I
recently finished the third draft of my latest YA, and have asked several folks
to read it and provide feedback. Logan, one of my AP students he said overall
he liked the story, but he was horrified by the chapter in comic sans font.
“Really?
why?”
“Comic
sans is the white trash of fonts.”
The
book is, written in Arial, is narrated by a male protagonist’s in first person,
and I wanted his passages to physically differ from the woman’s journal he discovers.
I thought Comic Sans had a feminine look to it.
I
told my friend and fellow writer Elizabeth about Logan’s reaction, and she agreed
with him. “Comic sans is awful,” she said. “You have to change it.” I sent her
an electronic copy of my novel, and she admitted she changed the font on her
copy before she could read the chapter in question. “When I started to read the
character’s journal, it was like Minnie Mouse and Daffy Duck were screeching in
my head,” she said. “It was unreadable.”
This
led me to an investigation of font snobs. There are 125,000 pages linked to the
term ‘font snob,’ and one can download 20,000 different fonts from a single
site. There is even a blog called The Font snob blog. http://fontsnob.blogspot.com/
The
banner at the top reads: Hi.
My name is Justin, and I'm a graphic designer. Most people don't give typefaces
a second thought. They shamelessly use Comic Sans, Hobo, or Papyrus. It's time
to get oriented about the beauty of the letterform. This is my passion. This is
my disease. This is The Font Snob Blog
Some
people need lives.
I
admit a preference to san serif fonts because as an art student, when I had to
hand letter my work with an old fashioned quill pen, serifs were the bane of my
existence. One slip of the pen when I filled in those damn serifs and the work
was ruined. Serifs were a pain in the ass, so I gravitate to using fonts like
Arial, Calibri and other san serif typefaces. Comic sans is a member of that
group.
“Why
is there a problem with comic sans?” I asked.
“comic
sans is like an undesirable body shape,” Elizabeth said. “It needs to go on a
diet.”
I typed lines in Arial, Verdana and Comic Sans to compare.
“See
how comic sans is squat
compared to the others It’s like someone stepped on it.?”
“So
the reason I don't mind the typeface is it’s an endomorph like me?”
Logan
and Elizabeth are both Ectomorphs, those stick figure body types who can
eat anything they want (and we secretly hate them for it) and never gain
weight. The soft sided Endomorphs like me just think about food and gain
five pounds. Neither of those fonts is
heavily muscled, though. Apparently the
Verdana font has six
pack abs.
“It’s
a matter of taste, Elizabeth said. She used to do newspaper ad layouts, and
fonts were like their personal signature.
Here are a few
fonts. This one is Tempus itc. Not bad. Maybe a little spindly.
Lucida is rather pleasant, but I used it in
another section of the novel.
what does this
one look like? No.
palatino
italciced MAYBE
euphemia
is leaner. This could work.
calibri Is this like comic sans on a diet ?
fzshyuti font. I like the name of it.
kalinga font. Another maybe
batang che- too much like courrier
gulim font is an ectomoroph on steroids
trebuchet
is probably too much like comic sans
but
at least I didn’t write the chapter in wingdings:
i cant write it in wing
dings
or wing dings do
and here is wing dings 3
Sorry, but I still like
comic sans. It’s a fat bottomed girl like me.
What are some of your favorite
fonts?Happy Writing.
