Okay, let’s deal with this right now so it isn’t hanging over us. Comic Sans: You hate it, loath it, deride it, etc. Here is the big shock. You are wrong to hate this font. This font is the perfect example of how typefaces have personality. How each and every one ‘says’ something and imbues text with a tone, flavor and ‘character’. What you hate is the way people use this font. It has been misused on emergency vehicles, tombstones and warning signs.
It isn’t the fonts fault, nor is it the fault of the designer, Vincent Connare, a man who has been spat on in the street because others don’t know how to correctly choose a typeface. He designed a font that was intended to be highly legible whilst making large sections of text appear less daunting. And it does that, magnificently. That was his design vision and he achieved that perfectly.
As soon as I hear someone talk about how crap this font is I instantly know that they’re an ‘armchair designer’ or just an average-Joe-on-the-street with no design knowledge. Hating this font is such a populist, undergraduate opinion to have. Every industry has a whipping boy and this is ours, but it’s just plain wrong and inaccurate. Just like how Helvetica is ‘perfect’ (it’s not, but that’s a story for another time). Spend enough time with typography and you will realise that sometimes Comic Sans is an appropriate choice. Sure, many of those occasions may be limited formatting large sections of text for children with learning difficulties so that the words don’t freak them out, but it’s a legitimate typeface.
So all you ‘armchair designers’ out there. Before you start slagging off someone’s work, why don’t you go make a font (other than just vectoring your handwriting) and see if it’s better than Comic Sans I dare you to try and make something that does its job as well as this typeface.
nope. I still don’t like it.
(via victoryboat)
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