6 ms·

What is wrong with Comic Sans?

37 points by papaf 12y ago

Steko 12y ago
38 comments and no McSweeny's link? http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole Listen up. I know the shit you’ve been saying behind my back. You think I’m stupid. You think I’m immature. You think I’m a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I’m Comic Sans, and I’m the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg...
aamar 12y ago
Nearly all of the answers give the same answer: that Comic Sans is a fine typeface that is only inappropriate (sometimes) because it sets an inappropriate tone. I don't believe that's the main problem at all. The problem is aesthetic[1]. Some letterforms are inherently unbalanced and create tension, notably the wild angles in the m, the serif in the s, and the tipping-over T. The wobbles in the I, n, and h distract as well. Beyond that, there are the subtler issues of different inclination on the verticals (j, t, l, h) and bad kerning for various character pairs. If Comic Sans were truly convincing as handwritten font, it would probably be better; on the plus side it is sufficiently far from that that it avoids falling in the very bottom of a handwriting uncanny valley. Now aesthetics doesn't necessarily impede legibility per se, but beauty and visual harmony are generally enjoyable, and use of Comic Sans eschews it. Compare it to the much better Comic Neue[2]. [1] example: http://kinkeaddesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Comic-Sans-Probs.jpg http://kinkeaddesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Comic-S... [2] http://comicneue.com/ http://comicneue.com/
- currysausage 12y ago
  Comic Jens is great too: http://www.netzallee.de/extra/comic-jens-en http://www.netzallee.de/extra/comic-jens-en
  - camillomiller 12y ago
    Compare ti to a good comics font, like Laffayette, and that's suddenly clear what's wrong with it
    - boomlinde 12y ago
      No, please explain what is wrong with it. You can't expect people to look at a font and reach the same subjective conclusions you have.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- boomlinde 12y ago
  Let's pretend for a minute that beauty isn't inherently subjective. Is beauty and visual harmony always a desired property?
  - currysausage 12y ago
    > Let's pretend for a minute that beauty isn't inherently subjective. Why just pretend? > Is beauty and visual harmony always a desired property? No. But bad technical execution is usually an undesired property, no matter what tone I want to set with a certain typeface.
    - boomlinde 12y ago
      > Why just pretend? Do you mean to say that there is any substantial evidence to the contrary? If so, you should elaborate. > No. But bad technical execution is usually an undesired property, no matter what tone I want to set with a certain typeface. OK. Please let me know what exact technique is being executed badly and how. Just dropping "bad technical execution" out of nowhere without substantiating or explaining the claim in any way isn't a valid argument.
  - fennecfoxen 12y ago
    When it comes to the process of getting information into someone's brain through the use of written language, yes, it's generally quite desirable not to make the brain work too hard to process the writing, or to otherwise distract it. (There are of course a few special-purpose exceptional cases.)
    - boomlinde 12y ago
      I am glad that someone agrees.
- kahirsch 12y ago
  I think the example that you linked[1] is quite strange. If you are going to write a form letter — "Dear Sir or Madam" — then, yes, you don't want a font that makes things look personal, like Comic Sans. Also "this note looks like it was written by a 12 year old"? Have you seen the handwriting of a 12 year old? That is, perhaps, a good indication of the disconnect between how professionals trained in graphic design perceive something and how the vast majority of the public perceive it. Most people wish their handwriting looked as neat and legible as Comic Sans. It doesn't look like it was written by a twelve year old, it looks like unprofessional. Which is why people like it. Many people, when they see something they wrote in a standard computer font, think that it looks wrong. It doesn't look like their words any more, it looks too cold, formal, impersonal, professional, machine-like. They don't want their words to look like something that has been reviewed by a series of editors, run by the legal department and then sent to the team of graphics artists for final layout. Comic Sans looks warm, friendly, human, and informal. Everything you list as aesthetic defects are exactly the characteristics that make Comic Sans successful. [1] http://kinkeaddesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Comic-Sans-Probs.jpg http://kinkeaddesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Comic-S...
  - aamar 12y ago
    The example was the first image I found that set several lines of text in mixed-case Comic Sans. Unfortunately all the examples I saw were either deliberately mocking or had tonal disjunctions, including the one I picked (which I agree makes my point less clear). Looking again now, I do see a Lorem ipsum, which I should have included instead: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-obX-NunkcIo/Te7HPuvuovI/AAAAAAAAANA/ctbkejgyTic/s1600/Comic+Sans.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-obX-NunkcIo/Te7HPuvuovI/AAAAAAAAAN... Many nice humanist sans-serif faces communicate "friendly, human, informal" well in practically any setting, but okay, there are folks who absolutely must have something that indicates "handwriting" in order to be sufficiently informal. Several typefaces fit that bill--Comic Neue, Architect's Daughter, maybe Just Another Hand--but seem nicer to read (not quite the same as legibility).
