I used Comic Sans exclusively for our block party invitation...knowing full well there was at least 3 art directors/graphic designers on our street.

Because I like to poke the anal retentive.

/long live comic sans

Treygreen13: The campaign against Comic Sans was to prevent its overuse. There's nothing "wrong" with the font... it's the people who use it.



On the other hand, I used it for my dad's birthday card at the weekend.

Treygreen13

busy chillin': um, some of us actually get paid to use fonts.
/graphic designer

Cool. Font-snobs represent.

From now on all my posts will be in Papyrus.

Cheers!

NOOOOOOOOO!

Researcher: I was under the impression Helvetica was pretty much universally loved.... but whatever.

What I'm sick and g-ddamned tired of is people using san-serif fonts for actual documents, or hell, anything longer than a sentence.

I hate having to review a document and some genius was like "Serifs are too mainstream, I want this 25 page cited article to say more about me personally.... so f**k em"

Serifs are your FRIENDS people.

/FUUUUUUUUUU

busy chillin': I like Helvetica. I hardly ever use it though. But there are many other fonts to be mad about people using.

/f*ck comic sans forever
//and yes, if you want people to actually read what you are saying (on paper), use a serif font.

This. If you can use a typeface that has ligatures for certain letter combinations, even better.

asmodeus224: I used Comic Sans exclusively for our block party invitation...knowing full well there was at least 3 art directors/graphic designers on our street.

Because I like to poke the anal retentive.

/long live comic sans

I hope you used all the included clip art too.

I was at a hospital this weekend (friend had a baby) and I swear half the signs had Comic Sans and the stick figure guy clipart. It was worrisome.

Palatino Linotype for me, because I like to use the Interrobang a lot.

asmodeus224: I used Comic Sans exclusively for our block party invitation...knowing full well there was at least 3 art directors/graphic designers on our street.

Because I like to poke the anal retentive.

/long live comic sans

Recently I saw a T-shirt with this printed on it:

Helvetica

It made me LOL.

farkeruk: Treygreen13: The campaign against Comic Sans was to prevent its overuse. There's nothing "wrong" with the font... it's the people who use it.

[farm4.static.flickr.com image 500x373]

On the other hand, I used it for my dad's birthday card at the weekend.

My favorite inappropriate use was that Cleveland Cavs owner rant.

421 angry words and every single one was in Comic Sans.

BTW this sentence is starting to look scary:
"I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER 'KING' WINS ONE"

moothemagiccow

Nonsense. Take a look at any book that's not a novel. You think magazines are designed not to be read? fark, look at boxes, a billboard, or anything printed on what's all around you. Look at any piece of electronics, your keyboard, your watch, etc. Maybe serif fonts are easier to read for longer periods up close, and that's why they're in novels, but saying the printed word must be serif is a stupid rule.

chill out...I meant long bodies of copy. Of course headlines and brief points and short bodies of copy can be san-serif. I love san serif fonts and think they look cooler.

I use Trade Gothic daily.

Treygreen13: I swear half the signs had Comic Sans and the stick figure guy clipart. It was worrisome.

Is this your picture?

Cybernetic: The Homer Tax: We need to focus the energy on the real enemy - Courier.

Anyone who has ever written code for a living understands and appreciates the importance of fixed-width fonts.

My IDE's all get switched to Lucida Console for fixed-width. San Serif for life!

but if you are laying out a brochure, you should deny your urge to set everything in Futura because it looks cool.

Adobe Garamond kicks ass and people will actually read your stuff and maybe buy the product and you will continue to be gainfully employed.

theorellior

I hate sh*tty clip art, but that just got you favorited.

Not real font snobs, just some dipsh*t at Gizmodo. Helvetica is still perfect for imparting information that doesn't need marketing hype.

I like my fonts like I like my beer. Free and bold.

theorellior: Treygreen13: I swear half the signs had Comic Sans and the stick figure guy clipart. It was worrisome.

Is this your picture?

[allthingsfit.files.wordpress.com image 100x300]

My friends were all like:


So 9 months later my friend was all like:


But when I saw all the Comic Sans I was like:

I disagree with TFA's take on Helvetica's lack of "neutrality," but whether or not it is neutral, it's a lot harder to deny that it's inconspicuous, much like Times and, to a lesser extent, Courier and Monaco. No font snob is going to look at text written in these and read "HEY KIDS DOESN'T THIS TEXT LOOK AWESOME?" or anything like that. They'll see the text, read it with a minimum of fuss, and move on.

