Labeling immigrants

As they are wont to do when devoting all of their news-reporting efforts to a single topic, CNN has designed a special title graphic for today’s “Day Without Immigrants.” There’s barbed wire, and there are pant legs and shoes, but what I’m curious about is the font. It is lettering made to resemble plastic label embossing tape, like that wonderful stuff made by Dymo®.

I wonder how they arrived at this font choice. Does plastic label embossing tape relate to immigrants in some way? Has the graphics department taken the day off to attend a demonstration, forcing CNN to resort to embossing its graphics on plastic labeling tape?

I also wonder why, instead of embossing “immigrants” on a single strip of tape, each letter is on its own tiny piece. Wouldn’t that make it much harder to remove the backing and apply the adhesive lettering in a nice, straight line?

It’s time for answers.