- coldtea 12y ago
  >I don't believe that's the main problem at all. The problem is aesthetic[1]. Some letterforms are inherently unbalanced and create tension, notably the wild angles in the m, the serif in the s, and the tipping-over T. The wobbles in the I, n, and h distract as well. Beyond that, there are the subtler issues of different inclination on the verticals (j, t, l, h) and bad kerning for various character pairs. So what if we don't care about those issues and we don't feel the tension?
  - aamar 12y ago
    > So what if we don't care about those issues and we don't feel the tension? A valid question that I can't answer well briefly. It takes some training or practice to recognize many forms of beauty, such as that in paintings, film, or buildings. The more educated/practiced one is in such things, it seems, the more one is able to pick out beauty and its lack. This consciousness makes ugly things more painful, but this is probably outweighed by the increased pleasure of beautiful things. (The idea of training improving one's perceptions isn't in tension with some person-to-person & culture-to-culture variance in what's beautiful.) Even without practice, certain kinds of beauty or visual tension (which btw is not always ugly, though usually is when not "resolved") probably affect you even if you're not aware of it. Such effects have been observed in the other media I mentioned, though I'm not sure if typefaces have been so studied. So even if you don't feel the tension, it may be there, and it would only rise to consciously perceived levels with long exposure. Obviously there's some theory and speculation involved, but many fundamental design principles do by & large work. Finally, let's say you conclude that it's a waste of time to enhance your critical eye for typefaces, you don't believe there is unconscious tension, etc. This is reasonable! But even then, you could still—nearly effortlessly—pick typefaces that work for you and work for us when you're communicating with a broad audience.
    - coldtea 12y ago
      >It takes some training or practice to recognize many forms of beauty, such as that in paintings, film, or buildings. Sure, but do you recognize a beauty that's actually there, or you merely recognize what you were taught to recognize? (e.g you respond with a Pavlovian reflex to things you were conditioned to see as beauty).
sambeau 12y ago
Without knowing anything about this guy, it seems like he'd be the kind of person who'd wear socks under his Crocs because it's comfortable and he doesn't care. Hahaha. When I knew Simon Peyton Jones he didn't wear shoes at all—just bare feet—in Glasgow—one of the coldest, wettest cities in the UK.
- AndrewGreen 12y ago
  Maybe he got more hardcore over time. I was (one of) his undergrads at UCL when he was a newly minted professor and I think he was one of the socks-with-sandals crew (vs sandals without, and those who wore regular shoes).
nraynaud 12y ago
Funny quip at the boxed wine, since good winemakers have started selling their stuff in BIB in the last 15 years in France. It shows a bit the lack of perspective of some people. They complain about comic sans to show membership to a group. Like cracking a Star Trek joke.
- Theodores 12y ago
  If fonts were rock bands then Comic Sans would be something like one of those 'X-factor' talent show boy-bands, i.e. popular with the masses yet utterly despised by 'proper musicians' for not making 'real music'. To fit into the 'I am a designer that cannot use anything other than Photoshop club' you have to mock comic sans in all of its uses and show utter disgust at what is a truly popular font. It is as easy to do as mocking the talent show boy bands. On the 'designer' learning curve it is up there with replacing all text with lorem ipsum. Despite what people say in general Comic Sans is used quite appropriately, particularly by those that are not designers. If you want people to go to the village fete then a 'designed' flyer is not what you want, something banged out in Word with Comic Sans actually conveys the message pretty well.
flurdy 12y ago
I used to use Comic Sans all over the place, even though I knew it was frowned upon. I did it mostly to piss off my designer friends and colleagues, although probably initially just because I liked it when back then when there was not much choice. I don't use it anymore as I can't be bothered to annoy people on purpose anymore, and nowadays there is not much effort needed to find a nice google font etc. Although I do still like to argue about tabs-spaces, curly brackets, pragmatic-mathematic etc.
loup-vaillant 12y ago
This looks like a status issue again. Comic Sans is an informal-looking font, which means low status. Seeing a high-status researcher using it in front of a relatively high-status audience speaking about a serious, high-status topic… is jarring for many people. On a similar note, I know of a guy who often illustrates his very serious philosophical points with Japanese anime references. Many people don't like such status dissonance. They literally cringe. I don't, and I suspect Simon P.J. doesn't either. And I don't see why we should: we're the kind of people who care more about the structure of an argument than the clothes the speaker is wearing. This is also apparent in His talk, "How to Write a Great Research Paper"[1, 2]. His counsel is all about readability and engagement, never about sounding serious or important. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dkRsTqdDA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dkRsTqdDA [2]: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/writing-a-paper-slides.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers... --- As a last note, I have seen suggested here, and in the Stack Overflow thread, that there are much better fonts out there (Comic Neue seems to be the most popular alternative). But let's imagine for a second that SPJ used Comic Neue instead of Comic Sans. Would that make people stop asking why he's using this font? I don't think so.
