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Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

Comic Sans and its descendants are... indestructible. No matter how much some font designers complain about it, and how often they criticize it, Comic Sans keeps coming back, like the Terminator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Sans#Reception_and_use_i...

Among the most incongruous uses of Comic Sans I've seen, a few stand out:

* A plaque on a large statue of a historical figure in a public space: https://www.biobiochile.cl/noticias/nacional/region-metropol...

* A letter announcing the creation of new political party in Greece, breaking off with the then-current Prime Minister: https://web.archive.org/web/20151004131442/http://www.volosn...

* A letter to the US Congress from the legal team defending the President against impeachment proceedings: https://www.fastcompany.com/90414127/trumps-old-lawyers-real...

Thankfully, in these examples the authors chose not to use a different color for each letter!

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I've always been quite irritated by the amount of disdain toward Comic Sans.

Partly because I feel like this is such an easy target, and people who have just learned 2 or 3 things about typography are very keen on bashing Comic Sans to show off their newly acquired knowledge.

Partly because, let's face it, it's not that bad. What it does, it does well, it's pretty legible, no glyph stands out from the general harmony, etc.

There's a reason it became massively used. It was included in windows because it was part of Microsoft Chat, which back then was heavily comic book styled, with speech bubbles for messages etc (something that has since then become a standard in IM). It appeared in the font drop-down list, and people picked it when they wanted their message to look a bit informal, not too severe. Of course, someone with design knowledge is able to achieve this without resorting to this specific font (or even a funny font), but most people lack this knowledge.

Comic Sans is the Britney Spears of fonts.

Overused/Overplayed. Legible/Catchy. Well crafted for its original purpose. Gets no respect. Probably deserves a little, but it makes you feel dirty to give it.

Not sure it’s Britney.

Comic Sans has no ambition; is chosen despite itself; is hyper-ordinary.

It’s the supermarket’s-own-brand ramen noodles of typefaces.

And I’m sure those ramen sell well. Fact is, not many people care.

If you have a product that doesn’t target designers or the like, does it really matter?

Surely there must be some value is graphic design? Or esthetics?

Sure. If you’re targeting a similar audience as Apple or other high end brands. My point is that there’s a different kind of audience for comic sans or its variants.

This and the parent comment need to be written with Comic Sans to highlight how absurdly pretentious they are.

It's virtually impossible to have a deep design-related discussion without it sounding to naive ears as pretentious. Design is the art of arranging things so as to evoke particular feelings in people. To discuss them is to discuss the feelings they're evoking vs the feelings that were intended to be evoked. And there's only so far you can get with the sorts of words ordinary people use to talk about their feelings. And nobody likes to hear that other people might feel and perceive deeper than them.

"No ambition... hyper ordinary.. "

Same as every crack addict on a come down, surely?

I'm not sure if Britney Spears had pushy parents, but I think that's the analogy with Comic Sans. Abusively pushy and demeaning, trying to criticise when the flaws are those of the beholder and bestowing outrageous praise for imaginary achievements.

I'm glad to hear solid defence of Comic Sans here because whatever it is, it's sui generis, unto itself true. Which I think is the most attractive character trait at the same time as provoking extreme reactions of self projection in observers.

This would explain why the discourse around it is so toxic.

Leave Britney (and Comic Sans) alone!!!! :)

Not Britany Spears.

Maybe Carol Burnett.

i made reading cards for my kids in comic sans because it’s one of the few fonts with the normal lower case a and g

They’re clearly not “normal” if most fonts don’t have them (as default glyphs; many fonts have them as alternates).

By "normal" he means the glyph we are taught to write by hand, which is also the glyph young children are taught to identify individual letters.

Yes, my point was that that is a very narrow view of “normal”.

That's what context does, it narrows!

I personally write, and have seen many others use as well, the "two-storey" a and g, so I suspect there's regional variation.

look at “Annika” it’s designed to be legible for early readers

Edit: not that comic sans is a bad choice I’ve just been working on things related to this and found that other font

Searching for it - I think you're referring to "Andika"?

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Andika

https://software.sil.org/andika/

Sassoon is designed for that purpose, this version seems OK: https://www.wfonts.com/font/sassoon

You're not wrong. As fan of single-storey (your "normal") "a" and "g", a few additional examples do, however, come immediately to mind:

Classic example: Futura.

