11.20.2006

Why Comic Sans is the Devil

So here's the thing. Even though I claim to not be a designer, and am trying to move my career in a more project management direction, I've been realizing that I still have a designer's sensibility when it comes to visuals. The idea of not having an image editing program on my computer is like having my fingers amputated. And even if I can learn to deal with not being able to touch up every photo to my satisfaction, what is truly intolerable is being limited to standard Windows fonts.

At best, these fonts are tolerable. Arial doesn't suck too bad, Courier is great when you want your papers to take up ten pages instead of seven. But the font to be avoided at all costs is Comic Sans. This is Microsoft's version of a "novelty font" and it burns my eyeballs from the inside, it's so fucking ugly. Lately, I've discovered it's also the darling of the academic world. Any teacher who wants to spice up their documents with something beyond the standard Times New Roman uses Comic Sans. Any time I get documents in Comic Sans, I reformat them into something far less offensive, like Verdana. Were I to receive documentation in PDF format, I would probably re-type the whole thing, just to avoid having to look at the carnage Comic Sans makes of perfectly decent text.

While some of the designers I work with far outstrip me in attention to visual detail, on the scale of normal people, I am an anal control freak.

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