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Dear Startups, Lobster is the new Comic Sans

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Re: Dear Startups, Lobster is the new Comic Sans

#41

Post by studiofellow »

cpeterso wrote: post #31
jonnathanson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The genius of Helvetica is that it's styled, but subtle. It "gets out of the way," but not entirely. The common assertion about Helvetica is that it's "clean" and unstylized. But actually, its cleanliness comes from the assertion of a certain style. On a semi-related note, I highly recommend the documentary "Helvetica," as well as the books about the development of the font. I'm not a font wonk by any means, but I do…

Try Helvetica is a blog that alters photos of handmade signs from Brazil shops to use Helvetica. Some results are surprisingly good. http://tryhelvetica.tumblr.com/

What's funny about this is the changes are not only the typeface. The creator is also correcting proximity, alignment, etc. I'd argue those factors make a much bigger difference in the quality of a design than typeface choice.

Re: Dear Startups, Lobster is the new Comic Sans

#42

Post by michaelbuckbee »

georgemcbay wrote: post #32

I'll throw in my two cents on the "Lobster is the new... XYZ" by chucking out Papyrus. They are both highly-stylized fonts that are fine on their own merits but highly overrused within a certain niche (Papyrus for anything supposedly 'holistic', Lobster for anything supposedly 'startup'). Now we just need an "Avatar"-sized hugely commercial startup to use Lobster to finally run it into the ground.

You mentioned Avatar, which chose Papyrus, narrowly missing Trajan the movie font -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t87QKdOJNv8

Re: Dear Startups, Lobster is the new Comic Sans

#43

Post by posabsolute »

gyardley wrote: post #15

Oy. Comic Sans isn't problematic because everyone uses it, it's problematic because it's a bad font. The kerning alone is reason enough not to use it. http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/why-you-hate-comic-sans/ By this author's logic we should all stop using Helvetica, too - it's way too common.

I was shooting for the same thing. This guy does not seems to know anything about typography and his article is ridiculously small for such a big topic.

Comic Sans is grotesque and was badly designed from the start. One has to wonder why it was popular, i'm sure there is a ton of article about that (surely the author should have deepen a bit in the subject and check that),

But if I would have to guess, in the 2000 debut it was one of the widely available fonts that had a different (poor) look.

Lobster is NOTHING like comic sans, it's a good font unfortunately overused. That's it.

Re: Dear Startups, Lobster is the new Comic Sans

#44

Post by mnicole »

studiofellow wrote: post #40
mnicole wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobster is bad. Bello is bad. They're bad because they are ill-designed typefaces that leave much to be desired in the realm of readability and just the general aesthetic. They're display fonts that you can't compare to something like Gotham that can be used as display, headline or body. Saying Gotham is overused is like saying Arial, Tahoma, Verdana are overused for web. If it is clean, visible at a distance and gen…

What you're saying is that Lobster, Bello, and Museo offend your sensibilities and are used frequently. That doesn't mean they are of poor quality. Bad choices? Maybe. Bad typeface designs? No.

Everything's subjective to a point, but when it doesn't scale and people are using them for tiny app logos and subheadings, sensibility has nothing to do with it. Not to mention these fonts are generally used in conjunction with some pretty terrible layer or CSS effects.

Re: Dear Startups, Lobster is the new Comic Sans

#45

Post by studiofellow »

mnicole wrote: post #44
studiofellow wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is that Lobster, Bello, and Museo offend your sensibilities and are used frequently. That doesn't mean they are of poor quality. Bad choices? Maybe. Bad typeface designs? No.

Everything's subjective to a point, but when it doesn't scale and people are using them for tiny app logos and subheadings, sensibility has nothing to do with it. Not to mention these fonts are generally used in conjunction with some pretty terrible layer or CSS effects.

Agreed--in many of these cases, people need education about how to properly use display faces.

