So, What Is It with Comic Sans Anyway?

The problem with Comic Sans is not just that it is more often then not inappropriately used, it is its poor, disjointed design.

A good way to judge a typeface is to first look at each line and notice how it ‘flows’, how the characters work, or don’t work, with each other. Look at individual words. Then look at the individual characters/glyphs to see how they are designed.

You’ll notice how Comic Sans’ flow is jumbled, the characters don’t work well together, and the letter spacing is unbalanced. Look at the words in Comic Sans, such as “fox” with its awkward lines and curves, what a mess, or how the roundness of the bowls, counters, and loops of the characters in “dogs” is not as aesthetic as in Chalkboard or Komika below it.

Below is a comparison of “Pop Art Comic” by the P22 type foundry — which is a recreation of the lettering Roy Lichtenstein used in his paintings, and is part of the “Pop Art Set” font collection commissioned by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery for a retrospective — and Comic Sans. This illustrates the sheer ugliness of Comic Sans.