Comic Sans Criminal
comicsanscriminal.com
comicsanscriminal.com
Yes, most of the examples presented on this site are heinous and tremendously bad typeface choices. But that has nothing to do with the fact that comic sans was designed to mirror comic book lettering. The designer's intent is not embedded in the typeface, only his actual results.
Papyrus falls into the same category. People get bent out of shape about it: "It was meant to look like Egyptian lettering, but now it's on my Greek menu! It makes no sense!"
Guess what? It doesn't matter what it was "intended" to convey, it matters what is actually conveyed when people read it. Frutiger was designed for airport signage, but it happens to look great outside of airports too. Granted, it was never meant to be a niche font, but the principle applies: you shouldn't get upset on account of people using something in ways you didn't foresee or intend.
All this to say, if you're going to argue that a font is ugly or doesn't belong somewhere, that's fine, but your argument shouldn't be based on what the font was intended for. Sometimes the things we make turn out to be way more useful than we thought.
And I'll stick my neck out here and even say that I think Papyrus often looks good on menus :)
Do you know what the purpose of that sign is? It's not to evoke en emotion, not to convey some abstract message about the corporate structure of the refrigerator, not to let everybody know that the fridge is successful enough to afford some designer who can spend time obsessing over font choices, it's to abstract the thought of "please stop eating my yogurt" into a universally-understandable form.
This type of thing is important if you're Charles Schwab and you're trying to make me feel warm and cuddly about trusting you with my money. The message I'm getting from your ads goes beyond just the words. This is the same as keeping the grass in front of your building trimmed, making sure your staff irons their clothes, that your building isn't in disrepair, that your board members aren't caught doing embarrassing thigns, etc. etc. It's all image. It's 3 forks at dinner. Do you need 3 forks? No, you don't.
Likewise, do you need to worry yourself with things like the typeface that you're using to write a birthday invitation for your 9 year old?
No.
Are you trying to argue that Times New Roman is not up to that task? Because otherwise I don't see how all this discussion of the sign's purpose makes any difference to the fact that it looks stupid.
Similarly, somebody might be wearing a pair of women's granny panties on his head because his ears get cold, but that does not explain why he would do such a thing when there are earmuffs, scarves and hats readily available.
No.
>I don't see how all this discussion of the sign's purpose makes any difference to the fact that it looks stupid.
It only looks stupid to a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny minority of people who seem to feel as though they should devote a significant portion of their time reminding the rest of the world that they're stupid.
>Similarly, somebody might be wearing a pair of women's granny panties on his head because his ears get cold, but that does not explain why he would do such a thing when there are earmuffs, scarves and hats readily available.
This isn't even remotely similar and you know it. Using Comic Sans instead of Times is more like using a salad fork to eat your steak.
And no, it is not similar to using a salad fork to eat steak. You've even pointed out the difference in your comments: "Do you know what the purpose of that sign is? It's not to evoke en emotion…" This recognizes that choice of font has a significant practical impact in many contexts. Which fork you use for salads is always just a fiat, and experts in the field of dinner etiquette realize that it doesn't have a rational basis.
Wearing panties on your head is a much better analogy. Granny panties will keep your head warm, and people who want to feel superior and open-minded might say, "Hey, stop being elitist about what counts as acceptable headgear" — but none of that changes the fact that wearing panties on your head looks silly and there are better ways to accomplish that goal.
And yes, it is. Fonts can evoke emotional responses, but so can steaks. In the example I used (reminding a coworker not to steal your yogurt from the fridge), however, the point isn't to cause an emotion, it is just to convey a very simple, very 1-dimensional message.
In the example of eating a steak with a salad fork, the point of the action is to get the steak into your mouth, not to convey to message to those around you know you are a member of the class of people that know which forks to use on which portions of their food.
I agree with you that ridiculing people for their typographic choices is a bad idea. In many contexts – like the note on the refrigerator – those choices just don’t matter as long as the type is legible. Even when typographic choices might matter it’s better to educate people and not be a jerk. Typography is not taught in school and unless you take an active interest in it you will just not know anything about it.
It's the kind of thing that causes people to not even try things because they're so afraid of looking so stupid.
At the end of the day most any language/paradigm is Turing complete, as is any font.
If it is unimportant which font we use most of the time then why have you set the font family in your website? What made you choose Georgia over Comic Sans?
Fonts and typefaces are important, and Comic Sans is misused frequently.
