Serious Sans

[imomus]

Comments

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Cool. I have at least something to use against people who engage in annoyingly hyperbolic "I hate comic sans" humor. It's developed into an internet megaconsensus all out of proportion to Comic Sans' supposed aesthetic sins. Trotting out stuff like this (http://achewood.com/index.php?date=07052007) as humor is about as challenging and innovative as mashing together a bunch of monkeys, pirates, robots and ninjas and calling the resultant crap stew funny.

[thegooseking.livejournal.com]

Your mistake appears to be in considering it humour.

Comic Sans hate is srs bzns.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

oh how I wish this was not-humor (http://bancomicsans.com/image/bunnypunch.png), rather than painfully not-funny.

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

I think the joke in that cartoon was that the reaction of everyone was inappropriate, that a mob of people are beating the shit out of someone over something as trivial as a typeface, that people on the Internet hate Comic Sans just a little too much for their own good. So I thought it was funny.

[thegooseking.livejournal.com]

Indeed, Achewood has always more poked fun at internet phenomena than joined in. One only needs to look at the 'lolcat' arc for that to be abundantly clear. Or the strip where characters from webcomics (their activities are so poorly conveyed) showed up at Ray's toilet party.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

I really like the Achewood guy's ear for dialog, but I took the comic sans thing as just another "humorous" overstatement about how much they hate comic sans, because it pretty much just matches the tone of existing bancomicsans junk without really exceeding it. Bancomicsans.com itself is all slightly tongue-in-cheek, but this is an example of Ha-Ha, Only Serious. (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/ha-ha-only-serious.html)

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Here's a list of reasons why I hate Comic Sans, not to be ironic or funny, this is me being serious/angry:
-I can't fucking stand seeing it used in serious design (I have to walk past a ritzy frozen yogurt place in Hollywood as I'm protesting certain things not related to Comic Sans)
-I can't stand when it is used in PowerPoint Presentations, especially when said Power Point Presentations are inside Mormon establishments
-I can't stand seeing Comic Sans used in every stupid fucking "caution" sign, every fucking "go away you are not wanted here in this restaurant, we have a rat infestation and they will bite your fucking head off because they ate every single warning flier that used Comic Sans in the world" etc etc
-I DO NOT EVER WANT TO SEE RAINBOW GRADIENT COMIC SANS TYPEFACE EVER AGAIN, EVER EVER EVER EVER

All would be fine if people learned NOT TO USE THE FUCKING MOST OBNOXIOUS FONT IN THE GODDAMN WORLD

I now leave you with this badly Photoshopped picture of me:

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

This comment was entertaining enough to win me over.

[thomascott.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you should consider copyrighting that background before McCain's entourage appropriate it. ;)

[diesel-pioneer.livejournal.com]

I want something to use against the equally hyperbolic, twice as disturbing "I love helvetica™" megaconsensus.

[viceanglais.livejournal.com]

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

This I dig.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Lazy, my dear.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Can you imagine the bible written in comic sans?

[sirwilliam.livejournal.com]

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

You know, I was expecting it to look odd but it doesn't. It looks friendly and hopeful, and they're not words I usually use to describe the bible.

Typography is important!

[sirwilliam.livejournal.com]

When I think of the Bible, which is not often, I picture it set in Fraktur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur_%28script%29).

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

In regards to Weber's ethical ratings system; whilst the idea of 'ethics made easy' is appealing, I think it has a very serious flaw -- Ethics is about assertive action, not passive compliance.

Ethics over-simplified takes away the most important aspect of being an "ethical" person -- actually having to consider and understand your own actions and your place within a society.

It takes away the intellectual discourse that's part of ethics and just sticks the equivalent of digital Good and Bad sticker on products. That's potentially very dangerous.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

indeed, and it's very easy to imagine who the first to use it would be assuming the idea did take off.

[thomascott.livejournal.com]

Glad someone else made this point.
I find it disturbing how these 'ethics' adopt the vernacular of religion, there seems to be an in-built assumption that some greater power must decide what is 'righteous' and what is not, that the label is implicit and that the consumer need bother no further with the troublesome business of thinking for him/herself.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5376/

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Ironically, about 300 million of these "bar code readers" (cell phones) are thrown away every year, world-wide. (That's about 200,000 tons/180 million kilograms, for anyone keeping track.) Each discarded phone contains arsenic, lead, nickel, cadmium and other toxins and, of course, urea-formaldehyde (most thermo-set plastics) which, when the phones are incinerated or crushed, re-enter the environment.

Perhaps the most eco-friendly thing one can do, in this context, is to eschew cell phones. It can be done. Maybe we'll see a "slow conversation" movement that encourages people to communicate in-person, rather than through cell phones.

Comic Sans

[viceanglais.livejournal.com]

Re: Comic Sans

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Bud's wife was nicknamed Curly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Curlyhoward.jpg) in the mid 20th century? Must've been a real looker.

Why I reject Comic Sans

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

True, hating Comic Sans is about as obvious as hating George W. Bush or Paris Hilton or Coldplay. Though, beneath the herdish consensus, there are reasons to dislike this font and its cultural connotations.

First, there are the sorts of communications that Comic Sans typically finds itself used on, and the sorts of people who use it. The passive-aggressive control freak, sugar-coating their barbed missives with a layer of content-free faux-friendliness. The unfunny class/office clown. The sad-eyed guy who just wants to be liked and will latch on, limpet-like, to any show of friendliness, however token. The big-haired, overly-made-up lady who still dots her 'i's with love-hearts. And so on.

Comic Sans is a pre-measured dose of insincere friendliness, an E-number of low-grade funniness, a spam-marketed sugar-pill promising instant likeability. It is a crutch, eschewed by those who don't need it, and a dead giveaway that a communication isn't sincerely friendly, funny or likeable, but wants to be seen as such. Not to mention a curiously formalised way of being faux-informal, like blue jeans on casual Friday.