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Fighting the Plague of Our Time: the Ban Comic Sans Movement

Filed under: Headline Shooter Tagged: Comic Sans, Dave Combs, Emily Fleet, Holly Sliger, Pollux, Vincent Connare, fonts, typography

Pollux writes:

One reads alarming statistics sometimes. The increase in the number of gigantic Burmese pythons in Florida, the growing rate of sea-ice shrinkage, the country's unemployment rate.

Here's another statistic that will chill your blood: by approximately 2018, usage of the Comic Sans font will have surpassed usage of the Helvetica and Times New Roman fonts. By 2030, Comic Sans will be the only remaining font. All other fonts will be extinct and will go the way of grunge and post-grunge lettering.

These are the statistics provided by the Ban Comic Sans movement, which has sprung up in reaction to the Comic Sans typeface, originally designed by Vincent Connare. Connare, as reported in this Wall Street Journal article by Emily Fleet, is not exactly against the movement against his typographic baby, and is certainly fonder of one of his other creations, the Magpie font.

Originally designed in 1994, Comic Sans has become the bête noire of the typography world but sometimes it has been a superhero, as seen in this humorous video, and sometimes a dim-witted creature with a lisp.

Holly Sliger and Dave Combs, the husband-and-wife team who started the Ban Comic Sans movement and man the typographic barricades, offer merchandise, font alternatives, and oratory on their website to inspire us all:

"By banding together to eradicate this font from the face of the earth we strive to ensure that future generations will be liberated from this epidemic and never suffer this scourge that is the plague of our time."

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Emdashes, founded in 2004 by Emily Gordon, is a place where keen and dedicated readers of The New Yorker, past and present, can find related news and commentary: about people, subjects, and ideas within the magazine, and events and conversations outside its pages. Learn more about us and our contributors.

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Some writing by Emily Gordon

Review: A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (for Newsday)
Annotated slide show: a wet, festive 2009 Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for nycgo.com)
Proposal: A better-looking MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
Review: Does a redesign of The New Republic mean a change of tune? (for Print)
Interview: four online obsessives and visual cataloguers, Kate Bingaman, Nicholas Felton, Ellie Harrison, and John D. Freyer (for Print)
Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
Interviews: winning New Visual Artists Eleanor Grosch, Zigmunds Lapsa, Christian Cervantes, and Kate & Camilla (for Print)
Profile: lindy hop legend Frankie Manning (for Newsday, with Robert Fouch)
Feature: Rea Irvin, illustrator, bon vivant, and The New Yorker's first art director (for Print)
Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
Review: My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World by Julian Dibbell (for Newsday)
Review: Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley (for Newsday)
Review: Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry (for Print)
Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
Report: The New Yorker's redesigned website (for Print)
Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
Interview: Matthew Diffee on the appropriately inappropriate cartoons of the The Rejection Collection (for Print)
Interview: Roz Chast on Brooklyn, pysanky eggs, and animation (for Newsday)
Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
Interview: Edward Gorey (for Newsday)

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They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—emphasizes what’s between: in particular, between the lines, covers, and issues of a magazine close to my heart.

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