Movement to ban "silly" font-type gains steam

[Lenny]

Typeface Inspired by Comic Books Has Become a Font of Ill Will

Vincent Connare designed the ubiquitous, bubbly Comic Sans typeface while working at Microsoft 15 years ago.

The font, a casual script designed to look like comic-book lettering, is the bane of graphic designers, other aesthetes and Internet geeks. It is a punch line: "Comic Sans walks into a bar, bartender says, 'We don't serve your type.'" On social-messaging site Twitter, complaints about the font pop up every minute or two. An online comic strip shows a gang kicking and swearing at Mr. Connare.

The jolly typeface has spawned the Ban Comic Sans movement, nearly a decade old but stronger now than ever, thanks to the Web. The mission: "to eradicate this font" and the "evil of typographical ignorance."

"If you love it, you don't know much about typography," Mr. Connare says. But, he adds, "if you hate it, you really don't know much about typography, either, and you should get another hobby."

Typefaces convey meaning, typographers say. Helvetica is an industry standard, plain and reliable. Times New Roman is classic. Depending on your point of view, Comic Sans is fun, breezy, silly or vulgar and lazy. It can be "analogous to showing up for a black-tie event in a clown costume," warns the Ban Comic Sans movement's manifesto.


The 'Ban Comic Sans' group slaps its stickers
on uses of the ubiquitous font, such as a
retirement-benefits document.

The proliferation of Comic Sans is something of a fluke. In 1994, Mr. Connare was working on a team at Microsoft creating software that consumers eventually would use on home PCs. His designer's sensibilities were shocked, he says, when, one afternoon, he opened a test version of a program called Microsoft Bob for children and new computer users. The welcome screen showed a cartoon dog named Rover speaking in a text bubble. The message appeared in the ever-so-sedate Times New Roman font.

Mr. Connare says he pulled out the two comic books he had in his office, "The Dark Knight Returns" and "Watchmen," and got to work, inspired by the lettering and using his mouse to draw on a computer screen. Within a week, he had designed his legacy.

The font has become so popular that it's approaching retro chic. Design shop Veer is selling a T-shirt with a picture of human heart on it made entirely of tiny Comic Sans characters. Veer's text: "Love it, love to hate it, or hate that you love it."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123992364819927171.html (more at link)

[Skandi]

People really have too much time on their hands! What was the date of this article! I have trouble understanding why you would care, neat handwriting yes but which font you use so long as it is legible?

[Susi]

People really have too much time on their hands! What was the date of this article! I have trouble understanding why you would care, neat handwriting yes but which font you use so long as it is legible?

It's a design issue. Comic Sans is useful in some contexts (in fact, it is derived from comic books). But in some other contexts, it's inappropriate.

[Vulpix]

I don't like that font, but why ban it? That's just silly.