Fonts come in and out of fashion. Comic Sans, when it first met the PC, was the joie de vivre font, the approachable, populist cheerleader of typefaces. Now, it is the UGG, the iPod-as-walking-accessory, the novelty classroom laptop: it is no longer fashionable. Comic Sans is bed-head, last year’s big belt.
Comic Sans has now come to represent flightiness, overbearing helpfulness, bureaucracy and incompetence. Often we have the impulse to make things seem fun or accessible—signing up for paperless payroll for your Wesleyan Paychecks, learning about regulations at Residential Life information sessions, even taking the RIDE late at night—but Comic Sans will not do that for you. We have seen that font too often. We suspect that perhaps our time with you won’t be fun, or helpful; in fact, we worry that something might go horribly awry.
Instead of Comic Sans, why not try out the elegant goofiness of Garamond, the dangerous geometry of Gil Sans or the crisp reassurance of Optima? Why not embrace the smart bounce of Jenson and Bembo, the insurgency of Electra or the hope of Futura? Just throw out Comic Sans: it never looked good on you, anyway.
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