- lostcolony 12y ago
  I'm not sure that's it. Using anime and geek references in a presentation to 'the suits' is going to be jarring and either missed or frowned upon, but using it amongst devs is perfectly accepted. It fits the mold of a status issue. Comic sans, though, would likely receive a -worse- reception amongst those technically inclined, because we've been implicitly trained not to use it by seeing how it's talked about (on places like Hacker News). In fact, making a big deal about it seems -exactly- the sort of thing that happens amongst the low status people; designers balking at it being unprofessional, and devs balking because we like to nitpick (it's like finding a misspelled word in the slides). It might be related to status, but in that case it's complicated; the low status people are looking for ways to appear high status (avoid comic sans), or ways to make others appear low status (eww, look, he used comic sans), whereas the high status people want to protect the integrity of status; a low status person using comic sans is likely viewed a bit patronizing ('well he's a dev; they don't know any better'), and another high status person would be more likely to be defended for the choice, if not have it outright ignored ('the content is what's important; he was just having a bit of fun').
Muzzaf 12y ago
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html > John Tukey almost always dressed very casually. He would go into an important office and it would take a long time before the other fellow realized that this is a first-class man and he had better listen. For a long time John has had to overcome this kind of hostility. It's wasted effort! I didn't say you should conform; I said ``The appearance of conforming gets you a long way.'' If you chose to assert your ego in any number of ways, ``I am going to do it my way,'' you pay a small steady price throughout the whole of your professional career. And this, over a whole lifetime, adds up to an enormous amount of needless trouble.
- loup-vaillant 12y ago
  On the other hand, thanks to people like John Tukey, technical folks can now spare the suit and still be taken seriously. The price he paid may have been worth the benefit we now have.
  - Muzzaf 12y ago
    The day when the entire arXiv is re-typeset in Comic Sans cannot come soon enough. Rebels like Peyton-Jones are truly fighting the good fight.
    - ZenoArrow 12y ago
      That's not the same thing. The argument is for choice, not replacement. A more appropriate example would be a single arXiv article written in Comic Sans without detracting from the message. As for the wider debate, people have pointed out that it's a matter of form vs. function, but there's another aspect, which is intention. If you do not intend to convey any extra information by using Comic Sans, then discussing the font choice is irrelevant. It's only when Comic Sans is used to signify something that the whole form vs. function argument comes into play. I, for one, am glad that there is a popular font that pisses experts off, Comic Sans is the punk rock of the font world, I hope others will make an impact.
klunger 12y ago
The problem is that fonts are used to signify tone. When I see Comic Sans, the tone I read the text in is "cartoon dog." Although this particular interpretation may be just me, I believe many people have similarly toned readings (it comes down to cultural interpretation of symbols...). So, it is jarring and inappropriate for many people to see Comic Sans, in certain contexts. There are many equally legible fonts out there which do not signal "cartoon dog" or similar. So, yes, you can can present your research in the voice of a cartoon dog. But, it is pretty tone deaf.
- jarcane 12y ago
  I think tone is the correct argument against it. It is essentially kitsch, in font form, and because of that it's going to devalue the information it presents in many contexts, and is thus only likely to go unregarded in contexts where kitsch is basically expected. I recently received a letter from the Finnish employment department demanding more documentation of an alleged business interest. This is a government official making a request that potentially threatens my livelihood. In Comic Sans. As an emotive impact, it was very much like your "cartoon dog". Imagine getting a Garfield condolence card as a layoff notice, or seeing a :) smilie at the end of a foreclosure notice. It seems to immediately impart a lack of respect for the gravity of the situation.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Its entirely subjective. I for instance can't recognize comic sans or any other font than Courier by sight. So for me it carries no insult. So again, what's wrong with that font? Nothing, intrinsically. Its all in the 'internet meme' part that says its passé. Quit subscribing to that (or like me, never emotionally invest in any silly meme) and the issue disappears.
    - jarcane 12y ago
      All aesthetics are subjective, because they are based primarily on associative memory. That's not an argument against their value, that's merely a refusal to acknowledge it.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
I'd say the problem is that Comic Sans is already an established meme. Everyone who knows what Comic Sans is already knows that it's bad, and a design smell, and you absolutely positively should never ever use it for anything. Of course, the little know secret that was just brought up here is that no one really knows why. It doesn't matter to them. There are some good reasons to restrain yourself from using that font in some situations, but current attitude towards Comic Sans is pure fashion. It's the exact same situation as programmers have with goto - there's this widely established meme of "goto considered harmful" that most have heard somewhere, but have no clue why it's so except that it is. Only few of us know why using goto leads to bad consequences (and what those consequences are); even fewer could name situations where goto is a right tool for the job. For the rest, it's fashion.
