I don’t usually beg, but please, please go listen to the brief Marketplace piece on what fonts to avoid using. Comic Sans might look fun and quirky to you, but it’s painful to the rest of us who have a smidgen of design sense.
Some of you might find it strange, geeky, or art nerdish to hear that I and many of my co-workers and associates find the fonts people use in everyday life as a source of entertainment. I mean, can you imagine walking out of a movie and saying something like “Can you believe they used ITC Benguiat on that notice in Chocolat when that font wasn’t invented until 1978 and the film was set in the 1950′s?!” to your friends? I can.
But some fonts are not funny. The name of the font “Comic Sans” literally means “no fun.”
Once upon a time, Comic Sans could have been properly used for announcements about children’s birthday parties, or at a circus. But overuse in the most improper of circumstances has rendered it offensive in any situation much like the swastika, once a proud and respectable symbol used by Native American Indians, has been made useless because of a short man with a funny mustache whose offense at being denied admission to art school resulted in the murder of tens of millions of people.
Your use of Comic Sans in emails hurts those you care about. They would tell you, but they are afraid to confront you about it. It also hurts your opportunities for success in life as those you communicate with become more and more convinced that you are unprofessional, incompetent, and best suited to the company of three-year olds as well as only the hottest and noisiest jobs.
Almost as obnoxious as Comic Sans is the use of Times Roman. While not inherently evil like Comic Sans, by virtue of it being the default font in many computer applications, Times Roman has come to be the font used by those who are 1) ignorant of the existence of other fonts, or 2) don’t know how to use different fonts in Word. Any other font could have suffered the same fate had it been chosen as the default font, but the fates decreed that Tmes Roman should suffer that fate. Ironically, the default font has become the one font you should never use unless you’re writing a book.
Along with the use of Comic Sans and Times Roman we should also ban background patterns in emails. If you’re a rocket scientist or a mathematician then perhaps using a background that looks like graph paper is allowable, but it is certainly off limits for anyone else.
Next time a co-worker or loved one shows you something they’re working on and it contains Comic Sans or Times Roman stop immediately, think, and then engage in a crucial conversation. You have no idea the ripple effect your small action might have in making the world a better place.
I cringe every time I see Papyrus used out of context (also find the font to be vile, but let’s look beyond that). Biology Department websites with Papyrus in their homepage, for instance… how on earth is that appropriate?
As for Comic Sans, it’s barely even approriate for the aforementioned birthday parties and circus events… the name in and of itself tells us that it is a face for comic books, or at least somewhat modelled after such. So really, it should only be used (in theory) in the text of comic books and graphic novels (or similar areas… for instance, the TV show Heroes appropriately uses a comic typeface in its opening credits). I say in theory because while technically a comic face such as Comic Sans should be used in such situations, Comic Sans is just so poorly designed that it should frankly never be used.
Don’t get me started on Arial…
Arial? That’s the PC’s version of Helvetica. Great san serif font. Its overuse is okay because its easy on the eyes unlike comic sans. That latter works great for comic book esque type talk bubbles.
Recently an adoption agency here in Utah was accused of getting Samoan parents to give up their children for adoption. Essentially Samoan parents were lied to and told their children were just coming over to get an American education and that the LDS Church was backing it. The American parents were told it was permanent and that the Samoan parents weren’t able to care for their kids. Sound evil? Indeed. And what font do evil adoption agencies use on their websites? Yep, you guessed it.
Which fonts do you all recommend? I use Tahoma with a plain white background for my work-related e-mail. Is there a better font I should be using?
Times New Roman is a great font. It’s the official font of the Energy Solutions Logo. And Energy Solutions has an entire arena named after them. It looks even better with a faux italic.
BTW, it’s not weird to sit around and make fun of fonts. It’s our duty as Americans.
I am old fashioned in that I think readability of body text is primary. Times Roman stands out as the most readable font for English. Since I care more about my reader’s ability to understand what I write, I usually choose it. People read through a process of pattern recognition, Times New Roman is compact but has the serifs in all of the sweet spots that let people read quickly with high comprehension.
Times Roman is also compact; so you get more info on a line.
Traditionally, serif fonts were only used for display text (the headlines). Comprehension studies usually show a slower reading rate and lower comprehension rate for sans serif fonts … but they look pretty.
Microsoft went Arial with its first GUI because the monitors of the day had low resolution. They seem to be wanting to get people back to using serif fonts for body text.
Personally, I like courier because all of the letters are the same size. I do all of my coding in courier on Notepad.
On the offensive-o-meter Papyrus is definitely the nails on the chalkboard of the standard issue fonts. Comic sans is a major fun-killer. It probably makes children with an inkling of design sense cry. Times gets the President Bush Award because its prominence makes it more prone to low approval ratings. It does its job and means well, but still draws the short straw at the end of the day.