Comic Sans, Font of Ill Will 503
Kelson writes "The Wall Street Journal profiles Vincent Connare, designer of the web's most-hated font, Comic Sans. Not surprisingly, the font's origins go back to Microsoft Bob, where he saw a talking dog speaking in Times New Roman. Connare pulled out Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns for reference, and created the comic book-style font over the next week. 'Mr. Connare has looked on, alternately amused and mortified, as Comic Sans has spread from a software project at Microsoft Corp. 15 years ago to grade-school fliers and holiday newsletters, Disney ads and Beanie Baby tags, business emails, street signs, Bibles, porn sites, gravestones and hospital posters about bowel cancer. ... The jolly typeface has spawned the Ban Comic Sans movement, nearly a decade old but stronger now than ever, thanks to the Web."
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:2, Interesting)
actually, this is incorrect. when designers were working on one of the first computer fonts, they had only enough storage for one set of letters. a study was conducted to determine which one was most legible, and lower case won. the reason they went on to use only capitals? apparently you can't write the name of the christian deity in all lowercase.
yes, folks, religion is why old terminals were all-caps only.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:4, Interesting)
On Windows, it looks like a business font (unless cleartype hasn't been turned on, then it looks like someone puked on the monitor [ampsoft.net]). A business font trying to be fun. Of course that's going to look bad, it's a bad mix.
The problem these guys have isn't that Comic Sans looks bad, it's that it is used in places it shouldn't be. The reason it is used in places it shouldn't be is because there isn't much choice in fonts. There are really only 15 safe web fonts, which isn't much to choose from. Comic Sans is really your only choice if you are looking for something casual, informal.
On Ubuntu, the fonts look good. They are smooth and clearly drawn. BUT THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME [ampsoft.net]. Seriously, look at that list: I think Comic Sans, Lucidia Console, and MS Sans Serif are ALL THE SAME FONT. I believe this can be remedied by downloading extra font packs, I don't know if this easily possible on Ubuntu.
Darn kids! (Score:4, Interesting)
How can you have Comic Sans in an email - email is a plain text medium! Pica was good enough from my daddy, it's good enough for me! And what's this business with "!" amd "=="? The proper syntax is .NOT. and .EQ.
Seriously, however, it Comic Sans really that common? I have to admit to being an old fart but I do a lot of document work, and I had to go look up what Comic Sans looked like. I had seen it before and yes, it's goofy, but is it really an issue?
Brett
The typeface isn't the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
The typeface isn't the problem. In fact, I rather like it. It is a well-designed typeface, very readable, and appropriate for playful images - projects like children's books, comic books, children's toys and clothing, and the like. You know. its intended purpose.
The problem is, the typeface (a "typeface" is an outline/shape - it's not a "font" until it has size and weight, kerning, etc. attributed to it) has become used for things where it is completely inappropriate: the main text in "professional"[sic] web sites, books, official documents, advertisements, and so forth.
I use the typeface on occasion - but only where it's appropriate. In nearly every case where I see Comic Sans used, Helvetica or Arial or even Verdana would be far more appropriate. I won't stop using the Comic Sans typeface where it is appropriate (dialog for comic/clip art/line art images/strips, for example) but I have never nor would I ever plaster it all over the place.
No one typeface is intended to be used for all circumstances. The type of user who would use Comic Sans in a professional document is the same kind of "designer"[sic] who would mix typefaces from four or five (or more) different font families in a single document; you know, as if they were creating examples of how NOT to use typefaces.
Just as with guns, the problem isn't fonts; the problem is people.
Oh, and you're curious about my nit-picking about "font" vs. "typeface?" I'm not in the wrong here. See:
http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/fonts.asp [webopedia.com]
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/theyre-not-fonts [aiga.org]
http://desktoppub.about.com/b/2005/05/02/2-minute-tutorial-font-vs-typeface.htm [about.com]
http://www.publish.com/c/a/Graphics-Tools/Font-vs-typeface/ [publish.com]
http://fontfeed.com/archives/font-or-typeface/ [fontfeed.com]
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:4, Interesting)
1 49R33 4|\|D 7|-|1|\|| 7|-|@ L337 5P34| 5|-|0ULD b3 7|-|3 r3PL4(3/\/\3|\|7.
Does anyone use 1337 5p34k these days? It was quite common five years back, but it seems to have died out almost completely.
Having thought about it, I realised that it seemed to have disappeared shortly after all those articles appeared in newspapers explaining what all those strange characters your children were typing meant. Which probably isn't a coincidence; wasn't the whole point of 1337 its impenetrability?
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe the most read newspaper is trying to teach you something.