hysan 12y ago
As someone who has read up on typography specifically to pick better fonts for the worksheets I give to my students (teaching English in a foreign country), Comic Sans is actually a very good font to use. As a handwritten style font, it was designed specifically for legibility. The characters and easy to distinguish and it's actually a good font choice for dyslexic people. Since the topic of the presentation is in the field of education, I think that Comic Sans (and other similar readable fonts - Comic Neue, Open Dyslexic) is a very appropriate choice. It shows that the presenter is cognizant of getting information across efficiently. And for all those detractors, I'd like to ask them, "Do you ever use Comic Sans (or similar fonts) in your classes? If not, why not?"
Pxtl 12y ago
The problem with comic sans is the associations it has, not the font itself. Comic sans is the preferred font of passive-aggressive clip-art smattered notes that use "quotes" for "emphasis" to explain that men of the dorm "must" rinse their shavings down the drain or that this is America and we speak "English".
thenduks 12y ago
Seems to me that the real/only reason for SPJ not to use Comic Sans is that using it distracts people (in general, since he notes that he gets lots of comments about it, I'm not personally distracted by it) from what he's saying. So it might make sense to use a font that goes pretty much unnoticed, to put the focus on the content of the talk. Then again, maybe he is thinking more along the lines of "if my font choice is the most important thing to you, feel free to leave/not watch this talk." I feel like, if I were advocating something (FP, Haskell, new ways of teaching computer science, or whatever), I would want to do everything I could to keep the discussion on-topic.
MileyCyrax 12y ago
>I frequently see remarks like 'Simon Peyton-Jones, great talk about Haskell but why did he use Comic Sans?' but nobody's ever been able to tell me what is wrong with it. It's a nice legible font, I like it. So until somebody explains to me ... Of all the little things that annoy me about Comic Sans, this is by far the worst. Suppose I showed some of my Haskell code to a group of people and they all told me that every Haskell expert says I should keep my IO functions as minimal and separate as I can. I ask them why, and they assure me again that Simon Peyton-Jones himself is adamant about this, but none of them seem to be able to put an explanation into words. I wouldn't just dismiss them with "it works fine for me" and not even bother to Google something like "haskell separate impure code". So why do so many people do that when the advice is coming from designers instead of engineers?
- thenduks 12y ago
  I think your logic is flawed a bit here. A lot of people absolutely will dismiss suggestions like "keep your IO functions minimal/separate" and "you should test your code" and etc essentially saying "it works fine for me." But in general I agree with you. "Until somebody explains to me... a rational reason..." - I will explain it: It is detracting (however unfortunate that may be) from your message/content.
alricb 12y ago
SPJ isn't a developer, or at least not mainly a developer. He's a computer science researcher, one of the top researchers of his generation in his field. Among his peers, what counts are the contributions you make, not what shoes you wear or what font you use. Some researchers will make their presentations look nice because they care about aesthetics, but as long as the meat is there and the slides are readable, nobody really minds odd-looking fonts. In a way, this is a bit like the encounter of a Canadian and a Scottish officer on South Beveland (Netherlands) in October 1944. > In the early hours of the 29th I was out with a unit of carriers, maintaining a standing patrol on the left flank of the battalion. In order to complete our patrol, we utilized some Dutch bicycles to patrol down a dyke to the bank of of the West Scheldt. All our men were desperately tired and in a filthy, wet, muddy condition. On our way we were terribly surprised to find a party of what were obviously Allied troops landing in a small boat. Then forth from one of the boat onto the shore stepped what seemed to me to be the finest soldier I had ever seen in my life, a fine figure of a Scottish gentleman, carrying the shepherd's crook affected by some senior Scottish officers in place of a cane or a swagger stick. He had a small pack neatly adjusted on his back. (I had absolutely no idea where mine was and couldn't care less.) His gas cape was neatly rolled. (I had last sen mine somewhere around Eterville.) He had his pistol in a neatly blancoed web holster. (I had mine in my hip pocket.) He had a neatly kept map case. (I had mine stuck in my breast pocket.) He was a Colonel and I was a Captain. His boots were neatly polished and I was wearing turned-down rubber boots. I did manage to salute, although I think it must have been haphazard. He politely enquired if we were Canadians. (Although who else could have looked as we did?) I assured his we were. He asked if I could direct him to battalion headquarters. I did better than that. I escorted him to battalion headquarters. I was taking no chances on losing such a beautiful specimen to the German Army. * *: D. G. Godspeed, Battle Royal (Toronto 1962), 509. (cited in Terry Copp, The Brigade (Mechanicsburg, PA 2007), 160.)

