Here's what I would like to say about this issue of a font being for a purpose:
Yes, most of the examples presented on this site are heinous and tremendously bad typeface choices. But that has nothing to do with the fact that comic sans was designed to mirror comic book lettering. The designer's intent is not embedded in the typeface, only his actual results.
Papyrus falls into the same category. People get bent out of shape about it: "It was meant to look like Egyptian lettering, but now it's on my Greek menu! It makes no sense!"
Guess what? It doesn't matter what it was "intended" to convey, it matters what is actually conveyed when people read it. Frutiger was designed for airport signage, but it happens to look great outside of airports too. Granted, it was never meant to be a niche font, but the principle applies: you shouldn't get upset on account of people using something in ways you didn't foresee or intend.
All this to say, if you're going to argue that a font is ugly or doesn't belong somewhere, that's fine, but your argument shouldn't be based on what the font was intended for. Sometimes the things we make turn out to be way more useful than we thought.
And I'll stick my neck out here and even say that I think Papyrus often looks good on menus :)
Regardless, I think the point is to choose fonts in the context of what you're writing, not because they "look cute". Now, whether you chose that font because of its original author's purpose or because you have some other purpose is a separate issue. In that regard, it seems like you agree on the major idea: that you should have a purpose. The way you choose that purpose is a detail.
You hate comic sans do you? You know what I hate? Obnoxious jerks trying to make people feel stupid because they didn't use the right typeface when they made a sign to put on the staff refrigerator.
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.
This type of thing is important if you're Charles Schwab and you're trying to make me feel warm and cuddly about trusting you with my money. The message I'm getting from your ads goes beyond just the words. This is the same as keeping the grass in front of your building trimmed, making sure your staff irons their clothes, that your building isn't in disrepair, that your board members aren't caught doing embarrassing thigns, etc. etc. It's all image. It's 3 forks at dinner. Do you need 3 forks? No, you don't.
Likewise, do you need to worry yourself with things like the typeface that you're using to write a birthday invitation for your 9 year old?
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.
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.
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.
I had no idea Comic Sans was so kickass but I like her even more after reading this rant. "We don't all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros. Sorry the entire world can't all be done in stark Eurotrash Swiss type. Sorry some people like to have fun." Yeah really.
Excellent. The typography reminds me why I stopped using webmail. People like my mom actually wrote me messages in this font, and I was powerless to change it.
Now I read my email in Emacs, and everything is very pretty DejaVu Sans Mono-9.
When people need to kick back, have fun, and party, I will be there, unlike your pathetic fonts. While Gotham is at the science fair, I'm banging the prom queen behind the woodshop. While Avenir is practicing the clarinet, I'm shredding "Reign In Blood" on my double-necked Stratocaster.
Dear all, my name's Matt Dempsey, I'm the designer and author of ComicSansCriminal.com.
For a bit of context. I'm a Graphic Design student in the second year of my BA. This website formed 1/3rd of a self directed project which consisted of an educational leaflet, a set of stickers and a website. The website is basically a web version of the print booklet, which I focussed least of my effort on. The website was never intended to be seen by a large number of people, it was coded quickly with little thought for web standards because I only expected it to be seen by my tutors for a quick 30 second read.
I do not think I am above anyone else and am not trying to preach. The world spread inappropriate use of Comic Sans is an issue I'm tired of. This is a simple, straightforward website to try and let people know that it's inappropriate to use it in some instances and that there are alternatives. I stated at the end of my project that if I could just get one person to stop and decide whether a font was appropriate before using it as opposed to just using their default Comic Sans, then I would have succeeded and would be happy.
The fact that I've had 80,000 unique visitors in the last 14 hours is something I had never anticipated and was not prepared for. I've corrected the "it's" issue, which I spotted myself soon after launching but was unable to rectify due to being away from the computer with the PSD files on until later today. Please let me know what the other grammar issues are and I'll rectify those too.
At the end of the day I think you guys are taking this a little too seriously. It was supposed to be a bit of fun, a tongue-in-cheek piece of work viewed by a few people that would hopefully make someone stop and think a little. That's all.
Thanks for your feedback, it's been a pretty overwhelming day!
Reminds me of an book about grief called Tear Soup [1], which is typeset in Comic Sans. It's actually somewhat appropriate, since it's a large picture book ostensibly aimed at children (but not insultingly - adults can learn something too).
The legal newspaper I read had a 1/4 page advert a few weeks ago along the lines of "__________ Law Firm deeply regrets to announce the untimely death of its senior partner, Mr. _________"
It was, of course, in Comic Sans. Although it seemed rude to inquire, I'm still wondering whether this was some horrendous faux pas by the secretarial staff, or whether it reflected some well-known habit of the deceased and was thus entirely appropriate.
