Ah, I see. I just didn’t blow it up big enough to see the effect.
They look crooked to me, too, almost as if they were in Italic…hey wait.
I agree on Arial, but Helvetica is a perfectly regal sans serif. Beautiful, clean, geometric, strong. Its form does not distract from content. Both Helvetica and Times New Roman get a bad rap for being “boring,” but they are perfectly designed fonts and exemplars of their respective styles.
I don’t mind it for headings or such but it’s not a font for the entire book or paper.
I actually found sans-serif fonts are the best for the web while serif fonts look better printed out.
I’ll send the money, just stop with the ransom notes!
Traditionally, for long running lines of text, serifed fonts are generally preferred. For shorter lines of text (captions, headlines, titling), sans serifs offer a nice counterpoint. This is, of course, just a guideline. I agree that in screen fonts, serifed fonts can sometimes be a little bothersome as the serifs could get a little lost on the screen.
Amateur. I’m a public librarian. I win the “most tedious wankers” contest every time, I don’t care how many audiophiles you have to endure. 
Yeah, you’re right. There’s nothing particularly wrong with Helvetica. As a matter purely of personal preference, I like Univers better as a general-purpose sans.
I received a resume in Comic Sans recently. For a software developer position. I threw it away like it was on fire.
Hope it’s not too late to bump, but the boy from Winnipeg I like and I recently came across a Comic Sans inscription carved in stone on a ground-level plaque in the Botanical Gardens. Photos to follow, heaven help us.
I am so embarrassed.
I’m no graphic designer or anything, at all. But for a bunch Christmases and stuff, I’ve designed tshirts and made them with with iron on transfers.
Made my dad a fake heraldry shield that he loved, made a bunch of tshirts that said “I survived Christmas '99” Did a Gordon Ramsay shirt for my coworker that loves him.
I’ve surfed many MANY font types. And I’ve used Comic Sans serif once or twice for effect.
When I read the thread title? I thought Comic Sans was some Doper nick. And I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t be in The Pit.
D’oh moment.
I like palatino linotype, which I have not set up as default on this computer. Hmmmm
Todd Klein (a long-time comic letterer) wrote a good article about Comic Sans. Unfortunately the average person isn’t likely to notice a lot of his problems with it. But you want to know why it looks rushed and uneven? Because it was drawn in a week, with a mouse
A relevant video. Sometimes, Comic Sans is what you need.
I’ve been hoping someone would post that link, Kobal2. Thanks!
How else is the grapist supposed to learn about his family [del]tree[/del] vine?
We apologize. The preceding poster has been sacked. The thread will now resume in a completely different style.
The Achewood strip referenced earlier reminded me of another strip I saw some years ago (sadly, I can’t remember what strip) where one of the characters was wandering around town looking at signage and muttering to himself, “Hobofont … Hobofont … Hobofont …”
Graphic designer here. I can definitely be counted in the hate crowd when it comes to Comic Sans. I have to agree with what others have mentioned; it’s hated because of overuse and misuse. It’s been a system font since '94, so it’s always been one of the only choices for a “fun” font for most. That’s all well and good, but I’ve seen it used in professional communication, and that drives me crazy. In my case I think it bothers me because I’m already so conscious of anything related to design in print, video, or on the web. There are a few other fonts that I’m really sick of, though.
Papyrus. Don’t get me started. My friends are well aware of my feelings toward this font, as I will shake my fist and verbally curse it any time I see it.
Brush Script. Another system font that’s overused.
Copperplate Gothic. I don’t quite hate this font yet, but I’m getting close. Used sparingly it can be fine, but it’s already far too common in business names and movie titles.
There are others, but I’ll spare you my whining. I’ve recently been doing some research into typography to fill in some gaps in my education, and it’s amazing how in depth it can be. A professional type designer can spend months or years working on a single font. It’s not enough to worry about the spacing between letters in general, individual pairs are also carefully scrutinized. In the better quality fonts, the italic set isn’t just a tilted version of the normal font, but is designed separately. You can tell the quality of a font by increasing the size of the letters up to around 72pt or so. At that size the detail of the shapes is more apparent, and you can see how much care the designer put in. That’s why Comic Sans looks awful at larger sizes; it was put together to look okay when fairly small on screen.
Really though, if you absolutely need a fun font and you don’t want to spend the big bucks to get a really well made one, go to somewhere like dafont.com and just grab a free font. Odds are it will stand out a bit more, and it may save a graphic designer’s eyes from bleeding.
Hint: Clear Type.
Ok, you need to have Windows XP (or Vista I guess) and an LCD rather than a CRT screen, but, with those in place, the Clear Type setting vastly increases readability, and, to my eye, gives back to the seriffed fonts on screen the same advantage they have on paper. Frankly, I find trying to read anything of any great length, on screen or off, in a sans-serif font (even a nice tasteful one) to be quite a pain. Sometimes, if the HTML coder has not used some CSS setting that makes it impossibly difficult, I will change the browser font settings just to get the text to display in TNR.
Of course, Microsoft being Microsoft, they left Clear Type turned off by default, and hid away the setting in an obscure place, but it is well worth finding if you have not done so. (In XP, go to the Appearance tab of Display Properties, and click Effects and set it at “Use the following method to smooth the edges of screen fonts.”)
(There are also Clear Type utilities floating around online that enable you to tweak it to get the best results. On some systems this may be worth doing.)
I am sure most people know this, but it seemed worth saying.