What it's teaching me is that the most read newspaper is ignorant. The only reason that there exists a single character for quotation marks is because the ASCII code only has one space for it. It has no place in the print medium. Even the cheapest in word processing software these days will convert these automatically.
Online it's a different story. Some casual experimenting reveals that only the New York Times uses different characters for opening and closing quotation marks, where the WSJ, The Register, The Washington Times, and Ars do not.
Remember when HTML had fonts? (Score:5, Interesting)
In early versions of Netscape, you could link to a remote font of your own choosing. [webdeveloper.com] The font-copyright people were up in arms about this, Microsoft didn't implement it in IE, and it was taken out of Netscape. That's why fonts on the web suck so much. You're either stuck with the lowest common denominator of fonts (Times Roman, Arial, Courier, or Comic Sans MS), or you can put a font into an image, which is silly but standard practice.
That's how we got into this mess.
Here's an example of a page that uses downloadable fonts. [unh.edu] Unless you have a very old browser, it will look ugly. There's a more recent attempt to work around the problem with Flash. [mikeindustries.com] Wrong answer.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:2, Interesting)
It is easily readable
Surely any font that isn't easily readable is unfit for purpose? Apart from a select few, obviously (Wingdings, and those "Math" fonts, etc) At the end of the day it is just everywhere, and that makes people hate it. It's overused, simple as. But how can we have an argument over weather it is a good or bad font? It is a matter of personal opinion. As you rightly said, it is readable, but weather it is good or not is down to the individual. But I still hate it.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:2, Interesting)
The purpose of leetspeak was to evade search and censorship efforts. A filter looking for "fuck" doesn't find "fu<k". A similar maneuver is to use wild cards in place of letters, like "f**k", because many search interfaces will search for any words starting with a "w" and ending with a "k", not just 4 letter words, if you ask for "f**k".
Has its uses, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
When I came into my webmaster job a few years ago, I found the entire site was done with Comic Sans. We're an academic unit, so this was just not appropriate for the site. It took a while to clear it all up because it was a large site even back then, plus there was no single way my predecessor had chosen to implement the fonts - although there were a lot of "<font face=..." tags.
You might argue that Comic Sans has its place; but I learned to hate it with a passion those first few days. (As an aside - fixing all that did finally motivate me to learn regexps)
It was amazing how simply cleaning out that one silly font changed the site. I kept getting compliments from the faculty - "looks like now we have a REAL webmaster!" - just because I removed Comic Sans.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:3, Interesting)
Look again at Lucida Console, but the bold fonts. Notice how on the Mac the tops of the letters are nicely curved, giving it a pleasing shape that still looks good bold? On Vista the letters look like they've been chopped off at the top. There are dozens of details like this that make the Mac look better. Yes, anti-aliasing helps a lot, but it is much more than that. Apple makes good looking fonts. Microsoft fails. I suspect this is due to better collaboration between the designers and the programmers, but I cannot say for sure.
I was unaware of the chalkboard font. I will check it out, thanks.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely wrong. All uppercase letters are harder to read because our minds see blocks of text, not individual letters. When you change the fundamental shape of a word (by making it one big block of uppercase text), you make the reader stop and look at each individual letter, as opposed to seeing the word shape.
As for a citation, too many to post. I have a grad degree in Education with an emphasis in typography and cognition.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:5, Interesting)
We use Comic Sans at work, sometimes (Score:1, Interesting)
I work at a research reactor. Sometimes I get forms called Reactor Irradiation Requests sent to me from the rod office, which I need to sign. The RIRs are usually printed in Comic Sans.
Sometimes I've thought about typing my stuff in Rugby font [quartzcity.net], which was used by 80's British band Spacemen 3 on their album covers, and named after their hometown of Rugby. Somehow I don't think my boss would like that.
Comic Sans: the language of diplomacy (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Uppercase are mostly straight lines and hence easier to carve.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes. if you put a page containing the same text, one in arial and one in helvetica besides each other in 1m distance you will see the difference without looking at single letters. Overly hefty usage of arial for headlines was one of the reasons MS office documents looked so incredibly crappy when printed on a decent printer.
Re:So what do you use instead? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:1, Interesting)
All uppercase letters are harder to read because our minds see blocks of text, not individual letters. When you change the fundamental shape of a word (by making it one big block of uppercase text), you make the reader stop and look at each individual letter, as opposed to seeing the word shape.