Modern examples:

Apple fonts: Monaco uses both single-storey "a" and "g"; San Francisco uses single-storey "g" by default, and includes single-storey "a" in stylistic sets.

The Adobe Source (Code, Sans) and IBM Plex (Sans, Serif, Mono) font families include both single-storey "a" and "g" as alternate glyphs accessible through OpenType stylistic sets.

I always felt somehow ashamed for liking the 'a' in Monaco.

I've heard that Comic Sans is accessible for dyslexics! But I don't have a source.

I don't have any typographical basis to dislike Comic Sans. I just dislike it because it's ugly to the point of irritation for reasons I can't articulate. I suspect most people dislike it for reasons more similar to mine than because they have some principled basis for disliking it.

"if you like comic Sans, you know nothing about typography. If you hate comic Sans however, you definitely know nothing about typography"

I just hate all handwritten fonts for passages of text because a single character looks the same every time it appears, which is very unrealistic and cringe-worthy for emulating handwriting.

There are handwritten-like fonts which avoid that problem, by having several versions of each glyph and choosing one randomly for each letter. Some of them even introduce some random variation in the shapes to replicate true handwritten text.

I haven't heard of this but that sounds awesome. Are there a couple of good handwritten fonts you like that do this?

I am not a font designer, but I don't like Comic Sans for the same reason I don't like Las Vegas architecture that resembles ancient Rome or Egypt, even though I am not an architect.

Maybe it's because they're both tacky?

Vegas is just a big adult theme park. The giant pirate ship is not seaworthy.

That's my point: comic sans is the Vegas of fonts.

People who dislike it aren't trying to show off the "2 or 3 things that have learned on typography", they are simply not blind and can see its ugliness.

But apparently people got offended when I've said that there's no need to be an architect to understand that Vegas has no architectural value...

There's no special quality that makes comic sans good if you look close enough, it's just bad, 20 dollars WiFi router bad, LIDL shoes bad, IKEA lack table bad, Caesar Palace Forum shop bad, something that looks okeish from afar but that's not even good enough for casual use.

Nobody would live and raise a family in a Treasure Island hotel room, nobody would seriously use comic sans to write code and look at it 8+ hours a day.

> I've always been quite irritated by the amount of disdain toward Comic Sans.

So who exactly is the more petty? People getting irritated by a typeface, or people getting irritated over those people?

A bit of satire lauding Comic Sans' indestructibility:

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole

Obligatory Achewood reference (bring back Achewood btw): http://achewood.com/index.php?date=07052007

Don’t forget: the CERN presentation announcing the discovery of the Higgs Boson: https://blog.scottlogic.com/2012/07/05/the-higgs-boson-comic...

And a plaque in front of a church in Seregno, Italy: https://reddit.com/r/italy/comments/2rawy3/seregno_mb_dove_i...

I can't find where I read this, but I thought Comic Sans makes text easier to read for people with dyslexia. A pretty narrow use-case, I agree, but there's at least one redeeming quality from something so ugly.

i agree and i love the font. it looks like a proportional font but sure behaves like a mono. kudos!

apparently not as well as other some other fonts that are generally considered less ugly http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/sites/default/files/good_fonts...

this is not a conclusion of the study you linked to.

hmm, you're right I got confused by the reference L. Evett and D. Brown. Text formats and web design for visually impaired and dyslexic readers-clear text for all. Interacting with Computers, 17:453–472, 2005. and took it to mean that they recommended Comic Sans for visually impaired readers with dyslexia as well, but it seems they don't have comic sans in the list of fonts they actually tested.

There's evidence of this: https://theestablishment.co/hating-comic-sans-is-ableist-bc4...

There are fonts that were actually designed to be dyslexic-friendly, but they tend to be uglier; Comic Sans is a middle ground that doesn't slow non-dyslexics as much.

You can found it also in a tetrabrik soup brand from Spain: https://www.google.com/search?q=caldos+aneto&sxsrf=ALeKk02rt...

Those broths are delicious. I had not noticed the font, maybe because they used ALL CAPS.

I think it's meme'd too much. Using comic sans sometimes makes sense.

