I don’t mean to rain on the Graphic designer parade. I know a lot of people have been enjoying a giggle at it’s expense for the past four, five years but I wonder if we (designery folks) have really thought through how it makes us look to non ‘designer’ types. You know our clients, the people who pay us. I kind of get the feeling it’s making us look a bit snobbish and unapproachable.
I know it’s become a common theme for graphic designers to bond over, almost like a Mason handshake. I also know I’m in line to get a lot of flack for writing this piece but I can't help it I’m just over it. I follow a lot of smart talented graphic designs in all forms of social media and I witness the joke in one form or another at least once a day. Tell me any joke once a day for four years and at some point I’ll stop laughing and start pulling my hair out.
Ok and here’s were the post gets real dangerous... (Hastily looks up tickets to Hawaii) I’m not all that offended by Comic Sans. Ok it’s not very fashionable at the moment but a lot of fonts I hated at art school ten years ago have since come back in trend. Fashion is cyclical and it’s perfectly possible some great young designer with more vision than me will take on this font and do something great with it, something that we’ll all want to emulate and bam suddenly we’re eating our roundly san serif words.
Oh man, I just don't like it as a font! I did when I was little, but I think it's the over-saturation of it that gets to me.
ReplyDeleteI can understand a non-designer using it - why not? It's friendly and approachable right? Just the thing to take that edge off a staff room note that may have come across as passive aggressive otherwise.
But I just think there are better friendly (not so cheap looking) fonts that can be used for designed stuff! So many well written, well-illustrated kids books have been made to look shabbier than they are through comic sans and I find that sad. I agree about being over it as a meme/joke within the design community, but yeah, I don't think I'll be using it professionally in a hurry.
Who knows, perhaps I'll be eating my words in a few years (nom nom nom) :)
Hey Lucinda, yeah I pretty much totally agree with you:) I differently do not love it as a font but then again I felt the same way about most script font in 2000 and I can't get enough of them now. I guess I feel the fact it's been ostracised by graphic designs make it interesting as a graphic design. I don't think we'll be seeing it's come back any time soon but who knows 50-100 years down the track.
ReplyDeleteI think the scorning of Comics Sans (Ban Comic Sans etc) is really an entry level thing for graphic designers to feel like they have elitist taste. Being able to spot and scorn Comic Sans is about intelligible as being able to pick your own kid amongst 4 others. Being able to tell me why it is a script face and a sans face would impress me more.
ReplyDeleteComic Sans is just one of those typefaces we know because of its omnipresence like Algerian, Papyrus, Trajan, Rosewood and dear I say it the holy Helvetica. people don't bag on Helvetica because it is considered a beautifully designed face which is seen as versatile. It's also a fairly emotionless and characterless typeface. And it is the default for many designers who lack the ability to make intelligent decisions of using typeface choices for the right context. Probably the same as those who hateComic Sans. Its just less offensive and they made a movie about it so it doesn't get the flack that Comic Sans does. Comics Sans is not a bad typeface because of its design, it merely to do with its usage, and is usually by those who have smaller subset of faces to choice from than designers.
you might enjoy this little monologue in defense of Comic Sans....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole
oh wow thank you Michelle that had me LOLing pretty much nail on head:)
ReplyDelete