Actually, that may not be correct. There is a study by Microsoft [microsoft.com] refuting what it says are mistaken ideas about word shape and reading. The old guard just hasn't incorporated newer findings yet. One excerpt:
"The weakest evidence in support of word shape is that lowercase text is read faster than uppercase text. This is entirely a practice effect. Most readers spend the bulk of their time reading lowercase text and are therefore more proficient at it. When readers are forced to read large quantities of uppercase text, their reading speed will eventually increase to the rate of lowercase text. Even text oriented as if you were seeing it in a mirror will quickly increase in reading speed with practice (Kolers & Perkins, 1975)."
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:4, Interesting)
My design and typography skills come from the mid-late 80s. My graduate degree comes from the late 2000s. I've seen a lot of changes over the years, and I am not limited to post-"typography in computing" knowledge.
Single words are very short phrases are acceptable in all-caps, but there is no benefit to doing so. What is bad about all caps is by assuming that capitalizing everything, it becomes important. In actuality, by capitalizing everything, nothing stands out. I was in the Army, and they are notorious for all-caps. For one presentation, I made all the key points lower case, just to make a point. In a solid block of upper case text, the one or two lower-case words are the ones that stood out, which is the entire point in the first place.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:3, Interesting)
First, why am I not surprised that Microsoft is completely backwards in thought compared to the rest of the industry? Second, the research you cited is dated. Third, the excerpt you provided proves my point. We spend our entire lives reading text in lower case. Certainly we'd get faster reading all upper-case the more we read it, but we'd never surpass our ability to read what we've been reading all our lives (lower-case).
In short, it isn't important WHY we can read lower case faster, only that we do.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, in addition to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_caps [wikipedia.org]
From the article: "However, the shapes of words set in lowercase provide a valuable cue to readers that helps speed the process of reading; type in all caps forms a rectangular shape for every word, which makes distinguishing words harder."
I once read on a forum that it is on average %10 slower to read anything written in all capital then in mixed or lower case. This may not seem significant until one considers the ramifications for reading significantly long documents or the build up of lost productivity over years of reading terminal messages.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lower-case letters have certain shapes--some hang down, some extend up, some are right in the middle. We learn to recognize these visual clues. Upper-case letters lack these visual clues. Instead, upper-case letters revert to a different shape, but these different shapes never vary by hanging below the line or above the line, because by definition of being upper-case, they take up the entire space.
WHEN YOU TYPE EVERYTHING IN UPPERCASE LETTERS THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY DESCENDERS OR ASCENDERS TO HELP DIFFERENTIATE THE SHAPES OF THE LETTERS. The reader then must slow down and look at each individual letter, then put the word together in their mind. If you don't believe me, take a 1,000 word document read it, then change it to all upper case, then read it again. Tell me you aren't slightly mentally fatigued upon the second reading (give yourself time to recover between readings).
Word shape is important. Take mono-spaced fonts for example. They may work well in writing lines of code or in spreadsheet columns (where it is helpful for the letters to line up), but in English prose, they are tiresome to read, because they completely eliminate the shape of words that we are used to reading. Again, change your paper to Courier, then try to read it. Tiresome.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:4, Interesting)
The purpose of leetspeak was to evade search and censorship efforts. A filter looking for "fuck" doesn't find "fu<k".
That as well- someone mentioned this the last time I commented on the disappearance of leetspeak, but generally speaking once the would-be-censors know these tricks- or rather, suddenly knowledgable parents realise what's going on- they lose their power.
:-)
Anyway, I agree that leetspeak probably started out for that reason, but I suspect it eventually became cool for its own sake. Until parents were suddenly hip to what the kids were doing, man
BTW, what's the deal with websites that happily discuss adult sexual and social topics, yet censor the naughty swear words and force people to use euphemisms (or auto-replaces them)? It seems quite silly to me. Is this to avoid problems with being blocked or something?
It strikes me that it would be better to allow people to swear, filter-replace it by default and allow people with accounts to turn the filter off. Censorship software might pick up on this and blacklist the site anyway, but it strikes me that for a site with obviously adult discussions it's likely to get blacklisted anyway, regardless of the amount of naughty words they filter.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:4, Interesting)
I know it's the least-used letter in the English language, but I didn't realize that "Q" has been completely forgotten.
There are very few fonts where "Q" does not have a stroke below the baseline. Even the san-serif fonts requested by the Slashdot CSS have at least slight descenders for the "Q". But, it's even more obvious in Courier:
Quick
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:1, Interesting)
Uppercase are mostly straight lines and hence easier to carve.
Also, it is always easier to use an alphabet that actually exists. Lower-case letters were not invented until several centuries later...
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:4, Interesting)
I was fine with the Arial example, but perhaps Helvetica would be a better choice. Still boring enough for income tax forms and I think still commonly installed on systems.