Re: Dear Startups, Lobster is the new Comic Sans

#46

Post by huggyface »

posabsolute wrote: post #43
gyardley wrote: post #15

Oy. Comic Sans isn't problematic because everyone uses it, it's problematic because it's a bad font. The kerning alone is reason enough not to use it. http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/why-you-hate-comic-sans/ By this author's logic we should all stop using Helvetica, too - it's way too common.

I was shooting for the same thing. This guy does not seems to know anything about typography and his article is ridiculously small for such a big topic. Comic Sans is grotesque and was badly designed from the start. One has to wonder why it was popular, i'm sure there is a ton of article about that (surely the author should have deepen a bit in the subject and check that), But if I would have to guess, in the 2000 de…

The vast majority of readers are not font snobs. They don't debate the merits of kerning or whitespace balance.

But they do notice when trendy fonts trend. And comic sans most certainly did trend, and it was that trend -- and not its relative font merit -- that made it so deridden. It is the Croc shoes of the font world. Wow that analogy works really well because while shoe snobs can rail off the problems with the mighty croc (ignoring its benefits), they completely miss the mark on why there is the general anti-croc backlash (hint -- hipsterism. Anti-populism. etc)

This article is dead-on.

Re: Dear Startups, Lobster is the new Comic Sans

#47

Post by mistercow »

gyardley wrote: post #15

Oy. Comic Sans isn't problematic because everyone uses it, it's problematic because it's a bad font. The kerning alone is reason enough not to use it. http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/why-you-hate-comic-sans/ By this author's logic we should all stop using Helvetica, too - it's way too common.

Well, you probably really should not use Helvetica or Arial in your logo.

Re: Dear Startups, Lobster is the new Comic Sans

#48

Post by slantyyz »

studiofellow wrote: post #40
mnicole wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobster is bad. Bello is bad. They're bad because they are ill-designed typefaces that leave much to be desired in the realm of readability and just the general aesthetic. They're display fonts that you can't compare to something like Gotham that can be used as display, headline or body. Saying Gotham is overused is like saying Arial, Tahoma, Verdana are overused for web. If it is clean, visible at a distance and gen…

What you're saying is that Lobster, Bello, and Museo offend your sensibilities and are used frequently. That doesn't mean they are of poor quality. Bad choices? Maybe. Bad typeface designs? No.

I think there are a couple of things at play here:

The aesthetic - as art, tastes are subjective (and there is no accounting for them), there's basically stuff you like and stuff you don't like. Right or wrong, for many people, liking and not liking translates to "good" and "bad". For example, "Comic Sans is bad because it's ugly".

The craft - the technical parts (i.e., kerning, spacing, scaling) are much more objective and have more to do with quality, so it's easier to classify stuff as good or bad. For example, "Comic Sans is bad because its kerning is broken".

I usually ignore aesthetic commentary - everyone's different. Some people like the way Comic Sans looks, and that's OK.

On the other hand, I do think criticisms on the craftsmanship are valuable, especially as a non-designer.

Re: Dear Startups, Lobster is the new Comic Sans

#49

Post by powrtoch »

tptacek wrote: post #36
powrtoch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobster and Comic Sans are both highly stylized font-faces, Helvetica is not. It's okay for Helvetica to be common because it doesn't scream "Hey look at me, I'm Helvetica!" When non-stylized things become very common, it's usually because they're good all around choices: their popularity advances the field. When extremely stylized things become very common, it typically leads to embarrassment down the road. In music…

Grotesque sans were uncommon before the (say) 60s, and were very stylized for the time. You just don't notice that because we've been accustomed to them for so long, and because they are very effective for their purpose. The parent comment is correct. Comic Sans isn't just stylized; it's a stylized face designed for a very particular purpose (as a stand-in for the hand lettering in comic books). And the problem with…

> Grotesque sans were uncommon before the (say) 60s, and were very stylized for the time.

Source?

Wikipedia sayeth about Helvetica:

"The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage."

There's a history of sans-serifs (with emphasis on grotesques) here http://www.linotype.com/en/795/thesansseriftypefaces.html?PH... that seems to suggest they had caught on pretty well by the 20s.

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