Printing in Comic Sans - NOT ADVISED
No font in the world is loathed more than Comic Sans. The childlike writing of this font is so convincingly jesting that only posters for lost kittens can be written in this font. The disgust that some people feel while reading in Comic Sans is unbelievable. It is the only font in the world with a web campaign that wants to ban it altogether. A printing press in Dubai or the rest of the world would rarely use this font. Below are the reasons why.
History of Comic Sans
Comic Sans was created for the computers in the 1980's. If we look closely to any font today, there are pixels at the edge of the letters that are not black or white, but grey. The black ink of the letter does not end abruptly; it is tapered off with a grey skirt.
Back then this tapering off, which is technically called as 'anti-aliasing' was not the norm and the pixels were not smoothed out when the letters used to curve or spike. Pixilated Comic Sans was not that unpleasant to look at back then, especially when the jagged edges of the letters could not fully articulate the loops in the 'e' and the curves of the 'p' and 'b'.
Comic Sans Today
A printing press in UAE wants the material it prints to be readable and pleasing to the eye. That is why all fonts are now anti-aliased. Comic Sans, however, blots the stem-shoulder joints of some letters after anti-aliasing. This gives a very uneven appearance to the letter and an unsteady look to the articles that are written in the font.
Fonts like Helvetica and Times New Roman give a sturdy and a solemn expression to the written article due to the homogenous thickness of their writing styles. Comic Sans has letters that are disproportionately weighted. Hence the overall look of an article written in Comic Sans can appear immature and clumsy, the information contained in it – misleading and undependable.
The Actual Cost
Apart from the negative connotation that has been attributed with the Comic Sans, the font is actually more expensive to print in. Obviously, printing one or two pages of Comic Sans on a home printer would not make much of a difference, but when it comes to a printing press that needs to print out thousands of pages every day, Comic Sans can cost ink worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars more to print.
In a survey, an identical article was written in the same font size but in different fonts. The survey showed that the printer had to cover 5.74% of the page in ink when printing in Comic Sans. New Times Roman consumed 5.14% and Garamond inked only 4.47% of the page. The later fonts not only save ink but paper as well.
Choosing not to write in Comic Sans is not only pleasing; it is cost effective and eco-friendly as well.
