Ugly Gerry


Ugly Gerry is a font that uses the shape of a United States [congressional districts|United States congressional district] for each of its characters, created in 2019 as a protest against gerrymandering. It was designed by Ben Doessel and James Lee of the Leo Burnett Agency in a project for RepresentUs.

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.

Shapes that loosely resemble the letters 'A' through 'Z' were used to create the font. Some of these shapes are not of single districts but instead combine pairs.
Ugly Gerry has been called "the world's most revolting font".
LetterDistrict
ACalifornia's 3rd & Texas's 35th
BOhio's 12th & 7th congressional district|7th]
CConnecticut's [1st congressional district|Connecticut's 1st]
DMissouri's 8th
EMissouri's 6th
FOregon's 5th
GOhio's 4th
HNorth Carolina's 6th
ITexas's 15th
JIllinois's 18th
KAlabama's 1st
LNew York's 7th
MNew York's 8th
NIllinois's 11th
OArizona's 6th
PFlorida's 25th
QTexas's 12th
ROhio's 10th & Michigan's 13th
STennessee's 4th
TCalifornia's 43rd
UIllinois's 4th
VNew Jersey's 5th
WNew York's 8th
XCalifornia's 8th & 14th congressional district|14th]
YIllinois's 12th
ZIndiana's 8th & Ohio's 8th

Usability

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

Recognition

Ugly Gerry won the 2020 ADC Award for typography.