Innate hilariousness of Comic Sans finally revealed.
August 24, 2011, 3:47 pm
Posted by Grant Gallicho
This one goes out to the type nerds. Or nerd.
New Study Explains Why Comic Sans Font So Hilarious (Season 1: Ep 8 on IFC)
My favorite fonts include Sylfaen, Century Gothic, Baskerville Old Face, Bell MT, Book Antiqua, Bookman Old Style, Garamond, Georgia, Lucida Bright, , Palotino Linotype, and Perpetua. In college and grad school, I’d use different fonts for different papers in order to keep things interesting as I typed, etc.
And for headings or special occasions, I often enjoy Papyrus, Blackadder ITC, Viner Hand ITC, Lucida Calligraphy, Matura MT Script Capitals, and Monotype Corsiva.
“How can you bear to hold his hand?/I bet he signs his name in Comic Sans/He’s a bad comedian. I don’t know what you see in him.” From a current release by the snide English band Art Brut (a guilty pleasure).
But nothing tops Times Roman!
Another thing that makes this web site hard to read, in addition to the watery blue, is the sans serif type.
We’re about to switch typefaces here at the magazine. We plan to announce it but wonder how many would notice if we didn’t. We’ll know it was a good idea only if we get fewer complaints, not more compliments.
And we’re looking into changing the type on the Web site too. But the blue stays.
Good news for my poor old eyes.
What about allowing posters to edit?
(If I could edit, I would make it clear that I was responding to Matthew, not to Grant. The blue is so weak, so wishy-washy, so pale. Yuck.)
Who complains about the color blue?
No one who matters.
Helvetica in its various iterations once figured prominently in Commonweal headlines. It is san sarif and amazingly easy to read. I find the typeface on dotCommonweal quite readable, and the blue? I thought it was for the BVM.
Grant –
I can’t stand your color blue. It’s illegible. ( And reminds me of the Blessed Mother’s sash. Ugh.)
Well, sorry, but the correct answer is our blue is just right. Better luck next time.
Blue indicates links. Leave it alone.
Yale’s Web Style Guide, which seems to have become the standard in Web design, has a whole section on typography. That section uses serif fonts for headers and sans serif for body copy.
E-version of the guide is here: http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/index.html
I read onetime (don’t know where, don’t know when) that some studies indicate that sans serif font is easier to read online, vice versa for print. Please do not go to a sans serif font in the magazine.
I have always been partial to Garamond. When students use the wrong font in their papers, I write my comments in Blackadder or Vivaldi. For which I am sure I will spend some decades in Purgatory.
Sorry, “onetime” should be two words.