Post: Schtopp, this font is not ready yet!
For those of you who have been wondering why I haven’t posted for the past week or so, I’ve been on holiday in sunny Amsterdam with my family (all food and drink paid for, but no chance to sample the Amsterdam night life). Even more impressive than me getting out of the house is that, for the whole five days, I barely touched a computer. The only exception was when, in a fit of “Oh-it’s-so-shiny”, I spent 15 minutes wandering around one of Amsterdam’s Apple Stores, trying not to drool over the 17-inch PowerBooks.
My other moment of geekdom was related not to computers as such, but to fonts. I was dismayed to find that I could barely walk around for 10 minutes without seeing a label, sign or menu written in the scourge of the font world, Comic Sans.
I knew before this trip that this font had achieved a certain amount of infamy through criminal overuse, but it wasn’t until I arrived in Amsterdam that the problem was really hammered home. Over and over again. Considering the anti-Comic-Sans movement appears to have been going on for a good couple of years now, and The Font is still spreading and being recommended in beginners’ computer courses (I speak from experience here), I worry for the sake of the world. While Comic Sans probably has places where it’s appropriate (although I can’t think of any right at the moment), it scares me how often it seems to crop up.
I may just have to join the Ban Comic Sans movement…