As Helvetica has been on a slow decline in generally modern designs, I’m now seeing an almost proportional rise in the use of Reykjavik (rayk-jah-vik?). Barnes & Noble has become a chief abuser of this font, and I’ve seen it used in more one-shot designs than I can remember. Most may not be familiar with the name, as its prevalency hasn’t spread nearly as far as Helvetica, and some know it by an alternately-named clone (as is common in type’s digital age). I mean, yeah--I really like this font. I can’t say that it’s not good enough to be displayed everywhere. But I still get sick of seeing it on every sign, window, and ad that I see nowadays. Call it too much of a good thing (like the 18+ guitar rhythm games that now exist).

Myriad has also become a pretty tired typeface, but for some reason I don’t notice it as much as Reykjavik. Maybe it’s just because I expect the default Photoshop and Illustrator font to be just as epidemic as Times New Roman because of MS Word. That, and, it’s common knowledge that anything Apple does, like adopt one typeface for its entire product line, gets beat to death by competitors.