The only thing worse than using Comic Sans in the wrong context is projecting an insufferable attitude of superiority about font choice, especially when said insufferable attitude is displayed on a website that makes highly questionable design decisions of its own.
If we can't all be on the same page with respect to Comic Sans, then how could one hope to find agreement about the design decisions made on this website?
If the webmaster is reading, your click to scroll doesn't quite work right in Opera - it always scrolls from the top of the page, rather than the current position, resulting in all the previous slides flashing past each time I advance.
The funny part about this font has always been that people choose it in positive response to it's style. It's often been quoted as friendly and welcoming, and that's not so surprising when most people have only get experience with Times New Roman these days.
If you want to kill Comic Sans, put another friendly But well-designed font on every computer in the world and then redesign as many things as possible to increase its public mindshare. Only once there's a viable friendly-font alternative do people even have a place to go away from CS.
But I don't get the impression that folk like that want to kill Comic Sans per se. If you put another "friendly" font out there, the point about not writing probation notices in it would still stand.
I'd much rather someone set a probation notice in anything on the list below than in Comic Sans. I'd also rather they set it responsibly, but though you can't fix a sense of style at least you can provide people with better tools.
How is it nice UI? I'm forced to read eight words at a time, then click to get eight more words. I have no idea how long this is going to last, and I can't skip ahead to see whether it gets more interesting later on.
That doesn't solve their terrible usage of light blue font on a white background. I agree, this UI sucks.
Edit: and vice-versa apparently. How can this person be so aware of typography but completely fail at picking readable colors? Furthermore, this website doesn't even work with readability, so it's not like I have any recourse.
My complaint still stands though, because with the big "Click Anywhere On The Page To Continue" it was distracting my attention away from the user interface element I actually wanted to use.
It has long descenders and ascenders which make it easy for dyslexic readers to differentiate letters. Dyslexic readers also find handwritten looking fonts easier to read because they are more familiar with that style.
Probably in part due to them being less symmetrical. "bd" are almost identical in the font on HN, but mirrored, while in handwriting you form different connection angles because you write them differently.
I was curious about this, as well - from the links, it sounds like dyslexics rely more on the shape of whole words when reading, so fonts with pronounced ascenders and descenders (the stems and tails on t, j, etc.) may be easier to read.
The opposite extreme would be WRITING IN ALL CAPS in a fixed width font, making every word into a rectangle.
Curiously enough, I keep seeing smart people using Comic Sans font when they shouldn't. Very, very smart people. Some of my best professors, some of the most talented programmers I know, etc. Even SPJ! ( http://vimeo.com/15467880 )
And then it comes to me if I'm sitting here caring about presentation more than the content like a prude. I'm not picking on anyone -- just remarking on my very own situation =).
Despite the hatred among typophiles, Comic Sans managed to become an ubiquitous font.
I think that we must look beyond the dogma/bigotry and try to understand the popularity of the font.
Its fun personality has been mentioned in several posts in the comments, but comicsanscriminal.com ironically offers another major argument in favor of the font: its legibility.
Comic Sans is popular at elementary school and among dyslexic people because it is easier to read for them. Even though non-dyslexic adults are better at deciphering other fonts, I wouldn't be surprised if the attentional/cognitive load for reading Comic Sans was lower that what's needed for any of the so-called "better" fonts.
Their comic font alternatives are pretty bad, though. Blambot has a few better ones.
And of course there's "Comic Jens"[1], which is in the same vein, but not as obnoxious for some kind of reason. (And free, available as a web font etc.)
While this doesn't answer your direct question, try taking a good-sized block of text (a couple paragraphs from Project Gutenberg, lorem ipsum text, whatever) and print it side by side, in several different fonts. Compare the feeling you get from the typography itself.
I mostly write in MonteCarlo (http://www.bok.net/MonteCarlo/), but programming fonts are a different discussion entirely.
Yes, most of the examples presented on this site are heinous and tremendously bad typeface choices. But that has nothing to do with the fact that comic sans was designed to mirror comic book lettering. The designer's intent is not embedded in the typeface, only his actual results.
Papyrus falls into the same category. People get bent out of shape about it: "It was meant to look like Egyptian lettering, but now it's on my Greek menu! It makes no sense!"
Guess what? It doesn't matter what it was "intended" to convey, it matters what is actually conveyed when people read it. Frutiger was designed for airport signage, but it happens to look great outside of airports too. Granted, it was never meant to be a niche font, but the principle applies: you shouldn't get upset on account of people using something in ways you didn't foresee or intend.
All this to say, if you're going to argue that a font is ugly or doesn't belong somewhere, that's fine, but your argument shouldn't be based on what the font was intended for. Sometimes the things we make turn out to be way more useful than we thought.
And I'll stick my neck out here and even say that I think Papyrus often looks good on menus :)