Actually, Helvetica isn't commonly installed in systems because Helvetica is something you have to buy [linotype.com]. That's why Arial is so widespread. Microsoft wanted a Helvetica, but didn't want the Helvetica licensing fee. I found this out last year when I was using Photoshop to forge a city parking placard* at work. The typeface is Helvetica, and no one anywhere at my worksite had it. I had to go on Pirate Bay to find it.
* Exempts you from posted limits, including meters and school zones. I work for a very large school district. The city offers us placards, but the pointy-haired bosses decreed "bottom-level techs shall not be allowed to apply for placards, only managers", despite the fact that managers never leave the office, while techs are the ones trying to park near schools in a big city with predatory parking enforcement. So naturally I concluded that a color laser printer + a sample placard + a couple hours in Photoshop was the best solution.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:5, Interesting)
> Yes. Compared to, say, Wingdings.
Actually, it's one of only three or four fonts my sister (who teaches lower elementary school) is willing to use for classroom materials, because it's one of the only ones the kids can read, because it uses the simple letter forms they teach the kids in kindergarten. The biggest points of contention for most fonts are the lowercase letters a and g. A few other sans fonts use the simple-form g, but almost none of them use the simple-form lowercase a.
Now, one could argue that the schools *should* be teaching the normal lowercase forms that are ordinarily used in almost all print materials throughout the entire English-speaking world. But they *aren't*. (It may be partly because the more common forms are more complex and therefore require more coordination to write. A lot of kindergarten students struggle to get the stick on the right side of the circle for lowercase a, so asking them to write the Times form of the letter admittedly seems a bit much.)
Anyway, I would argue that Comic Sans is better than *several* of the other fonts from Microsoft's "Core Fonts for the Web" initiative.
Georgia and Verdana, of course, are clearly the best of the batch. They actually look good, and furthermore they look good together, which is a fairly big deal. You've got to have a basic serif and a basic sans font that look okay together, and this is a reasonably good pair. I've seen better pairs, but not *many* of them, and especially not ones that were available in 1996. Also, Georgia has a real actual honest-to-goodness italic face, which even manages to LOOK GOOD, which is a fairly rare quality. (I'm not a big fan of most italic faces, as a rule. If anybody knows of a freely-available sans-serif font that actually looks good in italic, I'd sure like to hear about it, because as yet I've not seen one.) Verdana runs a little on the large side, but you can fix that by decrementing the point size, so it's not exactly a deal-killer.
Impact and Andale Mono are acceptable for their intended purposes (wet paint signs and source code, respectively). Lucida Console is in some ways better than Andale Mono, but it's not freely redistributable. Bitstream Vera Sans Mono is alright, but it didn't come out until later.
But after that, really, the fifth-best one in the pack is Comic Sans. Bear with me...
Arial and Arial Black and Trebuchet aren't actively ugly, but they're mediocre, and more to the point they're also pretty redundant with other, better fonts from the same initiative (Verdana, Impact, and Verdana, respectively). Admittedly, Arial dates to Windows 3.x and thus is older than Verdana, but once Verdana was produce we no longer needed Arial for anything (because Verdana looks better), so why was it still included, why is it *still* included with Windows? Why? As for Trebuchet, I never understood why it was needed at any time. It was never *bad*, but it also never had anything to offer over other fonts that were already available.
Then we come to Times New Roman, which is uglier than a half-shaved mandrill, and Courier New, which is the most heinously hideous excuse for a font ever created in True Type format. (I've seen bitmapped screen fonts that were worse, but not many.)
I assume we're not going to try to compare Webdings with anything because, you know, it was never intended for the same basic purpose as the other core fonts (namely, typesetting actual words).
So, Comic Sans isn't the best font ever, but it's orders of magnitude nicer looking than TNR, to say nothing of Courier New, and furthermore it offers a significant stylistic difference from other available fonts, unlike Arial and Arial Black and Trebuchet. It's not as good as Verdana or Georgia, and its niche is (arguably) not as important as the ones for Impact and Andale Mono, but it still serves a useful purpose.
You don't like Comics Sans? Hey, fine, uninstall it from your computer, and websites that try to use it (and don't provide a fallback alternative) will render in whatever font you set as your browser's default. Voila.
But personally I don't see what's so bad about it.
Times New Roman is the one I wish was never created.
Re:Similar to Windows hate? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's just a testament to the power of cognition.
And people prefer what they are used to. Windows users will prefer ClearType, and Mac users will prefer OS X's font rendering.
I don't think I've ever come across an experienced user who uses both Mac and Windows on a regular basis who prefers the ClearType font rendering.
Incidentally, Safari 4 for Windows enables you to switch between OS X's font rendering engine and ClearType. It's very interesting to see the vast difference it makes to the way we see websites.