37 points by papaf 12y ago

Steko 12y ago

38 comments and no McSweeny's link? http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole Listen up. I know the shit you’ve been saying behind my back. You think I’m stupid. You think I’m immature. You think I’m a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I’m Comic Sans, and I’m the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg...

aamar 12y ago

Nearly all of the answers give the same answer: that Comic Sans is a fine typeface that is only inappropriate (sometimes) because it sets an inappropriate tone. I don't believe that's the main problem at all. The problem is aesthetic[1]. Some letterforms are inherently unbalanced and create tension, notably the wild angles in the m, the serif in the s, and the tipping-over T. The wobbles in the I, n, and h distract as well. Beyond that, there are the subtler issues of different inclination on the verticals (j, t, l, h) and bad kerning for various character pairs. If Comic Sans were truly convincing as handwritten font, it would probably be better; on the plus side it is sufficiently far from that that it avoids falling in the very bottom of a handwriting uncanny valley. Now aesthetics doesn't necessarily impede legibility per se, but beauty and visual harmony are generally enjoyable, and use of Comic Sans eschews it. Compare it to the much better Comic Neue[2]. [1] example: http://kinkeaddesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Comic-Sans-Probs.jpg http://kinkeaddesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Comic-S... [2] http://comicneue.com/ http://comicneue.com/

currysausage 12y ago
Comic Jens is great too: http://www.netzallee.de/extra/comic-jens-en http://www.netzallee.de/extra/comic-jens-en
- camillomiller 12y ago
  Compare ti to a good comics font, like Laffayette, and that's suddenly clear what's wrong with it
  - boomlinde 12y ago
    No, please explain what is wrong with it. You can't expect people to look at a font and reach the same subjective conclusions you have.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
boomlinde 12y ago
Let's pretend for a minute that beauty isn't inherently subjective. Is beauty and visual harmony always a desired property?
- currysausage 12y ago
  > Let's pretend for a minute that beauty isn't inherently subjective. Why just pretend? > Is beauty and visual harmony always a desired property? No. But bad technical execution is usually an undesired property, no matter what tone I want to set with a certain typeface.
  - boomlinde 12y ago
    > Why just pretend? Do you mean to say that there is any substantial evidence to the contrary? If so, you should elaborate. > No. But bad technical execution is usually an undesired property, no matter what tone I want to set with a certain typeface. OK. Please let me know what exact technique is being executed badly and how. Just dropping "bad technical execution" out of nowhere without substantiating or explaining the claim in any way isn't a valid argument.
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  When it comes to the process of getting information into someone's brain through the use of written language, yes, it's generally quite desirable not to make the brain work too hard to process the writing, or to otherwise distract it. (There are of course a few special-purpose exceptional cases.)
  - boomlinde 12y ago
    I am glad that someone agrees.
kahirsch 12y ago
I think the example that you linked[1] is quite strange. If you are going to write a form letter — "Dear Sir or Madam" — then, yes, you don't want a font that makes things look personal, like Comic Sans. Also "this note looks like it was written by a 12 year old"? Have you seen the handwriting of a 12 year old? That is, perhaps, a good indication of the disconnect between how professionals trained in graphic design perceive something and how the vast majority of the public perceive it. Most people wish their handwriting looked as neat and legible as Comic Sans. It doesn't look like it was written by a twelve year old, it looks like unprofessional. Which is why people like it. Many people, when they see something they wrote in a standard computer font, think that it looks wrong. It doesn't look like their words any more, it looks too cold, formal, impersonal, professional, machine-like. They don't want their words to look like something that has been reviewed by a series of editors, run by the legal department and then sent to the team of graphics artists for final layout. Comic Sans looks warm, friendly, human, and informal. Everything you list as aesthetic defects are exactly the characteristics that make Comic Sans successful. [1] http://kinkeaddesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Comic-Sans-Probs.jpg http://kinkeaddesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Comic-S...
- aamar 12y ago
  The example was the first image I found that set several lines of text in mixed-case Comic Sans. Unfortunately all the examples I saw were either deliberately mocking or had tonal disjunctions, including the one I picked (which I agree makes my point less clear). Looking again now, I do see a Lorem ipsum, which I should have included instead: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-obX-NunkcIo/Te7HPuvuovI/AAAAAAAAANA/ctbkejgyTic/s1600/Comic+Sans.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-obX-NunkcIo/Te7HPuvuovI/AAAAAAAAAN... Many nice humanist sans-serif faces communicate "friendly, human, informal" well in practically any setting, but okay, there are folks who absolutely must have something that indicates "handwriting" in order to be sufficiently informal. Several typefaces fit that bill--Comic Neue, Architect's Daughter, maybe Just Another Hand--but seem nicer to read (not quite the same as legibility).
coldtea 12y ago
>I don't believe that's the main problem at all. The problem is aesthetic[1]. Some letterforms are inherently unbalanced and create tension, notably the wild angles in the m, the serif in the s, and the tipping-over T. The wobbles in the I, n, and h distract as well. Beyond that, there are the subtler issues of different inclination on the verticals (j, t, l, h) and bad kerning for various character pairs. So what if we don't care about those issues and we don't feel the tension?
- aamar 12y ago
  > So what if we don't care about those issues and we don't feel the tension? A valid question that I can't answer well briefly. It takes some training or practice to recognize many forms of beauty, such as that in paintings, film, or buildings. The more educated/practiced one is in such things, it seems, the more one is able to pick out beauty and its lack. This consciousness makes ugly things more painful, but this is probably outweighed by the increased pleasure of beautiful things. (The idea of training improving one's perceptions isn't in tension with some person-to-person & culture-to-culture variance in what's beautiful.) Even without practice, certain kinds of beauty or visual tension (which btw is not always ugly, though usually is when not "resolved") probably affect you even if you're not aware of it. Such effects have been observed in the other media I mentioned, though I'm not sure if typefaces have been so studied. So even if you don't feel the tension, it may be there, and it would only rise to consciously perceived levels with long exposure. Obviously there's some theory and speculation involved, but many fundamental design principles do by & large work. Finally, let's say you conclude that it's a waste of time to enhance your critical eye for typefaces, you don't believe there is unconscious tension, etc. This is reasonable! But even then, you could still—nearly effortlessly—pick typefaces that work for you and work for us when you're communicating with a broad audience.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >It takes some training or practice to recognize many forms of beauty, such as that in paintings, film, or buildings. Sure, but do you recognize a beauty that's actually there, or you merely recognize what you were taught to recognize? (e.g you respond with a Pavlovian reflex to things you were conditioned to see as beauty).