And yet it does those things, even if that is not the purpose. The reason that Charles Schwab pays attention is that it does affect people, and not just the "tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny minority of people" who are paying attention to how.
I sympathise with your position on not making people feel stupid because they're not typographers, but if the alternative is for everyone to blunder through life oblivious to all but the intended consequences of our actions then I can't endorse that either.
A case in point: the example is not a good one since setting a "please stop eating my yogurt" sign on the refrigerator in Comic Sans is an obvious, and probably effective, way to try to make it seem less threatening.
For a bit of context. I'm a Graphic Design student in the second year of my BA. This website formed 1/3rd of a self directed project which consisted of an educational leaflet, a set of stickers and a website. The website is basically a web version of the print booklet, which I focussed least of my effort on. The website was never intended to be seen by a large number of people, it was coded quickly with little thought for web standards because I only expected it to be seen by my tutors for a quick 30 second read.
I do not think I am above anyone else and am not trying to preach. The world spread inappropriate use of Comic Sans is an issue I'm tired of. This is a simple, straightforward website to try and let people know that it's inappropriate to use it in some instances and that there are alternatives. I stated at the end of my project that if I could just get one person to stop and decide whether a font was appropriate before using it as opposed to just using their default Comic Sans, then I would have succeeded and would be happy.
The fact that I've had 80,000 unique visitors in the last 14 hours is something I had never anticipated and was not prepared for. I've corrected the "it's" issue, which I spotted myself soon after launching but was unable to rectify due to being away from the computer with the PSD files on until later today. Please let me know what the other grammar issues are and I'll rectify those too.
At the end of the day I think you guys are taking this a little too seriously. It was supposed to be a bit of fun, a tongue-in-cheek piece of work viewed by a few people that would hopefully make someone stop and think a little. That's all.
Thanks for your feedback, it's been a pretty overwhelming day!
> It quickly became popular for use with young children in primary schools & other childcare thanks to it's [sic] fun, child-like appearance
Also Comic Sans is currently trending on Twitter due to this site. It must be doing something right.
Now I read my email in Emacs, and everything is very pretty DejaVu Sans Mono-9.
Just FYI.
Best laugh i've had in ages.
Genius.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Tear-Soup-Pat-Schweibert/dp/0961519762...
It was, of course, in Comic Sans. Although it seemed rude to inquire, I'm still wondering whether this was some horrendous faux pas by the secretarial staff, or whether it reflected some well-known habit of the deceased and was thus entirely appropriate.
MICROSOFT COMIC CHAT!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat
This was the original source of the font in question. Binaries must be found, VMWare awaits...
Can they pledge not to use images to render text?
My complaint still stands though, because with the big "Click Anywhere On The Page To Continue" it was distracting my attention away from the user interface element I actually wanted to use.
Edit: and vice-versa apparently. How can this person be so aware of typography but completely fail at picking readable colors? Furthermore, this website doesn't even work with readability, so it's not like I have any recourse.
If you want to kill Comic Sans, put another friendly But well-designed font on every computer in the world and then redesign as many things as possible to increase its public mindshare. Only once there's a viable friendly-font alternative do people even have a place to go away from CS.
http://www.fontshop.com/fontlist/alternatives/comic_sans/
(especially MVB Pedestria, obviously, although I don't think most people would consider it in fair running with Comic Sans)
The opposite extreme would be WRITING IN ALL CAPS in a fixed width font, making every word into a rectangle.
And then it comes to me if I'm sitting here caring about presentation more than the content like a prude. I'm not picking on anyone -- just remarking on my very own situation =).
I think that we must look beyond the dogma/bigotry and try to understand the popularity of the font.
Its fun personality has been mentioned in several posts in the comments, but comicsanscriminal.com ironically offers another major argument in favor of the font: its legibility.
Comic Sans is popular at elementary school and among dyslexic people because it is easier to read for them. Even though non-dyslexic adults are better at deciphering other fonts, I wouldn't be surprised if the attentional/cognitive load for reading Comic Sans was lower that what's needed for any of the so-called "better" fonts.
This could be scientifically tested easily.
And of course there's "Comic Jens"[1], which is in the same vein, but not as obnoxious for some kind of reason. (And free, available as a web font etc.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qefD5YHPeEM
Touche, but then lawyers, doctors, police officers, senatorial aides, and cancer researchers shouldn't be talking in Comic Sans.
They beat ya to the punch.
I mostly write in MonteCarlo (http://www.bok.net/MonteCarlo/), but programming fonts are a different discussion entirely.