Overuse of fonts

Semi-rant here, but...

Remember when Gill Sans was the font to be seen with? Everyone used it - not just the BBC and Carlton, but it used to be everywhere on adverts (Cable and Wireless for example). My company used it for ages until it started to look tired.

The current font de jour is Helvetica/Swiss - used (if I am not mistaken) by all the major news providers and on countless adverts everywhere. Of course, it has always been used heavily (particularly in N America) but, to this poster's eyes, it seems particularly prevalent now. Indeed, as was GIll Sans when it was the fashion, it is heavily used on my website, to add that extra level of hypocrisy.

For you, at what point does the usage of a font become too much? When do you start to tire of it? And is this endemic of a creative industry starved for ideas and inspiration?

Frutiger's another one. Perhaps I didn't really notice it much until last year when it was used extensively in the student publication I was helping with, but it really is everywhere if you look hard enough.
Sky News may have just ditched it, but keep an eye out for it.
(It was originally designed for Chares de Gaulle Airport in Paris, and can be seen in many other airports and stations around the world. And Ealing Council, too.)

Dax had a little flurry of interest. Used by Abbey National when the umbrella was ditched, then by myself, and then McDonalds, its now faded away.

To be honest the most popular font these days is the custom made one.

And of course MDTA is an (inter)national brand on a par with Abbey and the Golden Arches...

I discovered Greyhound SF the other week. A bit like the original Superdrug!

I love that. It's like when John Simpson liberated Afghanistan.

Optima (aka Zapf Humanist I think) was everywhere for a while in the late 90s - and still pops up.

Given that TV doesn't cope well with serifed founts I guess there is a constant cycling through clear, legible typefaces, as they come into and out of vogue.

On TV and off, I hate Arial with a passion. I wonder if people thought the same of Grotesque No.9 in the 1960/70s, when they saw it on credit rolls for just about everything on television from Thunderbirds to Crossroads.

You sound like the type of person I'd like to talk to. Utterly boring and seems to be used every 5 years for no other purpose than can't be arsed to find something original.

Or because it is the default on the CG being used and the untrained operator doesn't know how to alter the fount...

That too!

Things could be worse...

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y238/spencer4h/sncomic.gif