Fonts are a topic that we're always interested in here at Cubic Promote. Branding is our business, and typefaces are a big part of that. While the vast majority of typefaces used don't particularly stand out, there are times where the choice of font makes a big impact. A well picked typeface can seriously elevate your design, whereas a poorly chosen one will make your brand seem cheap or amateurish. So yes, you'd want to pick a nice, appropriate font when it comes to branding. Of course, there's a bit of an issue when it comes to good or popular typefaces. You want them to stand out, and if a font becomes especially well known or popular, it can reduce the impact of the font, making it rather generic or even hated. Case in point, Times New Roman, and Comic Sans

Times New Roman

Designed in 1929 by typographer Stanley Morison and artist Victor Lardent, Times New Roman was developed with newspapers in mind. The Times of London at that point was criticised for illegible print, and the new typeface was comissioned to address that. Simple, clean, and rather narrow (to fit as many words into one line as possible on a newspaper), it was used by The Times of London until 1972, where they proceeded to change typefaces multiple times. Times New Roman, and the extremely similar Times Roman, is one of the most ubiquitous fonts in the world, its popularity and use linked to its early adoption by word processors on computers. It's been used in Windows since the early 1990's and was the default font for most Microsoft word processors until Office 2007. Needless to say it's one of the world's most well known fonts, if somewhat generic as a result.

Comic Sans

One of the famous and most infamous fonts ever designed, the disdain for Comic Sans is almost legendary at this point. Created by Vincent Connare in 1994, Connare was inspired by the type seen in comic book speech bubbles. Designing Comic Sans within a week, drawing them himself using his mouse on a computer screen, Comic Sans became a standard typeface for Windows. And the rest of course was history. Within a few years of its invention, Comic Sans was seemingly everywhere, often being misused in serious situations. Apparently, Connare was both amused and mortified as his design went from a simple bit of software to appearing on everything under the sun. With its use and overuse, as well as the fact that it's often used in serious situations when it probably shouldn't be, Comic Sans is now one of the most hilariously despised fonts in the world.

Originally seen on: http://mentalfloss.com/article/78962/stories-behind-10-famous-typefaces-and-where-theyre-used