It feels like there’s not a day that goes by without witnessing some embittered designer firing off a blog post belittling Comic Sans. At first I chuckled to myself (“LOL n00bs!) about how foolish it was, and then I got all supreme designer and was offended by its very existence. But as the years wane on, the joke got less and less funny, and I started thinking about Comic Sans differently…
It’s web-safe!
From a developer point-of-view, using Comic Sans means that I’m not going to have to load my project with ultimately unscalable @font-face declarations, and kilobyte heavy fonts. I don’t need to use flash to get it to render. It doesn’t require a javascript call to some Rent-A-Font company that I have to pay a monthly fee to. I know its going to render on just about the same on just about every computer in the whole world.
Comic Sans has 100% market saturation.
Despite its glaring typographical flaws and misappropriations, Comic Sans is the definition of ubiquity. Even better than our beloved Helvetica. And best of all it’s free, something that no doubt played largely into it’s huge install base.
It’s comical 
Comic Sans is not pretty, it’s playful. It’s appalling that anyone would consider it for use in something like a business presentation, but in the right circumstance (a child’s birthday invitation or a soccer mom’s flyer) it’s an ideal choice. Looking at the history of Comic Sans, you can get a greater appreciation for its intention.
It was designed as font for the failed Microsoft Bob visual desktop environment. It was based on handwriting samples found in the Watchmen and Dark Knight comics. The text was meant to appear handwritten and still legible. The result was a felt marker looking font that just kept getting installed on computers because of its versatility and over the years has become very over-used*.
Comic Sans Appreciation Month
I think rather than perpetuating font-hate, we need to perpetuate font-grace.
To quote Mark Boulton
“Bad designers have used it, and it’s been used by non-designers who are making a design decision without having the right tools available to them…People berate it for no good reason. It’s a font that’s been overused, rather than a font that’s inherently bad.”
Instead of being a holier-than-thou designer and putting your client in the “idiot” category when they request Comic Sans for a logo, be a helpful resource who says, “I know what you’re trying to achieve, but let’s find a more appropriate font because Comic Sans wasn’t designed for print.”
Perhaps that’s been my message all along: Instead of being a condescending (jerk) designer spend a little time redesigning your attitude and be a resource, not an adversary, to your client. Let’s spend our time and aggression on more just causes like eradicating IE6.
*It was “viral” even before viral was viral. **ALL CAPS COMIC SANS IS RAD.
Still not convinced? Further Reading:
- http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/comic-sans-the-font-everyone-loves-to-hate/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Sans
Coming off my high horse, there’s actually some pretty good alternative fonts in these links worth checking out. Haters Gonn’ Hate.
Respect for using Comic Sans on your frontpage