Ban Comic Sans
ban comic sans: putting the sans in comic sans
I saw this on reddit today and thought it would amuse a few of you as it did me. I have used Comic Sans on occasion to mimic comic book style in Photoshop and it looks great. The guys at Little Gamers also use it for their comic (9pt regular all-caps, if you were curious). The opening titles for the movie Sky High
Comic Sans is certainly easy to read and is instantly recognizable but is not generally appropriate for use. Unfortunately, you can find tons of sites out there that use it since it is considered a “Web Safe” font of which there are very few. I don’t support a full out ban (other than for comedic purposes) but I agree that it should be a lot less used in the wild.
Update: The comment on Reddit turned up the page of one Vincent Connare the designer of Comic Sans. He gives the history of the font.
Lately I’ve become very interested in typography and what works and doesn’t work. I ventured to the library the other day and grabbed a few tomes that I am reading slowly. It certainly is a very dense topic but is extremely interesting. Once you start to recognize a certain font coming up again and again on posters, in manuals and on TV your interest starts to snowball. Lately I have been noticing Century Gothic everywhere I go, I even use it on my new commercial site. Take a very good look at the small A character it is the defining character of this font. You can see that the circle is reused throughout the small letters with the exact same dimensions. Trust me it is everywhere and now you will notice it too. :o)
December 12, 2006 - 5:49 pm
When I was in DE I worked with a prof who insisted on comic sans. And not just comic sans – fluorescent red comic sans! On top of his geology slides. When I attempted to change the design to a nice sans-serif (arial or verdana, I forget which), he basically told me that I didn’t know what I was doing and to change it back. He had been doing “graphic designs” since computers were invented, so obviously he knew more than someone who does graphics for a living!
Okay, so now I’m ranting :) I agree though – I have used occasionally to mimic things like writing on a chalkboard in simple designs. But otherwise, it has got to go!
December 19, 2006 - 12:48 pm
Interesting that article of the history of Comic Sans that you point out. In it, by the end, he tries to implicate Apple for doing the same thing and by association tries to pull himself up by his own bootstraps. He tries to imply that Chalkboard and Comic Sans are so similar that the user won’t even notice the switch at the end of the article. I did. It’s clear to me where the shift is because Chalkboard is much more legible with its better kerning pairs and more even baseline and x-height profiles.