The best approach to choosing the right font for the job, in my very humble opinion, is just throw the science out of the window and go with your gut feeling.
Kinda like matching wine with food – I like red with my fish, ok? So shoot me.
A few weeks ago I attended a lecture by a very prestigious Israeli scientist, a leader in his field of research. His ideas were groundbreaking, his arguments sound, and his presentation… run for the hills!
Every slide used a different typeface, often mixing different fonts in the same slides. Mismatched sizes. Misuse of color. And just when you thought you’ve seen it all — Comic Sans.
At once, everything the scientist said was tainted with cuteness. This went on for a few slides, until we landed on a Garamond page, and seriousness resumed.
But then again, Comic Sans is a common Blackberry interface font, and it works, because it’s one of the most legible fonts available.
And would it be treated differently if it weren’t called Comic Sans, but some highbrow Latin name?
In the documentary Helvetica there’s a part where one of the designers interviewed says she’ll always associate the Helvetica font with war and therefore never use it, because it was popular among Vietnam-era military suppliers who wanted to improve their image (if you don’t know what Helvetica looks like, it’s the font used by the New York City subway system, Target stores, Bloomingdales and many, many others).
Back to the wine analogy, there is no right and wrong, only convention. If tomorrow a brilliant, serious ad campaign will feature Comic Sans — hell, the Porky’s font — the designer would be praised for her genius. Yesterday’s cutting edge in design will be old fashioned tomorrow. And we’ll keep on doubting our choices.
We’ve just started to learn how to communicate via digital text. On the phone, you can convey emotion through your cadence and tone of voice. In hand-written letters, through your minute, personal graphical cues. But in digital text? That’s why we need proxies – emoticons, LOLs, LMAOs, XOXOs, handwriting-style fonts, and yes, the cheeriest of all typefaces, Comic Sans.
If this is so, future generations of writers, for whom digital text is the default form of communication (replacing handwriting; just ask my 13-year old niece), would be free of the need to simulate something they no longer use.
Maybe then we’d be able to put Comic Sans to rest.
Here’s a little Rorschach test for who you are based on the fonts you choose (courtesy of www.cracked.com):
