GalacticCactus Forum
Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: Lady Montagu on July 11, 2005, 10:20:38 AM
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I got a flyer for a conference this weekend from church.
It was in Comic Sans. Thought y'all should know.
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In our last ward, the font of choice was Dauphin (which I find to be an unforgivably ugly font). At least they had enough taste to avoid Comic Sans, I guess.
The worst part, though, was the haphazard mix of underlining, bold, and italics. Pick one and stick with it! You don't need two or three ways of making text stand out, and you don't need to make all the text stand out, either.
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(http://primalcurve.net/gallery/albums/dump/dauphin.gif)?
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Yes, unfortunately.
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It's very Riverdance.
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It's annoying. Half the letters are straight up and down, and half are all angled and swoopy. I especially hate the y.
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I rather like it, but only when it is used sparingly. Used all the time, it would grate rapidly.
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You mean "it would great rapidly."
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<grates weezer>
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Is that anything like knighting weezer?
[edit] Stupid question marks keep gettin' away.
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You guys keep putting the e in the wrong place! :angry:
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Why do people find Comic Sans so offensive?
My daughter happens to like it, so I'm just curious.
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Because people use it WAY too much. I'm going to make my flyer/ad/term paper/business card fun and original by using Comic Sans, just like everyone else!
Plus, I just don't think it's a very attractive or well-designed font.
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Eh, it's not terrible either. I've seen much worse.
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Yes, there are definitely far worse fonts, but since it's so overused, it starts to really grate (or great if you're weezer).
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I confess to using it once in a publication. I didn't know any better. It was an amateur mistake... but I was an amateur.
I've never done it again.
AJ
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It's alright, AJ. We've all been there before. The important thing is that you've overcome the sins of your youth.
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What not to do on your business webpage (http://www.softill.com/)
I especially like "Serving Mapland Customers since 1993". It should be followed by "Website not updated since 1995".
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Ooh. I like the waving American flag. That adds a great effect.
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That meets their animated gif requirement for bad webpages. They are probably only lacking midi music.
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Oooh . . . a hit counter and links to compatible web browsers. Classy. I also like the alternate text for the "logo"—mapping. It's so simple yet absolutely true.
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Here's another winner. (http://www.doubleeusa.com/ehomehfs.shtml)
"Light Years Ahead." Catchy slogan. Too bad the design is a decade out of date. The bad gif of the SR-71 Blackbird is a classy touch, too. Did the CEO's ten-year-old son pick out the corporate symbol?
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Why do people find Comic Sans so offensive?
Nothing but snobbery.
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It's not just snobbery. There are a lot of people who have years of training in fine art and visual design who make a living doing visual layout who are having a hard time finding a good job. The market has been thrown into turmoil these past few years since the advent of desktop publishing.
There are all kinds of upstart businessmen in my rural area, for instance, who discovered that they can print things out at home and so started charging people for graphic and website design, while giving them an inferior product. I suppose you could claim that the market demand was great enough and that people are willing to pay them so there's no problem, but a lot of times business owners are not knowledgable about what looks good and what is the most effective advertising, and so they hire someone, trusting that they know what they're doing.
It may not matter to the desktop artist that his Comic Sans looks juvenile and unprofessional, and it may not matter to his client. Neither of them may know the difference. But the larger market knows. People in larger cities will automatically recognize the business as small-town and naive, and even those customers who don't know much about advertising art can tell the difference between what's been professionally done and what hasn't.
So it's not the typeface itself; (though Microsoft fonts are made inexact and approximate because they're intended for word processing and not printing) it's the aspirations to professionalism that people who have no experience are assuming. I don't really care if I get a flyer passed to me on the street that's in Comic Sans. I do care when I see vinyl lettering on a delivery truck that I know someone paid good money to an established sign business for.
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It may not matter to the desktop artist that his Comic Sans looks juvenile and unprofessional, and it may not matter to his client. Neither of them may know the difference. But the larger market knows. People in larger cities will automatically recognize the business as small-town and naive, and even those customers who don't know much about advertising art can tell the difference between what's been professionally done and what hasn't.
I am unconvinced that this is true. Sure, people trained as you have been can tell the difference, but if everybody could tell the difference, then so could the people making and buying the crappy signs.
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I think people realize it at a subconscious level if nothing else. Show someone a crappy design job, and they might not see anything wrong with it. Then show someone a well-designed piece, and the difference is usually clear. And even discounting the aesthetic quality of the font and the layout, there are a lot of issues like readability, clarity, each of finding information, and visual impact. There's a much bigger difference between good design and bad design than simply the font choice.
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Right. People won't notice the specifics, but they can tell the difference between professional and unprofessional. What makes the professionals professionals is knowing how to achieve that difference.
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Perhaps. I think I'm reacting to this the same way I react to the idea of ki or chi in martial arts -- there might be something to ki, but most of what people actually say about it sounds like hogwash.
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*blank stare*
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Heh.
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I'm largely with Porter here.
And I think signs and such done in Comic Sans do look amateurish, but I think that typically either they are intended to look this way, or they simply are done by amateurs.
As far as readability, Comis Sans is one of the more readable typefaces out there. I think the vast majority of typefaces that people get all snobby about are rather unreadable. I think all of your basic needs are met by a nice serif font like Times Roman and a nice sans serif like Helvetica/Ariel. Anything else ought to be reserved for titles or not used at all, pretty much, but I consider Comic Sans to be an exception, in that, unlike most of those fifty thousand fonts that come with most software these days, it actually is pretty readable. (Another exception is Courier, in case for some reason you want something to look like a typewriter typeface--though in general I find Courier hideous.) I certainly would not want to read a paper written in Comic Sans, but for a little paper sign or personal web page or AIM font, I see nothing at all wrong with it.
Most people who complain about Comic Sans are not referring to "professional" products or thinking of the poor graphic designers driven out of business. Mostly they just make fun of people's personal web pages (or those of small businesses) or their AIM fonts, and I can't distinguish between that and being a snob.
-Icarus
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I have to say I agree with what Porter and Icky said here.
I brought this subject up with my sister, who happens to be a graphic artist by profession and teaches graphic design at the college level. She went into an explanation of how the kerning pairs in Comic Sans don't match, or aren't compatible, or something like that, and my eyes just glazed over.
I am fairly certain that I have never judged a piece of graphic art to be amateurish merely due to the use of Comic Sans, and I think that the average, less educated viewer would think about it even less.
Just my two cents worth.
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Last night we had a family gathering, and my mother had made up some questionairres for the sets of fiances to fill out about each other.
It was done in comic sans.
I thought of y'all.
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I was in the Pallete Zone and there was a big sign saying something about the new return policy.
I thought of y'all.
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My issue isn't with the kerning or anything like that. It's that it's the default font for everyone who wants to make their writing look fun and cute. It's also not the most readable font, and I think it distracts from the content. It's (bad) style over substance.
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You're talking like an engineer now. :)
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Actually, I find it extremely readable.
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I have to agree. I have never had any problems with its readability, either.