This is the key to their longevity. The campaign against Comic Sans was successful because Comic Sans is conspicuous. You could wage similar campaigns against BrushScript or even Zapfino if you really wanted to. But you're never going to get people riled up against something as inconspicuous as Helvetica in that same way.

We should hold a conference about this issue so that all of the people who honestly wish to argue the matter can be assembled in one room at the same time.




Preferably, this room.

busy chillin': theorellior

I hate sh*tty clip art, but that just got you favorited.

It was a jog down memory lane but these were apparently called Screenbeans. There are so many. Some I could never imagine using.

That read like a whiney livejournal blog. And I stopped reading and closed the window just as fast.

theorellior: Cybernetic: The Homer Tax: We need to focus the energy on the real enemy - Courier.

Anyone who has ever written code for a living understands and appreciates the importance of fixed-width fonts.

OCRA-B, Lucida and Orator are all better choices for that than Courier. Hell, VT-100 or Monaco are better than Courier.

Consolas is my home boy font. I just love it for all fixed width stuff.

way south

I like fonts even more now because of that. I really want to talk about Rosewood Fill and Rockwell. I want a whole page Orator STR and Mesquite. I want to see RondeauExtraBoldItalic everywhere.

/deal with it

Treygreen13

when you replied with more I figured I missed something. They are terrible.

About 15 years ago one of my coworkers ran out of hard disk space. When I was working on his computer I found he had over 600 fonts so he could pick just the right one, should he ever do any thing.

Me I'm a default man.

Cheron: About 15 years ago one of my coworkers ran out of hard disk space. When I was working on his computer I found he had over 600 fonts so he could pick just the right one, should he ever do any thing.

Me I'm a default man.

For a second there I thought you were saying he filled his HD with fonts. I did the scooby doo sound and then went to check the size of my fonts folder. I have 600MB of fonts.

theorellior: Cybernetic: The Homer Tax: We need to focus the energy on the real enemy - Courier.

Anyone who has ever written code for a living understands and appreciates the importance of fixed-width fonts.

OCRA-B, Lucida and Orator are all better choices for that than Courier. Hell, VT-100 or Monaco are better than Courier.

I like Menlo.

theorellior: Cybernetic: The Homer Tax: We need to focus the energy on the real enemy - Courier.

Anyone who has ever written code for a living understands and appreciates the importance of fixed-width fonts.

OCRA-B, Lucida and Orator are all better choices for that than Courier. Hell, VT-100 or Monaco are better than Courier.

Hell, I remember when VT-100 was a piece of hardware, not a font. I actually used one in college. When I graduated and got a job, I had the new-fangled VT-320 at my disposal. Ah, the days of amber monochrome text displays....

In reality, I could give a rat's ass about serifs. Courier New is my font of choice for code editing because it's more compact than Lucida Console, and I like that.

way south: We should hold a conference about this issue so that all of the people who honestly wish to argue the matter can be assembled in one room at the same time.


[dl.dropbox.com image 640x360]

Preferably, this room.

You severely underestimate the impact typefaces and design in general have on your daily life and you're a dick. Certainly you couldn't possibly be interested in some minutiae of your own. THE INTERNET: SERIOUS BUSINESS

Cheron

About 15 years ago one of my coworkers ran out of hard disk space. When I was working on his computer I found he had over 600 fonts so he could pick just the right one, should he ever do any thing.


I have 933 typefaces just in my FONTS A-G folder

When I see Helvetica, I think two things:

1) How delightfully/disappointingly retro. Helvetica is forever associated with the 60s, when it achieved major popularity, and if you use it, you better be trying to evoke that, because you're going to, whether you like it or not.

2) Someone hasn't had enough design classes. I dated someone who was actually disallowed from using Helvetica in design assignments, not because there's anything inherently wrong with Helvetica, but because it was so ubiquitous and overused and teachers wanted to make sure you weren't being lazy.

There is a wealth of beautiful sans-serif fonts out there: Avenir, Charlotte, Dederon, Felbridge, Glasgow, Kievit, Proxima, and Seravek all come to mind. Use one of those instead.

moothemagiccow: You severely underestimate the impact typefaces and design in general have on your daily life...

Care to enlighten us poor, uninformed rubes, then?

The Homer Tax: All Sane people are Arial People.

