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Comic Mono

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Re: Comic Mono

#81

Post by nescioquid »

bane wrote: post #32

I once worked with a guy who wrote everything in Comic Sans - despite being counseled about it repeatedly. Fonts set a "tone" to your writing, and while Comic Sans if maybe fine for inviting people to in impromptu office pizza party, it represents yourself poorly in a professional environment. Here's some examples of how inappropriate some of his emails were (all real): - Contract negotiations - HR issues - Announcin…

> despite being counseled about it repeatedly

For me, this makes it farce. Partly because the guy continues to do it after learning it bugs everyone else, and partly because of the earnestness around what fonts someone uses in office emails.

My guess is that you were driven to that level of earnestness. What was it like to have a disagreement with this guy about something that mattered (more)?

Re: Comic Mono

#82

Post by mbo »

ThePadawan wrote: post #78
porpoise wrote: post #43

When writing my dissertation, I found that changing the font to Comic Sans or Papyrus is an effective way of forcing myself to be self-critical and preventing myself from, for lack of a better phrase, "falling in love" with what I wrote (the "scholarly" classic-looking fonts like Sabon, Garamond, Baskerville tend to have that effect on me)

This is why Bertrand Meyer formats all his lecture slides this way. See e.g. http://se.inf.ethz.ch/courses/2013a_spring/JavaCSharp/lectur... It's readable enough for students to refer back to, but ugly enough that they prefer listening instead of reading along.

Simon Peyton Jones (Haskell committee) also formats all his lecture slides in Comic Sans: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1bd1ia/spj_and_com...

Re: Comic Mono

#83

Post by neolog »

nerdponx wrote: post #72
neolog wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so wildly inappropriate Comic Sans is a nice handwriting-style font. Isn't it just the name that makes people think it's inappropriate?

That might just be my personal taste, then. But no, I think a fun handwriting-style font is inappropriate for all of the cases mentioned.

Handwriting doesn't necessarily mean "fun".

Re: Comic Mono

#84

Post by alpaca128 »

torgard wrote: post #35

I legitimately like it. No joke.

I think due to the monospaced style as well as a relatively small font size it looks a lot more regular and just...less boring than other fonts. I was positively surprised, too.

Re: Comic Mono

#86

Post by Biganon »

cs702 wrote: post #24

Comic Sans and its descendants are... indestructible . No matter how much some font designers complain about it, and how often they criticize it, Comic Sans keeps coming back, like the Terminator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Sans#Reception_and_use_i... Among the most incongruous uses of Comic Sans I've seen, a few stand out: * A plaque on a large statue of a historical figure in a public space: https://www.bi…

I've always been quite irritated by the amount of disdain toward Comic Sans.

Partly because I feel like this is such an easy target, and people who have just learned 2 or 3 things about typography are very keen on bashing Comic Sans to show off their newly acquired knowledge.

Partly because, let's face it, it's not that bad. What it does, it does well, it's pretty legible, no glyph stands out from the general harmony, etc.

There's a reason it became massively used. It was included in windows because it was part of Microsoft Chat, which back then was heavily comic book styled, with speech bubbles for messages etc (something that has since then become a standard in IM). It appeared in the font drop-down list, and people picked it when they wanted their message to look a bit informal, not too severe. Of course, someone with design knowledge is able to achieve this without resorting to this specific font (or even a funny font), but most people lack this knowledge.

Re: Comic Mono

#87

Post by kzrdude »

cs702 wrote: post #24

Comic Sans and its descendants are... indestructible . No matter how much some font designers complain about it, and how often they criticize it, Comic Sans keeps coming back, like the Terminator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Sans#Reception_and_use_i... Among the most incongruous uses of Comic Sans I've seen, a few stand out: * A plaque on a large statue of a historical figure in a public space: https://www.bi…

I think it's meme'd too much. Using comic sans sometimes makes sense.

Re: Comic Mono

#88

Post by kzrdude »

mikehollinger wrote: post #63
nerdponx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I truly don't understand why. Are people just that sick of Times New Roman and Calibri? It's not like I especially hate Comic Sans, but it seems so wildly inappropriate for all of the uses mentioned above.

> inappropriate for all the uses mentioned above... I'll raise you. See Papyrus. [1] Who needs "'I'd rather be golfing' on a t-shirt in Papyrus, of all fonts? [1] https://www.instagram.com/papyrus_forever/?hl=en

Papyrus just reminds me of how little selection there is in the default fonts on Mac OS X. I mean, there could be so much more.

Re: Comic Mono

#89

Post by bane »

nescioquid wrote: post #81
bane wrote: post #32

I once worked with a guy who wrote everything in Comic Sans - despite being counseled about it repeatedly. Fonts set a "tone" to your writing, and while Comic Sans if maybe fine for inviting people to in impromptu office pizza party, it represents yourself poorly in a professional environment. Here's some examples of how inappropriate some of his emails were (all real): - Contract negotiations - HR issues - Announcin…

> despite being counseled about it repeatedly For me, this makes it farce. Partly because the guy continues to do it after learning it bugs everyone else, and partly because of the earnestness around what fonts someone uses in office emails. My guess is that you were driven to that level of earnestness. What was it like to have a disagreement with this guy about something that mattered (more)?

The best short descriptive word I can come up with is "absurd".

It was clearly part of a carefully crafted social image he was trying to portray. It included signing emails with "wise sayings", fortunes, and platitudes like "let your inner light shine the way for others" and other nonsense, long rambling speeches about how we're all each other's brother, and a bizarre need to try to protect the worst performing employees from even minimal levels of accountability.

In practice he was pure chaos to work with and never contributed anything meaningful to our work despite having a great looking resume (including stints at some FAANGs and top schools). When cornered about actual technical work he was supposed to be doing he just became annoyingly evasive and tried to redirect the conversation into some kind of drum-circle feelings session.

It was like a cheap con-artist, a yoga class, and a fortune cookie had a baby.

Re: Comic Mono

#90

Post by beloch »

Biganon wrote: post #86
cs702 wrote: post #24

Comic Sans and its descendants are... indestructible . No matter how much some font designers complain about it, and how often they criticize it, Comic Sans keeps coming back, like the Terminator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Sans#Reception_and_use_i... Among the most incongruous uses of Comic Sans I've seen, a few stand out: * A plaque on a large statue of a historical figure in a public space: https://www.bi…

I've always been quite irritated by the amount of disdain toward Comic Sans. Partly because I feel like this is such an easy target, and people who have just learned 2 or 3 things about typography are very keen on bashing Comic Sans to show off their newly acquired knowledge. Partly because, let's face it, it's not that bad. What it does, it does well, it's pretty legible, no glyph stands out from the general harmony…

Comic Sans is the Britney Spears of fonts.

Overused/Overplayed. Legible/Catchy. Well crafted for its original purpose. Gets no respect. Probably deserves a little, but it makes you feel dirty to give it.

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