I've been recently been in a deep dive about this display typeface called Gagalin by Iordanis Passas.

 

To be fair it's not the most impressionable free font out there. However, it's based off of Ricoh's Soei Kakupoptai, well known to be very heavily used within Japan, akin to their 'Comic Sans'.

 

With that being said, I'm noticing Gagalin being used within my region (I live in Singapore). So this is my question: Do you guys see Gagalin often used within your country? Pictures of their use will be highly appreciated.

 

(I'm just curious, and also a little tickled by the fact that there's a  revival of a regionally hated font that's now becoming used globally.)

5 hours ago, Faux Icing said:

So this is my question: Do you guys see Gagalin often used within your country?

Haven’t noticed it in Germany before. 

U.S.A. here. I often see text that looks like that. Whether it's Gagalin or some similar font I have never bothered to delve into.

I have since found a couple more of them out and about. I think because Gagalin is a free font to use in Canva, many local users tend to opt for it in their projects.

Other than that, I couldn't quite reason out why Gagalin would be used here as frequent as it is.

So, I've been out and about just trying to spot Gagalin whenever I see them. Turns out they're indeed used every now and then by Singaporeans for various promotional ads, unwittingly fulfilling the purpose of the original typeface (Kakupoptai)'s intended use in retail signages.

I will add the found images into a Google Drive folder for you guys to browse if interested and not hit the attachment quota over here.

Funnily enough, Gagalin also appeared in one of the Chicken Shop Date's interview (with Andrew Garfield). It's featured in Sam's Chicken digital display for their cake desserts (see screenshot below).

I guess Vasil Stanev (who developed Gagalin Cyrillic) is trying to manifest what he said:
 

Quote

I think there is not a city in the world that hasn't got at least one bilboard or poster with Gagalin.

 

Yes, the Canva is probably the reason. As with all other ubiquitous and hated fonts, it's not the font that is the problem, but the misuse of it. It always starts with those fonts being available in the software used by common people.

They spot the effect of typography and strive to make something different. However, they lack the context, taste, and knowledge about fonts outside the app. That's the story of Comic Sans or Algerian being available in MS Office. When you mentioned Canva, it was much clearer to me 🙂