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Banning the use of Comic Sans
PRESS RELEASE
Aura Print Officially Ban The Printing Of Comic Sans On Their Printers.
Huddersfield, UK, March 7th 2022: Here at Aura Print we are officially banning arguably one of the most hated fonts ever created from being printed on our machines. Overused, unprofessional and downright ugly, Comic Sans is the worst font, and we refuse to print anything with it featured.
Customers who send in their artwork will have to adhere to our no Comic Sans allowed policy. Our customer service and design team have been given up to date training on how to spot Comic Sans and will move any files sent to us with Comic Sans being used to a quarantine folder so it doesn’t impact any other design files.
Don’t worry, help is at hand. While we love that our customers choose us for print, we simply can’t put our name to print something with such a ghastly font included, and frankly we believe we’re doing our customers a favour.
Instead, we implore you to choose a different font for your next business card or flyer. If you’re not sure what font to use, we suggest some alternatives later in this blog. If you’re still not sure, just get in touch and our design team are more than capable to suggest some alternatives that you could use.
We’ll begin enforcing our no Comic Sans policy on 01/04/2022 and until that date, while we will still print files containing Comic Sans, our team will be flagging these files internally so that once the ban comes into full force, we’ll be ready.
"Comic Sans is kind of a joke at this point. As a business, we think we're doing our customers a favour by banning it (Comic Sans) so they're pushed towards other design choices that add professionalism and hopefully get them taken more seriously." managing director Liam Smith.
Rich Walker marketing manager "the number of memes you see posted online that either use or make fun of Comic Sans is immeasurable. You could be giving away free gold bars but if you include Comic Sans in your design choices people will instantly disregard it. We don't want that for our customers.".
About Aura Print
Aura Print is a rapidly growing specialist digital printer based near Huddersfield town centre. We have ambitious plans to grow our business with a current turnover in excess of £1.4M. We specialise in luxury printed items such as business cards, invitations, hang tags with unique finishes and paper options that other printers don't offer.
Media Contact
Rich Walker, Marketing Manager - Email: [email protected]
What type of font is Comic Sans?
Comic Sans is a member of the sans serif font family, meaning it lacks the additional extensions that can be found on serif fonts, such as Baskerville. It has a child-like script typeface in both regular and bold font weights. Like most fonts, it features upper and lower-case letters and the numbers 0-9. Without any context, this font is quite unassuming, so why is Comic Sans hated by so many people?
Why was Comic Sans created?
To understand why do people hate Comic Sans so much, we must look back to October 1994 when the font was created. Typographer Vincent Connare created Comic Sans for the computing program called Microsoft Bob. This computing guide aimed to teach inexperienced and younger users how to navigate their computer with the help of different characters, such as Rover the yellow cartoon dog. Characters like Rover would speak to the user through animated speech bubbles.
Connare was dissatisfied with the use of the font Times New Roman for these bubbles as he believed that cartoon dogs don’t talk in Times New Roman. Instead, he believed that the font used should be fun and playful to match the accompanying characters. Thus, Comic Sans was born.
Although Connare’s font did not make it into Microsoft Bob, it was later adopted by Microsoft becoming one of the default fonts for Windows 95, Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, this now meant that everyone had access to Comic Sans.
Why does everyone hate Comic Sans?
Infamous for being used inappropriately, this font has been found on professional documents, medical equipment and even tombstones! Improper usage of Comic Sans has led to widespread confusion, as it often causes a disconnect between the serious nature of a document with such a childish font.
In particular, the design community hate this font, describing it as childish and unprofessional. There is even a website that was created by two graphic designers that is dedicated to getting people to stop using Comic Sans.
Other than being used incorrectly, Comic Sans was not designed with commercial use in mind. When placed together to form a word, letters form unequal gaps between each other. This can make words and sentences appear unbalanced and makes kerning incredibly difficult for designers. The letters themselves also appear to have an uneven visual weight, which makes some letters look larger or thicker than others.
Is Comic Sans a good font?
Although almost universally seen as a bad font, there are those who disagree.
Connare himself defends his font, stating that those who disregard it are just bad designers. This may seem harsh, especially coming from the creator of Comic Sans, but he does raise the point that his font was created for a specific purpose.
Comic Sans is a child-friendly and fun font, which was its original intended appearance for Microsoft Bob. Connare never intended his font to become so popular and cannot be blamed for when it is used inappropriately by the public.
Fonts like Comic Sans
With Comic Sans being universally despised it is best to steer clear of this font altogether. It is often the case that anything featuring the font will be discarded without it even being read.
Instead, why not use fonts like Patrick Hand, Quicksand or Urbane, which are all fonts similar to Comic Sans but without the added hatred.
If you’re needing a font that looks a little more professional for, say, a business card, then we’d go with something like Garamond, a traditional serif font, or Proxima Nova, a reliable sans serif font.
Our design services
With such a large variety of great fonts available at your disposal, it can often be quite overwhelming to pick the perfect font. Your font choice sets the tone and can impact the response your designs receive. Our design team are experts on typography and can help you navigate the ever-expanding world of font types.
All you need to do is order your business cards or custom flyers with the choice of supplying a brief and having our designers get to work. Together we have almost 25 years’ experience in graphic design in-house, and don’t forget, there is no limit to our design, we’ll keep making tweaks until you’re 100% satisfied.