Helvetica is harmless.

We need to focus the energy on the real enemy - Courier.

I don't give a shiat about what font people think is "pretty" (except fark Comic Sans), but Courier is the Devil. Courier is the primary example of there being almost no difference between 1 and l

Ubuntu/Linux has some good programming fonts. I like Deja Vu Sans and Ubuntu Mono. I also like Microsoft's Consolas, and I like it enough that I've installed it on Linux.

Lord Dimwit: Best fixed-pitch fonts: Inconsolata and Computer Modern Typewriter Text Medium (the monospaced font used by default in LaTeX).

Rennie Mackintosh.
Now get off my lawn.
/art nouveau FTW

Verdana font is best font.

The Homer Tax: All Sane people are Arial People.

Helvetica is harmless.

We need to focus the energy on the real enemy - Courier.

Hey, you leave my monospaced fonts alone, they're very useful for fill-in-the-blank stuff and getting formatting from low-end word processors.

moothemagiccow: You severely underestimate the impact typefaces and design in general have on your daily life

I don't think that's mathematically possible, I'm pretty sure things can't have negative impact, that'd violate causality.

Any font in which the capital i and lowercased L look identical is stupid.

busy chillin': Cheron

About 15 years ago one of my coworkers ran out of hard disk space. When I was working on his computer I found he had over 600 fonts so he could pick just the right one, should he ever do any thing.


I have 933 typefaces just in my FONTS A-G folder

I work for a small defense contractor. His job was program manager and he was using the fonts to write memos. Spent more time getting the font right than writing.

This individual becoming surprisingly nervous about the War On Helvetica.

/I hope this isn't obscure...at least to iconography and fontography geeks
//even if I didn't know the AIGA Stick Figure Guy had a certain nickname until this year

I only use Chicago so that everything I do looks like it was made on a Macintosh in 1994.

Seriously? Nobody's posted it yet?

Achewood on Comic Sans

Cheron

I have 933 typefaces just in my FONTS A-G folder

I work for a small defense contractor. His job was program manager and he was using the fonts to write memos. Spent more time getting the font right than writing.

yeah, that is a waste of time. My HR lady sends everything out in comic sans. I would love it for her to just once choose a different font. but we all know what it would be. yep. papyrus.

Marcus Aurelius


/this guy's either a certifiable nutjob, or he had a deadline and this is all he could come up with

He's trolling for the gizmodo family of piss poor sites. Nutjob and idiot are the obvious answers.

Arial for headers, and Palatino Linotype for content. The notion being that a sans serif font directs the eye down, and a serif font directs the eye across.

/not a graphic designer
//technical writer

flaminio: Consolas is my home boy font. I just love it for all fixed width stuff.

Nah, Consolas has too much wasted vertical white space or something. For example, on a window showing 54 lines of source code in Consolas at Size 8, the same size Lucida Consola gives me 63 lines of source.

Whomever decided that Calibri should be the default font for Office can burn in hell. It looks completely unprofessional.

I hate Arial because lowercase ls look like uppercase Is. Times New Roman is ugly, but at least the letters are distinguishable from each other.

austerity101: 1) How delightfully/disappointingly retro. Helvetica is forever associated with the 60s, when it achieved major popularity, and if you use it, you better be trying to evoke that, because you're going to, whether you like it or not.

I have doubts that it raises such for almost anyone born after 1962 or so, the exceptions being design history students and people who have been watching too much Mad Men. What makes you think it would cause such associations in others?

PanicAttack: I hate Arial because lowercase ls look like uppercase Is

It's a flaw in the font but how often do you have a standalone lower-case L?

jonny_q: Ubuntu/Linux has some good programming fonts. I like Deja Vu Sans and Ubuntu Mono. I also like Microsoft's Consolas, and I like it enough that I've installed it on Linux.

I've been trying out Terminus recently, and I've really been enjoying it. Then again, I do my coding in vim with the zenburn color scheme, so maybe I'm some kind of luddite.

Ubuntu (the font, not the distro) for clarity. In the 10-14px range. Easiest to read after many hours of staring at the screen. But only when rasterized with this hinting.

/WAY too picky about my fonts
//don't ask how many years it's taken to get the stupid LCD displays to look at least that sane, after everybody started de-focusing the fonts in the name of "anti-aliasing"
///that particular rendering isn't perfect either, but at least it's gotten rid of most of the rainbow-color-fringing