art school does things to you. no matter how humble your roots, you'll inevitably start to scoff at the scrapbook section at jo ann's that you once loved and poo-poo fonts that every one else finds perfectly fine. like papayrus. (rightfully so...) or comic sans.
still, i have to wonder if we aren't being too harsh. now, i'm not completely clueless. anyone who has taken a typography class (or is aware of this radical movement) can give you easily a hundred reasons why comic sans is horrible. at the end of the day, it's just tacky type. but, in certain contexts, i'm willing to argue that it might just work. (form vs. function)
case in point: my mom, who happens to be a preschool teacher. she diligently pecks away at her keyboard one letter at a time and uses clip art gratuitously in microsoft publisher. (love you, mom.) but what she manages to do with such skills is more than commendable. for the past few years she has toiled away at her laptop before school ends to produce a book for each one of her kids documenting their year. she uses pictures from pajama day and snack time and everything in between. she saves attempts at name writing (where capital e's sprout horizontal lines like centipedes and spelling is somehow only mastered when letters are laid out right to left) and drawings of family members. starting from the first day of school to conge, just about every adorable moment is captured. now, her layouts don't use a grid or the golden rule. sometimes she stretches type (shock!) and uses comic sans. the pages are laminated and they're spiral bound together. but i'm willing to overlook all of those things that make a graphic designer squirm knowing the gift she is giving to every single student.
as someone who just found this fourth grade masterpiece, i don't mind at all. we all have to start somewhere.
2 comments:
i thought you wrote that preface now. i thought it was so counter-intuitive and simple that it was genius.
lol, you were a genius fourth grader. love it.
That's so coincidental that you bring up Comic Sans.
In my New Media class that I took last semester, we had a short discussion on the overused font and watched a few short video documentaries on the subject.
One said that the font should be buried never to be typed with again while the other proved that it had its purpose just like any other font but has been abused so much that its reasonable for some to get sick of seeing it every where.
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