Occasionally a new font comes along that becomes an instant winner. Archer, the colorful slab serif from Hoefler & Frere-Jones is described by it’s makers, very accurately I might add, as follows.

Sweet but not saccharine, earnest but not grave, Archer is designed to hit just the right notes of forthrightness, credibility, and charm.

Readable and good looking as body copy whilst being potentially stunning as a heading or part of a text based graphic design, Archer is very powerful typeface. I didn’t take much persuading to purchase a copy and start using it liberally as the identity for a new project which I hope to showcase here at Upstart Blogger in the coming weeks.

There’s a problem with this, however. Archer will be a hit. And that means it will be picked up and used by many designers for all sorts of different projects.

It’s a risk.

Hopefully it won’t suffer the same fate as it’s stable-mate, Gotham, and be used, abused and badly set by every political movement from here to the moon. Sometimes I wish there was a pool of exclusive fonts that had a license preventing their use for non creative purposes. I’d happily pay more for a font if I new it wasn’t going to be used by an organization that might tarnish its image and lesson its impact.