December 05, 2003

Comic Sans MS. Some people love it, some people hate it, still others are making a concerted effort to ban it (with pretty stickers and everything!). Read what the creator, Vincent Connare, says about his abomination, discover why he created it, check out some alternatives, or see just how Comic Sans MS is slowly but surely destroying our society.
posted by Blaise Bailey Finnegan 20 years ago
  • You can have my vote for hate it. I used to not mind it so much, but now it just looks annoying. You see everywhere these days, almost every flyer you come across has that godforsaken font on it.
  • Font abuse is one of the most preventable forms of cruelty and yet it's just everywhere. *sobs*
  • I agree that Comic Sans is an ugly font, but I think those guys over at BanComicSans are a bit extreme in their anger towards the dude who made it. He was just doing his job... On the flipside, did anybody else find that appreciation site utterly incomprehensible? I realize it is a joke, but while understanding all of the individual words used, the sum of their combination was utterly lost on me.
  • I just came back from an astrophysics colloquium where the speaker used comic sans in some of his Power Point slides.
  • You could cut the irony with a fucking knife (pardon the language). From the Ban Comic Sans page: "Early type designing and setting was so laborious that it is a blasphemy to the history of the craft that any fool can sit down at their personal computer and design their own typeface. Technological advances have transformed typography into a tawdry triviality...when designing a "Do Not Enter" sign the use of a heavy-stroked, attention-commanding font such as Impact or Arial Black is appropriate."
    Contrast with: this page detailing the evils of Arial.
    Methinks the writers of Ban Comic Sans actually have little to no knowledge of fonts, typography, or font design history. (Neither do I, but then I don't pretend to either)
  • Two things I noticed about that article: 1) It's not exactly like Microsoft are the only people stealing the Helvetica design; 2) It appears that Helvetica was robbing the design of the earlier Grotesque series. I mean, yeesh. Perspective, people.
  • Don't get me wrong, I don't really care about either one. And the Ban Comic Sans people have their tongues firmly in cheek. Still, their "About" page seems to be written as a pretty straightforward attack on Comic Sans as being a cheap, modern font as opposed to the venerable Arial, which it turns out, is a cheap, modern font. They both look fine by me, but, living in a non-English character using society, I probably haven't suffered the barrage of Comic Sans that everyone else has.
  • I apologise, I was not criticising you, but the article. And trust me: If you lived in a place where every single poorly-designed, multiple-exclamation-marked poster and memo sent by the "crazy guy" with the "funny ties" was typed in bold, red, size 16 Comic Sans, you would feel the hate also. You would want to kill, and stab, and maul, too.
  • This is all just a ruse. While so much commotion is made over ComicSans, Staccato222 abuse is quietly disrupting the social fabric of our society. I've seen it used to make more than one small business logo...ugh.
  • I like comic sans. Never would do a whole document in it, but nothing else (that I have) is quite the same for a title or a sign that wants to look a little casual, a little laid back. Just as the Ban Comic Sans page says, "Comic Sans as a voice conveys silliness, childish naivete, [and] irreverence" - aren't those really good things? But the best are fonts you design to look like your own handwriting. Wow.
  • Hmm. Banning Comic Sans? And I thought my mission here was silly. *wishes this whole post could be in comic sans*
  • From now on, only serious sans.
  • This thread began in 2003. The BBC is behind the times.
  • Stupid waste of time and energy whining about this. Did any of these typography purists ever think there might be a reason people like it and use it? It's casual, it's fun, and who cares what some typographical prescriptivist thinks. Are they going to come and take away our birthday invitations? I say have fun with it.
  • Wonder how long this font-tastick nonsense will continue. The fact it's been around for the last 7 years is what impressed and still impresses me about this. Some aspects of online culture - if culture's the appropriate word - seem unhinged.
  • Herein we are informed that more difficult fonts (including Comic Sans) can be used to instill learning in those who don't dwell on text written in more approachable fonts ... such as Arial .... hmm.