The large blocky design as well as the inclusion of the font with major operating systems like Microsoft Windows is exactly why the font took off as the font-of-choice for meme picture makers. The name is very fitting as Lee designed it (in his own words) to have a huge impact and put as much ink on paper as possible. Impact is an bold high-visibility sans-serif typeface designed back in the 1960s by designer Geoffrey Lee (who, most assuredly, had no idea that labor of his typographic genius would end up emblazoned across millions of cat pictures).
(A small minority use Arial and an even smaller minority use Comic Sans.)
While the font selection is at the discretion of the image maker the vast majority of Internet meme pictures use Impact font. With that little bit of trivia out of the way, let’s take a look at what font they use and how you can make your own for a little bit of Friday fun. The concept of “meme pictures” specifically (as opposed to a photograph of, say, people planking which is a type of cultural meme that is captured with photo and video and spread via social media) refers to the kind of white-text-over-photo images you’re interested in and is subset of a subset in the whole concept of memes and Internet memes.ĭawkins himself has said that the concept of “Internet meme” is a bit divergent from his pre-Internet conception of cultural memes, but the general premise is the same (albeit Internet memes are created, modified, and distributed at a radically faster pace than any historical meme, and they have the novel element of traceability as they exist in an electronic medium). Meme pictures are just a visual media for Internet memes, they can also spread via text and video. The general concept, and we’d certainly encourage you to read more on the subject if this interests you, is that music, slang and catchphrases, architecture, styles of art, and so on are all transmitted from person to person and those ideas (just like organisms) change through the process of transference via mutation, variation, competition, and inheritance.Īn offshoot of that concept is the idea of “Internet memes” ideas propagated, replicated, and modified as they spread via the Internet. He coined it in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene to serve as a term to facilitate discussion about how cultural ideas might spread via evolutionary-like mechanisms. The word “meme” was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Let’s dig into your serious questions about a most decidedly not-so-serious topic.įirst, let’s answer your trivia-grade question first and then look at the specifics of creating your picture. This is exactly the kind of not-so-serious Ask HTG question that was match-made for a lazy Friday afternoon, and we’re more than happy to help you in your quest for the perfect meme picture for your buddy. How can I easily make place text like that over an image? Finally, and only kind of related to my actual project, why exactly are the funny pictures called “meme pictures” in the first place? First, what’s the font they use for the pictures? Maybe I’ve got an untrained eye but it looks like all the ones I’ve seen have a really blocky white font with black outlining around the text. With that in mind I have a couple questions. Can you guys help me out with some serious advice on my definitely not serious problem? I read a lot of your Ask HTG articles, and I get the feeling I don’t have anything to worry about. I’d really like to do it in the style of those Internet meme pictures you see all over the place, but I’m not exactly a graphic designer (or even particularly clever). I want to make a funny picture to put in a coworker’s cubicle for his birthday next week.
What’s the font that stands out so boldly on them and how do you make them? Read on as we answer a reader’s serious question about a not-so-serious topic. Meme pictures, recognizable photos with sayings applied over top, pop up everywhere from Internet discussion boards to email forwards.