Monday, March 05, 2007

Comics Oughta Be Sans Comic Sans MS

Kevin Church knows a thing or two about a thing or two, and one of those things or two is halfway decent design. His BeaucoupKevin(dot)com blog is one of the more attractive of the comics sites; Kevin knows how to use a scanner and Photoshop, the value of white space, and how to tilt an image just right.

Kevin also knows the horror that is the Comic Sans MS font, and he posts here a serious awful usage of that awfully seriously overused typeface in a current Marvel/Jeep ad/comic. Oooh, it just looks so bad. (Not to mention that "log on" should be two words.)

I don't know if it rivals his award-winning "Q1 Award for Horrible Font Usage, Comic Sans Division," but there's another hideous example of the font in this week's Time Out London, used for a two-page fumetti comic strip (a portion shown below) about Time Out staffers distributing free books to suspicious London commuters on the Underground:

Time Out London

Click to biggify. But shield your eyes, Marion, shield your eyes!


How bad is it? It's so bad that Time Out doesn't even put the feature on their website page with all the other Books Issue articles from this week. That's how bad it is.

Seriously, folks, just because it says "Comic" in the name doesn't mean it's ideal for using in comics. Or, indeed, anywhere. I frequently praise British designers as being hip and ahead of the curve, especially in magazine and book design. But this, mates, is a giant step backwards.

Ban Comic Sans MS! Your children, and your children's children, will thank you.


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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous3/06/2007 3:34 AM

    The Order of the Stick uses Comic Sans MS. Doesn't bother me at all.

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  2. Kevin Church3/06/2007 7:49 AM

    Ouch, mine eyes!

    (And Order of the Stick is intentionally low-fi. Comic Sans MS matches the whole "I'm doing-this-as-work" aesthetic the strip evokes.)

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  3. Gordon D3/06/2007 8:09 AM

    Reminds me of a secretary where I used to work who used Comic Sans on every piece of correspondence...including things like grant reports, handouts, and business correspondence.

    It took me a good year to convince her that there were other fonts as well...I'm not a big fan of Comic Sans.

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  4. David C3/06/2007 9:33 AM

    Yeah, I think Order of the Stick is kind of the exception to the general rule.

    But in general, there are much better comics-style fonts out there. A bunch of nice ones here, many of which are free:
    http://blambot.com/fonts.shtml

    "Digital Strip" in particular is pretty nifty for general-purpose comics lettering.

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