--- title: Papyrus Creator Defends Font After Saturday Night Live description: CBS News caught up with designer Chris Costello, who defended the font as “well-designed” but admitted that yes, it’s overused. canonical: https://time.com/4965977/papyrus-font-designer-on-ryan-gosling-snl-sketch/ author: Entertainment Weekly article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-10-02T19:59:14.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:47:43.117Z og:title: What the Papyrus Font Creator Thinks of Ryan Gosling's SNL Sketch og:description: Graphic designer Chris Costello defended his creation og:url: https://time.com/4965977/papyrus-font-designer-on-ryan-gosling-snl-sketch/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltea95d04104a5e64a/6988e0357cdbac9d21d5a4da/papyrus-creator-ryan-gosling-snl.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: Saturday Night Live - Season 43 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What the Papyrus Font Creator Thinks of Ryan Gosling's SNL Sketch twitter:description: Graphic designer Chris Costello defended his creation twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltea95d04104a5e64a/6988e0357cdbac9d21d5a4da/papyrus-creator-ryan-gosling-snl.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Is What the Papyrus Font Creator Thought About Ryan Gosling's _SNL_ Sketch > Sponsored content. 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It curates the day's top headlines with TIME's reporting and analysis across politics, world affairs, business, health and culture. It is free to join at time.com/newsletters. #### How do I sign up for The Brief? The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/newsletters?i=fec82584-b976-4e5f-b7d8-9a242dba1f4e&cr=time-nl-brief-2026q3-v1) by [Devan Coggan / Entertainment Weekly](https://time.com/author/entertainment-weekly/) ## Devan Coggan / Entertainment Weekly Oct 2, 2017 7:59 PM UTC  Ryan Gosling in "Driving At Night" on September 30, 2017. Ryan Gosling in "Driving At Night" on September 30, 2017. Rosalind O'Connor—NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images by [Devan Coggan / Entertainment Weekly](https://time.com/author/entertainment-weekly/) ## Devan Coggan / Entertainment Weekly Oct 2, 2017 7:59 PM UTC When _Saturday Night Live_ returned for its 43rd season this weekend, the most talked-about moment on Sunday wasn’t the Emma Stone cameo or Alec Baldwin’s return as President Donald Trump. Instead, it was a [late-in-the-show pretaped sketch](http://ew.com/tv/2017/10/01/ryan-gosling-snl-avatar-font-papyrus/) starring host Ryan Gosling as a man who can’t stop thinking about the fact that James Cameron’s _Avatar_ used the font Papyrus. “I forgot about it for years,” Gosling muses in the sketch, “but then I remembered that _Avatar_, the giant international blockbuster, used the Papyrus font as its logo.” The sketch was an immediate hit, and now, the creator of the famous font is weighing in: [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/papyrus-font-avatar-saturday-night-live-chris-costello-ryan-gosling-viral-video/) caught up with designer Chris Costello, who defended the font as “well-designed” but admitted that yes, it’s overused. “I really think — and again if I can take this time to apologize to my brother and sister graphic designers,” he said, “I’m a graphic designer as well, I’m an illustrator … I believe it’s a well-designed font, it was well-thought out.” Costello said he designed the font when he was only 23, and he sold it for $750\. Since then, it’s become a standard font inclusion on just about every computer released since 2000. “I woke up this morning, Sunday, and my email was full. I had a lot of people telling me, ‘Did you see this _Saturday Night Live_ thing?’” Costello told CBS. “I took a look at it, and me and my wife were like cracking up, I mean we couldn’t stop laughing. It was one of the best things I’ve seen.” Production is currently underway on the first of [four planned _Avatar_ sequels](http://ew.com/tv/2017/09/27/avatar-2-first-look/). The first installment will hit theaters Dec. 18, 2020. _This_ [_article_](http://ew.com/tv/2017/10/02/saturday-night-live-papyrus-sketch-font-creator-responds/) _originally appeared on_ [_EW.com_](http://www.ew.com) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4965977/papyrus-font-designer-on-ryan-gosling-snl-sketch/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4965977/papyrus-font-designer-on-ryan-gosling-snl-sketch/"},"headline":"This Is What the Papyrus Font Creator Thought About Ryan Gosling's SNL Sketch","datePublished":"2017-10-02T19:59:14.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:47:43.117Z","description":"Graphic designer Chris Costello defended his creation","url":"https://time.com/4965977/papyrus-font-designer-on-ryan-gosling-snl-sketch/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Television"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltea95d04104a5e64a/6988e0357cdbac9d21d5a4da/papyrus-creator-ryan-gosling-snl.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Devan Coggan / Entertainment Weekly"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltea95d04104a5e64a/6988e0357cdbac9d21d5a4da/papyrus-creator-ryan-gosling-snl.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Saturday Night Live - Season 43","caption":"Saturday Night Live - Season 43","creditText":"Rosalind O'Connor—NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4965977/papyrus-font-designer-on-ryan-gosling-snl-sketch/","name":"This Is What the Papyrus Font Creator Thought About Ryan Gosling's SNL Sketch"}}]}] ```