sambeau 12y ago

Without knowing anything about this guy, it seems like he'd be the kind of person who'd wear socks under his Crocs because it's comfortable and he doesn't care. Hahaha. When I knew Simon Peyton Jones he didn't wear shoes at all—just bare feet—in Glasgow—one of the coldest, wettest cities in the UK.

AndrewGreen 12y ago
Maybe he got more hardcore over time. I was (one of) his undergrads at UCL when he was a newly minted professor and I think he was one of the socks-with-sandals crew (vs sandals without, and those who wore regular shoes).

nraynaud 12y ago

Funny quip at the boxed wine, since good winemakers have started selling their stuff in BIB in the last 15 years in France. It shows a bit the lack of perspective of some people. They complain about comic sans to show membership to a group. Like cracking a Star Trek joke.

Theodores 12y ago
If fonts were rock bands then Comic Sans would be something like one of those 'X-factor' talent show boy-bands, i.e. popular with the masses yet utterly despised by 'proper musicians' for not making 'real music'. To fit into the 'I am a designer that cannot use anything other than Photoshop club' you have to mock comic sans in all of its uses and show utter disgust at what is a truly popular font. It is as easy to do as mocking the talent show boy bands. On the 'designer' learning curve it is up there with replacing all text with lorem ipsum. Despite what people say in general Comic Sans is used quite appropriately, particularly by those that are not designers. If you want people to go to the village fete then a 'designed' flyer is not what you want, something banged out in Word with Comic Sans actually conveys the message pretty well.

flurdy 12y ago

I used to use Comic Sans all over the place, even though I knew it was frowned upon. I did it mostly to piss off my designer friends and colleagues, although probably initially just because I liked it when back then when there was not much choice. I don't use it anymore as I can't be bothered to annoy people on purpose anymore, and nowadays there is not much effort needed to find a nice google font etc. Although I do still like to argue about tabs-spaces, curly brackets, pragmatic-mathematic etc.

loup-vaillant 12y ago

This looks like a status issue again. Comic Sans is an informal-looking font, which means low status. Seeing a high-status researcher using it in front of a relatively high-status audience speaking about a serious, high-status topic… is jarring for many people. On a similar note, I know of a guy who often illustrates his very serious philosophical points with Japanese anime references. Many people don't like such status dissonance. They literally cringe. I don't, and I suspect Simon P.J. doesn't either. And I don't see why we should: we're the kind of people who care more about the structure of an argument than the clothes the speaker is wearing. This is also apparent in His talk, "How to Write a Great Research Paper"[1, 2]. His counsel is all about readability and engagement, never about sounding serious or important. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dkRsTqdDA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dkRsTqdDA [2]: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/writing-a-paper-slides.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers... --- As a last note, I have seen suggested here, and in the Stack Overflow thread, that there are much better fonts out there (Comic Neue seems to be the most popular alternative). But let's imagine for a second that SPJ used Comic Neue instead of Comic Sans. Would that make people stop asking why he's using this font? I don't think so.

