Hair Salons and Papyrus

Ok, before we begin, you're probably immediately baffled by this combination. You're thinking: "Papyrus? Say what? That light paper shit that comes from plants? How does that relate to hair salons?" Well, it doesn't, nimrod. If you're familiar with the design world, or rather, the shitty design world, you know the font Papyrus. You know, ugly, tacky, egyptian-esque, Michael G-ish, super ugly Papyrus. The kind of font that belongs to that league of grade school embellishing tools along with Comic Sans, Kurlz MT, Stencil, the dreadful Jokerman, and any other terminally lame typeface that, you know, resides on any PTO Conference Newsletter, High School Cheerleading Car Wash Advertisement, or Bake Sale Rundown. These are the types of fonts that freaks like Raptor use, while the big boys like us who write here at Perfect Combinations for Better Reputations stick to nice, appealing sans serifs and stuff.



Anyways, the gaudy quality of Papyrus just doesn't matter when it comes to a hair salon. Across the country, even the world for that matter (because you know, we do tons of rigorous research), you'd be surprised to find how many hair salons do indeed use Papyrus for their banners and whole visual scheme. Walk down the street and I guarantee within ten minutes you will discover this too. I'm not talking about Supercuts or any other dumb chain haircutters, I'm talking about the more personal joints. And they do it for a reason: behind the ugliness of Papyrus, there is a sleek, suave, almost rejuvenating quality. People go to hair salons to begin anew, by getting their hair cut, their mustachio trimmed, their hair colorized, (their pubes trimmed?), and maybe even in some instances, their religion converted. What is Papyrus if not a blatant attempt at a soothing, spiritual typeface, and given its Egyptian influence, a tribute to ethnicity and history and all that dumb bullshit. People want to feel soothed when they get their herr did, so how better to entice them than with a banner boasting Papyrus!?



At this point, you're probably a bit skeptical. All of the pretentious douschebags are thinking to themselves: "Well, once I look at that sign and I know its papyrus, I'm not going in there because they're tacky." Get over it, you schmuck! The bottom line is they don't care very much about design. As long as the place looks clean and healthy, to me, with their obvious lack of visual marketing skills, they have at least chosen a font that will get their point across. Their essence. (Isn't essence a great word to use when talking about hair salons? No? Fuck you Raptor.) Another important thing is, when you're driving down the street with your gross, scraggly hair that hasn't been cut in two years, and your wife is with you with her absurdly heinous afro, and you're having a discussion like this - You: "Baby, I'm sorry to admit this, but I'm a hermaphrodite", Her: "God dammit Jose, all i need for you to do is trim the lawn! You never do it!", You: "But what about the radioactive sandwich?" - you're gonna see that hair salon from a distance and immediately be attracted to Papyrus. You won't recognize how shitty the font is, you'll just see the essence of it. Then, in one hip-hip-hooray, you'll yell: "By golly baby, we better go get our herrs did!". I dare you to go in and not say the service is fantastic, because they know how to entice you with their Egyptian-like aura.