What is your opinion on Comic Sans?

Gamers_Mate@kbin.social to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 44 points –

I was going to make a post on unpopular opinions saying comic sans is not as bad as people make it out to be and can be useful in some cases since it is easier to read. But decided not to because I wasnt sure kbin/lemmy felt about it.

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Hating comic sans is a meme. It was overused and thus received backlash, and now the backlash has been going on longer that the trend it was in response to.

The trend was like 3 years, and the hate has been going on for like 25 years.

The trend has never stopped where I'm from. The hate is burning as bright as ever.

True it was overused at one point. I guess a lot of the hate is just exaggerated from people getting annoyed how much it showed up in resumes and official documents as well as being used by amateur graphics designers . Which is fair. The font itself I think still serves a purpose when used correctly.

It's acceptable in the following contexts:

  • In a comic
  • In content designed for children

That's pretty much it.

No no no no.

It's also acceptable for presidential speeches. The funny letters have a way of calming the elderly.

Did it actually get used in a presidential speech? That is pretty wild.

Oh......no no no. I'm not saying it did or didn't happen. I like to make absurd jokes, and I keep forgetting that this whole world has taken the absurdity meter, and cranked it up to 327 on a scale of 1-10.

At this point, I could say that Bill Cosby was giving head to hobos in exchange for jello-pops, and with how absurd this world is, I'd be then asked "Which flavor was it???"

See, when I grew up, if I had said something like that, I'd be laughed out of the serious conversation. It was just so absurd it's funny..........except now we live in a timeline where Rudy Guilliani's hair melts, Mike Pence is known to have a fly crawl in his mouth without noticing or reacting for hours, every superpower seems to be plotting their own WWIII, and Apu from the Simpsons is taken seriously as a social progressive commentary.

I swear when I was a kid, sci-fi was all about time travelers coming back from the year 2020 to warn of us alien invasions, and robot takeovers, and governments running big brother programs............

And while all that IS true, you never saw any sci-fi movies in the 80s like "THE FUTURE IS STUPID!!!! REALLY REALLY STUPID!!!" and then runs away.

I blame Harambe. Thats when the absurdity levels fell off the rails.

It's apparently pretty dyslexic-friendly

As are many other sans serif typefaces.

Comic Sans is better than other sans serif options because letters like b, p, d, and q are more rotationally distinct

According to research, the space between letters is more important for people with reading disabilities than rotational distinction.

Typefaces may affect web accessibility, but if you want to provide a better experience for readers, Comic Sans isn’t the only option. The best practice is to use a widely available font with no extra decorations or flourishes.

In addition to Comic Sans, the British Dyslexia Association recommends Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Century Gothic, Trebuchet, Calibri, and Open Sans.

https://www.boia.org/blog/does-comic-sans-benefit-people-with-dyslexia

People with disabilities really ought to respect your font choices.

So a comic made for children would be the best context for it?

The monospaced version is the best terminal font I've ever used. I can find information on the screen way faster.

I use monospaced comic sans for programming. The font is just easier on the eyes.

I don't really use it for anything. Though I imagine it would would make it easier to read having comic sans in white on a dark terminal.

I don't think it's that bad. What matters is that the message can be read.

True a font that is hard to read isn't very good especially if you are dyslexic.

^ Something that annoys me to no end. I don't have dyslexia but find handwritings hard to read, and for similar reasons I always write in print, but then I go consult people who write things if there's a project or I need something written, and nine out of ten times it's in cursive when it's not even a formal document, and I'm thinking "is it SO hard for normal people to write in a normal manner and write for understandability instead of bad aesthetics/tradition". Yet I'm called illiterate because I only write in print.

I very much associate it with the kind of person in the corporate environment who says things like "does somebody have a case of the Mondays?"

Right tools for the right jobs. The issues arise when it's out of place.

All the emergency signs in my old office were in comic sans. I thought it was rather funny

It doesn’t bother me at all. It’s readable and fun, but I like comics so…. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think that it's a pretty decent typeface -- it looks decent and successfully evokes comic book text. But because Microsoft bundled it with its OS, where it was one of the few distinct-looking typefaces, it became overused, got put in a lot of material where it wasn't really a great choice.

But I won't blame the typeface for people using it in inappropriate spots.

I used to have a number of typefaces used for various things, but I kind of stopped messing around with decorative fonts once I wanted wide Unicode support.

It helps me read better as someone with dyslexia, I hate the look but it’s useful. I use open dyslexic but it’s basically Comic Sans.

There was a time when it was overused. That’s not the case anymore.

I would still be triggered when I see it, but I don’t think the hate is needed anymore.

Comic Sans is a bad font because it was one of the first default fonts installed on windows machines and every secretary who wanted to come across as casual used it.

Today, I'd say it's been replaced by the Google font Lobster as overused and unimaginative font choice.

Have you ever read really dense technical material in comic sans? It’s awesome, I recommend it

I used it for its true purpose back in the day, for Microsoft Comic Chat.

It's like almost nobody remembers that ... that's a thing that existed.

We tend to suppress traumatic memories, like freeing up lower ram with himem.sys and friends to load Novell NetWare network drivers.

Dear God, it's all coming back to me! 😭

I remember figuring out a 10-Base-T network to get LAN Quake running, and dealing with Himem.sys and things like Sound cards needing to be put on IRQ 11 or IRQ 13 because they wouldn't work anywhere else.

I would rather use Comic Sans than the current trend of all these unreadable fonts people use for labels and signage. https://www.thedesignhippo.com/best-cricut-font/ https://www.creativefabrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/20/Meghan-Fonts-34546508-10-580x387.jpg

Went out with someone for 3 months who had comic sans on her phone and honestly I’m adding that to the red flag list. Never again

It honestly looks good and feels really charming... when it's within its comfort zone.

Is comic sans the Taylor Swift of fonts?

It's not easier to read, I'm not sure where that myth came from. There's fonts specifically designed to be easier to read for dyslexics and they look nothing like comic sans.

Some people just want to make excuses for their questionable typographical decisions I guess.

Some of those fonts are directly inspired by Comic Sans… such as Lexia Readable and you’d be pretty hard pressed to say Dyslexie doesn’t take inspiration from Comic Sans. I have Open Dyslexic on my pc and a few people have made a comment about it being comic sans.

I seem to recall that its main issue was that it used more ink when printing. Not sure about that but I print like two documents a year so I havent really checked.

It depends on the messages, if the message is more important than the delivery, then any font is fine.

Good option for dyslexics if no actual dyslexic font exsists