Choc (French: "shock") is a

display Display may refer to: Technology * Display device, output device for presenting information, including: ** Cathode ray tube, video display that provides a quality picture, but can be very heavy and deep ** Electronic visual display, output devi ...

script typeface Script typefaces are based upon the varied and often fluid stroke created by handwriting. They are generally used for display or trade printing, rather than for extended body text in the Latin alphabet. Some Greek alphabet typefaces, especially h ...

Roger Excoffon Roger Excoffon (7 September 1910 – 30 May 1983) was a French typeface designer and graphic designer. Excoffon was born in Marseille, studied law at the University of Aix-en-Provence, and then moved to Paris to apprentice in a print shop. I ...

in 1955.

History

The typeface grew out of Excoffon's repeated and ultimately abandoned efforts to make a

bold In typography, emphasis is the strengthening of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text, to highlight them. It is the equivalent of prosody stress in speech. Methods and use The most common methods in W ...

of his typeface

Mistral Mistral may refer to: * Mistral (wind) in southern France and Sardinia Automobiles * Maserati Mistral, a Maserati grand tourer produced from 1963 until 1970 * Nissan Mistral, or Terrano II, a Nissan 4×4 produced from 1993 until 2006 * Microp ...

. In the 1980s, the prevailing opinion among designers was that, because of its lack of modernity, it was one of Excoffon's "tacky fonts that should only have been used for parodying the shop window of a provincial butcher, baker or hair salon". In the 1990s, Choc was distributed digitally with the graphics software

CorelDraw CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation. It is also the name of the Corel graphics suite, which includes the bitmap-image editor Corel Photo-Paint as well as other graphics-related programs (see below). T ...

under the name Staccato 555. CorelDraw's widespread use in signmaking shops may have helped Choc in becoming widely used in

signage Signage is the design or use of signs and symbols to communicate a message. A signage also means signs ''collectively'' or being considered as a group. The term ''signage'' is documented to have been popularized in 1975 to 1980. Signs are any ...

. Because the

letterforms A letterform, letter-form or letter form, is a term used especially in typography, palaeography, calligraphy and epigraphy to mean a letter's shape. A letterform is a type of glyph, which is a specific, concrete way of writing an abstract charac ...

evoke the forms of

East Asian calligraphy Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "t ...

(whether intentionally or not is unclear), Choc is especially often used in signs for Asian businesses. The ''New York Times'' wrote in 2018 that "Choc has become a typographical shorthand for Asian-themed restaurants" in New York City, where it is frequently seen.

References

{{font-stub Letterpress typefaces Photocomposition typefaces Digital typefaces Display typefaces Script typefaces Typefaces designed by Roger Excoffon