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The author of the website explicitly states that using Comic Sans for nine-year-olds’ birthday invitations is perfectly appropriate. He does not in any way express hatred for Comic Sans. Please don’t attack a straw man.

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.

I guess I'm not specifically speaking to the author of the article, but more to the impression that I get from the design community.

It's the kind of thing that causes people to not even try things because they're so afraid of looking so stupid.

There's quite a bit of this in the development community as well, keep in mind. It just seems a bit more practical to us.

At the end of the day most any language/paradigm is Turing complete, as is any font.

There is a fine line between 'trying something' and 'repeating something stupidly'.

It's not to evoke en emotion, not to convey some abstract message about the corporate structure of the refrigerator...

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.

> 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.

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.

>Are you trying to argue that Times New Roman is not up to that task?

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.

That's simply not true. I don't devote any significant portion of my time to reminding the rest of the world that they're stupid, but I still think Comic Sans looks dumb.

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 no, it is not similar to using a salad fork to eat steak.

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.

Maybe he's in the fashion industry.

If the point of the sign was simply to abstract the thought of "please stop eating my yogurt" then you needn't put any thought into it at all and leave the default font of Times New Roman. What they've done is actively choose to use another font for some reason.

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.

+1. Comic sans irritates me a little bit, but as much as being irritated by it does. Relax and worry about something else :)