies that promote only the best (Veer for example, not to mention all the great studios and freelancers we’ve met and admired.) Hopefully this doesn’t become a trend in the field of type design.

From: One Twenty Six Design Blog