lostcolony 12y ago
I'm not sure that's it. Using anime and geek references in a presentation to 'the suits' is going to be jarring and either missed or frowned upon, but using it amongst devs is perfectly accepted. It fits the mold of a status issue. Comic sans, though, would likely receive a -worse- reception amongst those technically inclined, because we've been implicitly trained not to use it by seeing how it's talked about (on places like Hacker News). In fact, making a big deal about it seems -exactly- the sort of thing that happens amongst the low status people; designers balking at it being unprofessional, and devs balking because we like to nitpick (it's like finding a misspelled word in the slides). It might be related to status, but in that case it's complicated; the low status people are looking for ways to appear high status (avoid comic sans), or ways to make others appear low status (eww, look, he used comic sans), whereas the high status people want to protect the integrity of status; a low status person using comic sans is likely viewed a bit patronizing ('well he's a dev; they don't know any better'), and another high status person would be more likely to be defended for the choice, if not have it outright ignored ('the content is what's important; he was just having a bit of fun').

Muzzaf 12y ago

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html > John Tukey almost always dressed very casually. He would go into an important office and it would take a long time before the other fellow realized that this is a first-class man and he had better listen. For a long time John has had to overcome this kind of hostility. It's wasted effort! I didn't say you should conform; I said ``The appearance of conforming gets you a long way.'' If you chose to assert your ego in any number of ways, ``I am going to do it my way,'' you pay a small steady price throughout the whole of your professional career. And this, over a whole lifetime, adds up to an enormous amount of needless trouble.

loup-vaillant 12y ago
On the other hand, thanks to people like John Tukey, technical folks can now spare the suit and still be taken seriously. The price he paid may have been worth the benefit we now have.
- Muzzaf 12y ago
  The day when the entire arXiv is re-typeset in Comic Sans cannot come soon enough. Rebels like Peyton-Jones are truly fighting the good fight.
  - ZenoArrow 12y ago
    That's not the same thing. The argument is for choice, not replacement. A more appropriate example would be a single arXiv article written in Comic Sans without detracting from the message. As for the wider debate, people have pointed out that it's a matter of form vs. function, but there's another aspect, which is intention. If you do not intend to convey any extra information by using Comic Sans, then discussing the font choice is irrelevant. It's only when Comic Sans is used to signify something that the whole form vs. function argument comes into play. I, for one, am glad that there is a popular font that pisses experts off, Comic Sans is the punk rock of the font world, I hope others will make an impact.

klunger 12y ago

The problem is that fonts are used to signify tone. When I see Comic Sans, the tone I read the text in is "cartoon dog." Although this particular interpretation may be just me, I believe many people have similarly toned readings (it comes down to cultural interpretation of symbols...). So, it is jarring and inappropriate for many people to see Comic Sans, in certain contexts. There are many equally legible fonts out there which do not signal "cartoon dog" or similar. So, yes, you can can present your research in the voice of a cartoon dog. But, it is pretty tone deaf.

jarcane 12y ago
I think tone is the correct argument against it. It is essentially kitsch, in font form, and because of that it's going to devalue the information it presents in many contexts, and is thus only likely to go unregarded in contexts where kitsch is basically expected. I recently received a letter from the Finnish employment department demanding more documentation of an alleged business interest. This is a government official making a request that potentially threatens my livelihood. In Comic Sans. As an emotive impact, it was very much like your "cartoon dog". Imagine getting a Garfield condolence card as a layoff notice, or seeing a :) smilie at the end of a foreclosure notice. It seems to immediately impart a lack of respect for the gravity of the situation.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Its entirely subjective. I for instance can't recognize comic sans or any other font than Courier by sight. So for me it carries no insult. So again, what's wrong with that font? Nothing, intrinsically. Its all in the 'internet meme' part that says its passé. Quit subscribing to that (or like me, never emotionally invest in any silly meme) and the issue disappears.
  - jarcane 12y ago
    All aesthetics are subjective, because they are based primarily on associative memory. That's not an argument against their value, that's merely a refusal to acknowledge it.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

I'd say the problem is that Comic Sans is already an established meme. Everyone who knows what Comic Sans is already knows that it's bad, and a design smell, and you absolutely positively should never ever use it for anything. Of course, the little know secret that was just brought up here is that no one really knows why. It doesn't matter to them. There are some good reasons to restrain yourself from using that font in some situations, but current attitude towards Comic Sans is pure fashion. It's the exact same situation as programmers have with goto - there's this widely established meme of "goto considered harmful" that most have heard somewhere, but have no clue why it's so except that it is. Only few of us know why using goto leads to bad consequences (and what those consequences are); even fewer could name situations where goto is a right tool for the job. For the rest, it's fashion.

