For example, if someone sends an email or writes a document using it," said Chaparro, "it results in a mismatch - an informal, childlike, 'funny' typeface for a potentially serious topic." Naivety and noveltyĬonnare has a theory about why that occurred.
"People, especially typographers, get upset when it's used improperly. After the invention of Comic Sans, people started to use it in contexts that it wasn't intended for - such as, in formal documents - giving it a disjointed quality that some found jarring.
"I do not think it was ever intended to be used for serious documents."Īnd this, it seems, is where the problem lies for most people who despise its goofy characters. One thing is clear to typographers: "Comic Sans is a sans serif typeface - designed to be informal, casual and used for that kind of material - like a comic," Chaparro said. Perhaps, over time we have come to link these visual cues to formal writing. But, "from the typewriter days, there is a history of serif fonts being used for business documents," she said. Asked why we read these subtle cues the way we do, Chaparro said that's hard to know for sure. San serif fonts, on the other hand, don't have these elegant extenders, and tend to come across as more casual.
Consequently, "more professional documents tend to use serif fonts," Chaparro said. For instance, serif fonts have tiny extenders on the ends of letters, which lends them a more refined and elegant quality to the average eye. These qualities are cued by multiple subtle traits of the design. This suggests that humans are good at determining when a typeface suits a given context. Later studies showed that when people were asked to rate the suitability of these typefaces for formal documents like résumés, they typically chose typefaces rated as clearly “legible” and more "beautiful,", over those that were more "excitable," and “loud”, Chaparro told Live Science. (She's now a professor of human factors and behavioral neurobiology at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.) The main purpose of typography is to make your text easier to read."Results showed that people's perceptions of typefaces boil down to three main factors: their 'ruggedness and masculinity', 'perceived beauty' and 'excitement,'" said Barbara Chaparro, who led the research when she was the head of a usability research lab at Wichita State University at the time. When in doubt, don’t use Comic Sans - or any other flamboyant typeface that is hard to read, either in long-form or at smaller font-sizes.īefore you decide on any typeface/font family for a project, remind yourself that: Typography has both aesthetic and functional purposes, but reader-friendliness (function) is always more important than form (aesthetics) when it comes to body text - which makes up around 90% of the average website or document. However, we should keep in mind that people read best what they read most - so if your audience consists of comic book fanatics, their experience will be different from the average person who is used to reading newspapers or magazines. One pretty good argument I sometimes see against using Comic Sans is that it’s questionable how readable and legible the Comic Sans typeface is, especially for long-form content. If your website or your client’s website is a brand outside of the “silly/fun” category, you’ll almost always want to go for a more plain-looking font. the website has a comedic/unserious theme.That said, I wholeheartedly agree that you should probably not use Comic Sans on your or your clients' websites unless one of the following is true: It has become popularized to hate Comic Sans, to the point where the reasoning is often left out when designers deliberately bad mouth it on public forums. No, absolutist, black and white statements are rarely rooted in good thinking.
So is this absolutist, general advice against using Comic Sans in your work, actually good advice? If you’ve been working as a web designer or developer for a few months, you’ve probably heard this advice:Īnd here it is: Specimen of the typeface Comic SansĬomic Sans has a round, unelegant, and somewhat flamboyant style, which makes it look cartoonish and non-serious looking. Why does everyone hate Comic Sans? Let’s find out!