Spring Summer cleaning on Black Rabite is being stalled by me being unable to upgrade WordPress to a less antiquated version, thanks to some MySQL trouble with the host… ahh, well. Bear with me. Have an article while you wait.
Folks, there is an evil lurking on your hard drives. No, not a virus. Not some sort of evil corporate OS either. No. Read those words with as much contempt I had writing them: Comic Sans!
Yes, I know. Just another whiny rant about a font that has been scorned by designers and typenerds ever since its unholy inception. But I have had it with this one particular font. People use it because they think it’s endearing. Because it looks like fun. Because it feels more hand-written. Because it looks like you’re not really serious about what you are writing. Well, I can agree to the latter point. It’s what I always think when I read something written in Comic Sans. You cannot be serious!
Just look at those letters. Really look at them. They appear slightly bent, but not in any natural way. No-one would ever write like this. They look sickly, a mere husk of an actual font, empty, and soulless. So, cue the drum roll for my grand analogy of the day: Comic Sans is the Zombie Apocalypse of all fonts.
According to that wiki, the font was first implemented for use with MS 3D Movie Maker, so let’s call that program “Patient Zero” (…looking at the characters, the description is quite fitting). MS Bob only narrowly escaped that horrible fate. From here the font spread, with Windows 95 as its catalyst, to infect PCs and all the poor helpless Macs over the world. Its purpose? To devour human brains, especially that tasty section responsible for your sense of style.
“Oh, but Tim”, you say now, “that font is supposed to just be fun; there is not that many fonts out there that convey the same feeling!”
First of all, they got you! The font zombies got you! There is no hope left. You can’t stop the infection, well, except for the usual method. Consult the Zombie flick of your preference for further details. Secondly, yes, yes indeed, even Times New Roman and Papyrus fail to induce the same degree of nausea and dread that Comic Sans brings. However, if you want well-designed comic-style fonts, see Dr. Blambot for a prescription.
Make the world a better place. Only you can prevent font zombification!
Edit: Learn something new every day… Illustrator actually has a “Russian Poster” colour set! Immediately went to improve my propaganda revolutionary poster. Looks so much better.
