Comic Sense

Comic Sans is the Justin Bieber of Typography: hated by the cool kids, sported by the hipsters (for the sake of irony), and LOVED by my fat mexican nieces.

Are either of these prime examples of their respective genres? Hell-to-the-Nah. But are they as horrible as people often assume them to be? I’d like to argue the contrary.



Back when I was in high school — when people still asked for “ASLs” and it took 30 minutes to download a song off Napster — I used Comic Sans for everything. I used it to send important emails, to chat with friends on AOL 5.0, and to make Christmas cards for my family.

The reason Comic Sans appealed to me was because it was so ANTI-serious. It was playful in a world full of unoriginal robots (Verdana & Arial), rich douche bags (Georgia & Garamond), and office nerds (Courier New). It was friendly, popular, child-like and approachable.

Years later, while my classmates were using Times New Roman to type up their research papers (in 12 pt font), I was still using Comic Sans to piss off my design professors. And nowadays, while I’d rather associate myself with the sheer, bloody SEXINESS of types like..

I still look back at Comic Sans with a sense of fondness. Much like my old mixtapes (filled with cheesy hits, from Sisqo’s “Thong Song” to LFO’s “Summer Girls”), Comic Sans leaves me both smiling nostalgically and cringing in embarrassment; a humorous reminder of how far I’ve come as an artist, student, and connoisseur.