hysan 12y ago

As someone who has read up on typography specifically to pick better fonts for the worksheets I give to my students (teaching English in a foreign country), Comic Sans is actually a very good font to use. As a handwritten style font, it was designed specifically for legibility. The characters and easy to distinguish and it's actually a good font choice for dyslexic people. Since the topic of the presentation is in the field of education, I think that Comic Sans (and other similar readable fonts - Comic Neue, Open Dyslexic) is a very appropriate choice. It shows that the presenter is cognizant of getting information across efficiently. And for all those detractors, I'd like to ask them, "Do you ever use Comic Sans (or similar fonts) in your classes? If not, why not?"

Pxtl 12y ago

The problem with comic sans is the associations it has, not the font itself. Comic sans is the preferred font of passive-aggressive clip-art smattered notes that use "quotes" for "emphasis" to explain that men of the dorm "must" rinse their shavings down the drain or that this is America and we speak "English".

thenduks 12y ago

Seems to me that the real/only reason for SPJ not to use Comic Sans is that using it distracts people (in general, since he notes that he gets lots of comments about it, I'm not personally distracted by it) from what he's saying. So it might make sense to use a font that goes pretty much unnoticed, to put the focus on the content of the talk. Then again, maybe he is thinking more along the lines of "if my font choice is the most important thing to you, feel free to leave/not watch this talk." I feel like, if I were advocating something (FP, Haskell, new ways of teaching computer science, or whatever), I would want to do everything I could to keep the discussion on-topic.

MileyCyrax 12y ago

>I frequently see remarks like 'Simon Peyton-Jones, great talk about Haskell but why did he use Comic Sans?' but nobody's ever been able to tell me what is wrong with it. It's a nice legible font, I like it. So until somebody explains to me ... Of all the little things that annoy me about Comic Sans, this is by far the worst. Suppose I showed some of my Haskell code to a group of people and they all told me that every Haskell expert says I should keep my IO functions as minimal and separate as I can. I ask them why, and they assure me again that Simon Peyton-Jones himself is adamant about this, but none of them seem to be able to put an explanation into words. I wouldn't just dismiss them with "it works fine for me" and not even bother to Google something like "haskell separate impure code". So why do so many people do that when the advice is coming from designers instead of engineers?

thenduks 12y ago
I think your logic is flawed a bit here. A lot of people absolutely will dismiss suggestions like "keep your IO functions minimal/separate" and "you should test your code" and etc essentially saying "it works fine for me." But in general I agree with you. "Until somebody explains to me... a rational reason..." - I will explain it: It is detracting (however unfortunate that may be) from your message/content.

alricb 12y ago

SPJ isn't a developer, or at least not mainly a developer. He's a computer science researcher, one of the top researchers of his generation in his field. Among his peers, what counts are the contributions you make, not what shoes you wear or what font you use. Some researchers will make their presentations look nice because they care about aesthetics, but as long as the meat is there and the slides are readable, nobody really minds odd-looking fonts. In a way, this is a bit like the encounter of a Canadian and a Scottish officer on South Beveland (Netherlands) in October 1944. > In the early hours of the 29th I was out with a unit of carriers, maintaining a standing patrol on the left flank of the battalion. In order to complete our patrol, we utilized some Dutch bicycles to patrol down a dyke to the bank of of the West Scheldt. All our men were desperately tired and in a filthy, wet, muddy condition. On our way we were terribly surprised to find a party of what were obviously Allied troops landing in a small boat. Then forth from one of the boat onto the shore stepped what seemed to me to be the finest soldier I had ever seen in my life, a fine figure of a Scottish gentleman, carrying the shepherd's crook affected by some senior Scottish officers in place of a cane or a swagger stick. He had a small pack neatly adjusted on his back. (I had absolutely no idea where mine was and couldn't care less.) His gas cape was neatly rolled. (I had last sen mine somewhere around Eterville.) He had his pistol in a neatly blancoed web holster. (I had mine in my hip pocket.) He had a neatly kept map case. (I had mine stuck in my breast pocket.) He was a Colonel and I was a Captain. His boots were neatly polished and I was wearing turned-down rubber boots. I did manage to salute, although I think it must have been haphazard. He politely enquired if we were Canadians. (Although who else could have looked as we did?) I assured his we were. He asked if I could direct him to battalion headquarters. I did better than that. I escorted him to battalion headquarters. I was taking no chances on losing such a beautiful specimen to the German Army. * *: D. G. Godspeed, Battle Royal (Toronto 1962), 509. (cited in Terry Copp, The Brigade (Mechanicsburg, PA 2007), 160.)