Ugly Gerry

Ugly Gerry is a font whose characters consist of shapes of United States congressional districts, its intention being to protest gerrymandering.[1][2][3][4] It was created by Ben Doessel and James Lee through the Leo Burnett Agency for RepresentUs.[5][6]

Ugly Gerry
CategoryScript (typefaces)
Designer(s)Ben Doessel and James Lee
Date releasedSeptember 2019 (2019-09)

Design

The designers' intention was to draw attention to gerrymandering:

The team is from Chicago, and after seeing how janky our Illinois 4th district had become, we became interested in this issue. . . . Its notorious earmuff shape looked like a U, then after seeing other letters on the map, the idea hit us, let’s create a typeface so our districts can become digital graffiti that voters and politicians can’t ignore.[5]

Shapes that loosely resemble the letters 'A' through 'Z' were used to create the (uppercase) font.[7] Some of these shapes are not of single districts but instead combine pairs.[8]

Ugly Gerry has been called "the world's most revolting font".[5]

Usability

The Ugly Gerry font has no numerals, punctuation or other special characters. It provides only the capital letters 'A' to 'Z' (no lowercase). At the foot of each page of its website is "No rights reserved".[9]

Recognition

Ugly Gerry won the 2020 ADC Award for typography.[6]

References
  1. Epstein, Kayla (2019-08-03). "How do you spell 'gerrymandering is bad?' With a font made out of preposterous districts". Washington Post.
  2. Panetta, Grace (2019-08-02). "There's a new downloadable font inspired by gerrymandered congressional districts". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-02-12.
  3. "Ugly Gerry Font". Fonts Arena. 2 August 2019.
  4. Beschizza, Rob (2019-08-01). "Ugly Gerry, a font based on gerrymandered districts". Boing Boing. Retrieved 2020-02-12.
  5. Campbell-Dollaghan, Kelsey (2019-08-02). "The world's most revolting font is made out of gerrymandered voting districts". Fast Company. Retrieved April 6, 2021.
  6. "2020 ADC Awards - Typography: Ugly Gerry". The One Club for Creativity.
  7. Coldewey, Devin (2019-08-02). "This free, ugly font is made from hideously gerrymandered districts". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-02-12.
  8. Lyons, Kathryn (2019-08-02). "Ugly Gerry wants you to know the 'ugly' truth about gerrymandering". Roll Call. Retrieved 2021-04-09.
  9. "Ugly Gerry". Retrieved 2021-04-06.
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