Reebok’s new campaign juxtaposes superstar headshots with documentary minutiae. They’ve got Lucy Liu beside a snapshot of her as a little girl at the playground, Allen Iverson beside his devil tattoo, and some tennis guy next to a tennis trophy. In front of it is the slogan “I AM WHAT I AM” in a blackletter font. Blackletter, as we all know, is the ornate, thick lettering often found slithering across the backs of convicts and the tops of newspapers. After Nike’s extensive use of blackletter in their 2003 Battlegrounds campaign, Reebok should have shelved it for a while. “Battlegrounds,” by the way, is exactly the kind of word to use blackletter on. Like the font, it’s a brutal, forceful, pointy, thick, mean, warlike word. “I am what I am,” on the other hand, is a whiney, emo slogan that would be best served by equally whiney, emo, hand-drawn letters, such as those simpering spidery lines found on the cover of J. Safran Foer’s latest emo tome. For Reebok to use blackletter here is about as appropriate as writing a love letter on the back of a napkin or signing the United States Constitution in crayon. In other words, we do not approve.

Good use of blackletter

Lousy use of blackletter