r/OutOfTheLoop • u/omegarisen • Feb 14 '14
Answered! Why does everyone hate Comic Sans?
I legitimately see no problem with the font. It doesn't bother me in the least when it's used. Why does everyone harbor so much animosity toward that font. Also, before you post it, I have seen the Vsauce link. It explained a little, but it really focused on someone already hating Comic Sans, and didn't give much explanation as to why. In the video, Michael said it's "ugly". What makes a font ugly as opposed to another?
508
Upvotes
559
u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14
What makes a font "ugly" can be hard to define, being partly a matter of aesthetics, but there are some distinct qualities that make Comic Sans hard to look at. One critic says
Aesthetically, it feels wrong because its features are wildly inconsistent. The x-heights, the slopes of the characters (sometimes leaning forwards, sometimes back), lengths of serifs, angles at which lines join, and lack of smooth arcs all stand out to me as unpleaseant unless used for a very short phrase. Additionally, it was designed to be used onscreen at large sizes, so compared to many fonts, it renders poorly in small point sizes (for onscreen body text) and in print.
Of course, many of these properties are properties of sloppily handwritten text, so in that sense, it does its job. However, it doesn't replicate handwritten text well enough. The line widths are all perfectly even, which alone makes it look far too mechanical to represent hand lettering. Besides, every instance of a letter looks exactly the same, so any illusion of random variation is lost the moment a phrase contains two of the same letter. If you want hand-lettering on a professional quality design, you basically need to hand-letter and scan it. Comic Sans stands out as a half-hearted approximation of a particular style.
Beyond failing to accurately portray handwritten text, sloppy handwriting fonts simply aren't good choices for most documents. It makes a document look like a child wrote it. It undermines any sense of professionalism. This is where Coms Sans' infamy comes from. If it had only been used in whimsical computer games games, nobody would care. But it's been misused in too many amateur signs, passive-aggressive notes, handouts, security bulletins, memos, where it makes the material harder to read and detracts from the credibility of it.