* A hate letter from owner of Cleveland Cavaliers to Lebron James

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/07/09/comic.sans.cavs.james...

On LinkedIn I saw a Master's Degree diploma in Comic Sans shown by a recent graduate. As it happens the University is local and I have colleagues that graduated from there so I had to ask one about it. He confirmed that his at least is in the more typical gothic-y serif style font.

I think OpenBSD uses it on purpose in their slides so people won't take them seriously. Just a theory.

They use Comic Sans on their slides.

Now they can use Comic Mono on their xterm.

I truly don't understand why. Are people just that sick of Times New Roman and Calibri? It's not like I especially hate Comic Sans, but it seems so wildly inappropriate for all of the uses mentioned above.

I really prefer CS to Calibri. Calibri is one of the ugliest fonts ever invented.

This is true. Calibri takes effort to peruse. I confuse letters and words all the time and have to reread after losing context. Comic sans is certainly not the worst font out there.

CS works quite well for reading sheet music from a distance in the dark.

> so wildly inappropriate

Comic Sans is a nice handwriting-style font. Isn't it just the name that makes people think it's inappropriate?

For a long time I thought it was called "Comic" because of the hilarious faces font snobs pull when you show it to them, but apparently it's because it was inspired by the text in comic books.

I think it's sort of transcended all that, though. It's now the legendary Comic Sans from the land beyond taste, more meme than font.

I think it is called that after Comic Chat, where it was featured.

Straight from the horse's mouth: http://www.connare.com/whycomic.htm

Originally designed for Microsoft Bob, missed that deadline, came out in the Win95 Plus Pack.

The working name was "Comic Book". Probably because it is based on multiple comic books, primarily The Dark Knight Returns. I've also seen Watchmen mentioned in other interviews as a primary source for the shapes though he doesn't mention it in his page on the font.

So you're trying to convince us you legitimately though it was named, before anyone saw it, based on a presumed reaction people would have when they did?

Pardon me, I think my bullshit meter just exploded.

That might just be my personal taste, then. But no, I think a fun handwriting-style font is inappropriate for all of the cases mentioned.

Handwriting doesn't necessarily mean "fun".

Actually "Sans Bullshit Sans" (http://www.sansbullshitsans.com/) name is more inappropriate. "Comic Mono" or "Comic Sans" names sound better. Also "Comic Mono" font is not bad, just takes a bit getting used to. I'm using "Roboto Mono Light" at 14px for code and love it.

> inappropriate for all the uses mentioned above...

I'll raise you. See Papyrus. [1] Who needs "'I'd rather be golfing' on a t-shirt in Papyrus, of all fonts?

[1] https://www.instagram.com/papyrus_forever/?hl=en

You probably have seen it but for anyone who hasn't, this SNL skit on Papyrus is brilliant: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ

Ha. I actually hadn’t. Nice.

Font Fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_tQRGq6clE

I knew describing an SNL sketch as brilliant would turn out to be a wild exaggeration.

Ending it with the word "papyrus" in Comic Sans was the most brilliant part.

I hadn't before now and am going with "yeah, brilliant". I don't think I've seen anything Ryan Gosling's done that I haven't liked him in; to the point of a bit of a man-crush.

Didn't find that funny but it reminded me to rewatch Font Conference which is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3k5oY9AHHM

Obligatory to this discussion: https://laughingsquid.com/comic-papyrus/

Update: The designer actually had to change the name for... sigh... legal reasons, so now it's this: https://creativemarket.com/benharman/229510-Comic-Parchment-...

Papyrus just reminds me of how little selection there is in the default fonts on Mac OS X. I mean, there could be so much more.

At least there's actually Helvetica!

Some of these aren't that bad. I think once you get past five letters in a row or start adding apostrophes, it's time to use something else. A couple letters with some customization can work though, e.g. I don't think the Lamb of God logo is bad.

Isn't it weird that there's a and a?

So maybe given it won't die and it's used a lot, maybe... just maybe... it's not as bad as some people think?

The whole "font snob" attitude is pretty old and tired at least for me.

Add to this list of fun uses of comic sans, the Cleveland Cavelliers owner writing an angry open letter in response to LeBron James leaving for Miami.

I think Comic Sans was also used in ESA's presentation of breakthrough black hole photos.

That third one isn't too surprising

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