Ugly Gerry is a font created in 2019 to protest gerrymandering. It used the shape of a U.S. congressional district for each of its characters.
It was designed by Ben Doessel and James Lee of the Leo Burnett Agency in a project for Represent Us.
The team was from Chicago, and after seeing how crazy the Illinois 4th district had become, they became interested in this issue. … Its notorious earmuff shape looked like a U, then after seeing other letters on the map, they created a typeface so their districts could become digital graffiti that voters and politicians couldn’t ignore.
Shapes that loosely resembled the letters ‘A’ through ‘Z’ were used to create the (uppercase) font. Some of the shapes were not of single districts but instead combined pairs.
Ugly Gerry has been called “the world’s most revolting font”.
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‘type is what meaning looks like.’
-max phillips
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source credits: ben doessel and james lee, leon burnett, democrat docket, wikipedia
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I didn't have my glasses on.... 
I hadn’t seen this before. Thanks.
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it was new to me as well, but a great form of creative protest
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That’s a clever idea, and I hope lots of people use that font to make their protest known.
Best wishes, Pete.
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right
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Interesting Beth, I had never heard this before.
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new to me too, but a reaction to political craziness with a bit of art
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There is a story behind some fonts. Let’s just say I would be willing to read only a very short page in this one!
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same
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how interesting. it’s – though – as ugly and your orangey man’s handwriting – and probably as illegible too. goes straight in my collection of fascinating, unnecessary, mildly amusing ‘facts’.
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you never know when they’ll come in handy
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It is INDEED the world’s most revolting font. Our NC districts can be crazy — there are several that make me cock an eyebrow but I never would have thought to create letters from them!
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creative people have no limits and that’s a good thing
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Very very interesting.
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indeed –
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Sigh…The name Ugly Gerry says so much.
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that it does
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This is the first time I’m hearing of this font. I’ll look and see if my computer has it but I don’t think so.
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I don’t think it will be readily available, it sounds like it was a short term political artistic statement of sorts
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I never knew about this font. But what a clever way to make a point in a form of resistance.
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I so agree, Audrey
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Ugh! Barely recognizable as an alphabet. Probably illegible as words.
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Wow!
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creative and protest knows no bounds
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Love it! I’ll have to share this with my design guy.
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yes, isn’t it fascinating as a form of creative protest?!
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It’s as ugly as the way it’s used
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absolutely
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I must check this out Beth 😉
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an interesting form of artistic protest
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It is certainly hard to read that font. Gerrymandering has long been a big problem here in Texas. It is clearly manipulation of electoral district boundaries that allows politicians to choose their voters instead of the other way around, and here in Texas the gerrymandering is very cynical and the districts look crazy, like funny looking snakes. We just had a big gerrymandering happening again despite mid decade redistricting not being the norm/tradition.
The constitution does not say anything about it. I guess they did not foresee this. On the other hand the constitution allow you to fix it, but we aren’t. This problem exists (or existed) in a few other countries as well but they have addressed it. It certainly does not exist in Sweden (where I am from).
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yes, it is terrible on so many levels
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I have never heard of that font. I checked my Microsoft Word, but it is not part of the font choice.
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it was created at a special time for the purpose of making a political point, and may be hard to come by –
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That is really clever. I’m impressed there were enough appropriate shapes to fit the alphabet. Super creative.
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