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Why I created Comic Sans

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Re: Why I created Comic Sans

#91

Post by laumars »

digitalengineer wrote: post #57
jQueryIsAwesome wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you mean by "say"; if you mean gender I think is true. But if you consider people who like just one music genre and can stay motivated and loyal only because of that then you don't have too much say about who will be your fans, if you like trash metal it doesn't matter if you have a PHD from Harvard and your social circle is mostly composed by honored students, because the genre you may appel to a ver…

Kurt Cobain sure did. By cross-dressing he made Nirvana have a lot less appeal for the heavy metal fans.

I think him releasing accessible anthems that had widespread popular appeal did far more to isolate Navana from the core metal elitists than any styling choices Kurt may have made.

Plus it's not as if metal bands were against 'glamming' up in the first place. In fact it became it's own sub-genre.

Re: Why I created Comic Sans

#92

Post by tripzilch »

randomchars wrote: post #82
larrydavid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think even the most pretentious of designers would ever scoff at the use of Comic Sans where it was appropriate and fitting, such as on the invitation to a 6 year old's birthday party. That's where is fits, it exudes 'fun'. Where 'pretentious' designers do begin to huff is when it is used in a clearly inappropriately context such as on police notices raising awareness of rape. The handwriting example isn't pa…

That site also list appropriate uses too. [1][2][3] In these cases the intended audience is children, where Comic Sans is totally okay. [1]: http://inappropriatecomicsans.tumblr.com/image/19581183110 [2]: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1m7zmD2ot1rs2h1co1_500.pn... [3]: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m135odVzpV1rs2h1co1_500.pn...

I actually really kind of like the one about the lion.

Re: Why I created Comic Sans

#93

Post by tomjen3 »

crististm wrote: post #40
Surio wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. This is what I wanted to say as well. I am heartily sick of Times/Arial/Comic as you rightly said. Hell, I even saw it on some road sign/car parking bays where some kind of large Sans (Highway Sans??) is legally obligatory! Now Times as replace the venerable Courier New in US govt. documents.... Oh the horror! For me it was anything but those. :-) +1 for Palatino/Garamond. I also read somewhere that Garamond…

Thanks for pointing out the Century Schoolbook. I stumbled on it on some old hardware and liked the numbers very much. Now I know the name of the font.

Latex has a package for New Century Schoolbook. After I found that, I used it for all my University work. It is just that awesome, and if you are pressed for space, you can make the size quite small without anybody noticing.

I still haven't found a free version of it on the net though.

Re: Why I created Comic Sans

#94

Post by dbbolton »

It kind of surprises me that a photographer and typeface designer would choose #ffffff text on a #000000 background, something that the average person can only stand to look at for a few seconds before needing to rest his or her eyes.

Re: Why I created Comic Sans

#96

Post by Surio »

tomjen3 wrote: post #93
crististm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for pointing out the Century Schoolbook. I stumbled on it on some old hardware and liked the numbers very much. Now I know the name of the font.

Latex has a package for New Century Schoolbook. After I found that, I used it for all my University work. It is just that awesome, and if you are pressed for space, you can make the size quite small without anybody noticing. I still haven't found a free version of it on the net though.

If you are looking for "free" alternatives for other plaforms, here are some close relatives and provide the same 'features' that one expects from Century. Plus, they are free. :-)

You're welcome. ;-)

These sets below, are complete (R, SC, B ,IT, B+IT...) fonts AFAIK.

http://www.dafont.com/justus.font

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Latin-Modern-Roman

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/TeX-Gyre-Schola

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/TeX-Gyre-Bonum -- Bookman clone.

These are not complete, but they are close relatives.

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Theano-Didot

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/foundry/Alexey-Kryukov

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Old-Standard-TT

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Bentham

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/DubielPlain

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Theano-Modern

Here are some ripoff fonts...

http://www.fonts101.com/search/bodoni

Re: Why I created Comic Sans

#98

Post by Surio »

tripzilch wrote: post #89
Surio wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. This is what I wanted to say as well. I am heartily sick of Times/Arial/Comic as you rightly said. Hell, I even saw it on some road sign/car parking bays where some kind of large Sans (Highway Sans??) is legally obligatory! Now Times as replace the venerable Courier New in US govt. documents.... Oh the horror! For me it was anything but those. :-) +1 for Palatino/Garamond. I also read somewhere that Garamond…

> fontsquirrel, dafont, urbanfont while these sites are fine if you're looking for a cool display font for a poster or something, it's quite hard to find fonts there suitable for heavy use because many of them are really (really) badly kerned and miss many glyphs you need in most texts. there's probably a few to be found there (especially on FontSquirrel), but it's real hard to tell before downloading and trying them…

:-) Tell me about it!

I've found a few good ones on them (see my reply to Century clones elsewhere on this post) and a looooot of bad ones as you mentioned. And sadly, poster/logo is not my area, but body text is.

> but it's real hard to tell before downloading and trying them on a full paragraph

+1 :-/ I know what you mean. (Mido comes to mind immediately!)

Perhaps Smashing Magazine is not very popular around here(?), but I check back now and then with them, since they provide links to some very interesting and complete fonts from time to time.

Re: Why I created Comic Sans

#99

Post by factorizer »

PerryCox wrote: post #83
factorizer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also the atrocious guitar playing and constant mumbling helped a lot in that department. but we digress. on the topic: i like comic sans. it looks friendly. there, i said it.

> also the atrocious guitar playing You're joking right? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoiUpe7N3D0

alright, i was (kinda) joking. but i don't think that the guitar playing was the unique selling value of nirvana. the song writing was stellar though.

Re: Why I created Comic Sans

#100

Post by chestnut-tree »

Surio wrote: post #34
tikhonj wrote: post #8

One of the reasons people don't like Comic Sans is because it was overused, largely thanks to being included with a bunch of default Microsoft tools. It was also use in the wrong contexts. Amusingly, I think the same holds true of the typeface that sparked the whole thing: Time New Roman. Far too many people use it for far too much, sometimes in the wrong context. So maybe we should all use Times less too! (I tend to…

Thanks. This is what I wanted to say as well. I am heartily sick of Times/Arial/Comic as you rightly said. Hell, I even saw it on some road sign/car parking bays where some kind of large Sans (Highway Sans??) is legally obligatory! Now Times as replace the venerable Courier New in US govt. documents.... Oh the horror! For me it was anything but those. :-) +1 for Palatino/Garamond. I also read somewhere that Garamond…

"I am heartily sick of Times/Arial/Comic..."

When Microsoft released Windows Vista in 2007, it included new typefaces some of which I think are really nice.

- Calibri (a lovely sans-serif design) and Consolas (a monospace typeface) were designed by Dutch type designer Lucas De Groot [1]

- Cambria (a serif typeface) was designed by the Dutch type designer Jelle Bosma, Steve Matteson (who designed the popular Google-commisioned font Open Sans) and Robin Nicholas.

- Constantia (another serif typeface) by the Canada-based type designer John Hudson

To see examples of all of these fonts, see http://www.ascendercorp.com/catalog/microsoft/clear-type-fon...

There's no need for Windows' users to default to Arial or Times New Roman anymore. Excellent aletrnatives that come with the OS have been available for many years.

1. http://www.lucasfonts.com/case-studies/calibri-consolas/

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