2014 celebrates the 20th anniversary of one of the most hated fonts ‘Comic Sans’.
To celebrate the occasion an exhibition has been set up to support Cancer Research UK called Comic Sans for Cancer. Graphic designers have been invited to submit a poster inspired by the font.
Personally, I don’t like Comic Sans… Not because it’s a badly designed font, but because it’s mostly used in the wrong situations. There’s so much bad design in the world, and it’s all too common to see comic sans playing a vital role. I cringe every time I see it, and would never consider using it in my own design work.
For my poster, I wanted to use the idea of ‘wrong situations’ so thought it would be a fun idea to consider a world where comic sans was the only font available to designers. What would that world look like? I decided to take the worlds top 50 brand logos and change the fonts to see how it looks.
I gave myself a few rules:
- I could only use comic sans.
- I could change the kerning.
- I could slightly modify the font when needed (eg: Slant).
- If the most recent version of the logo is icon only, I would use the last version which included a font.
The final outcome (below) is quite interesting – Click the image to enlarge.
Note: I made the decision to leave the apple logo without the font since I’m personally used to only ever seeing it without.
From a distance, almost all of the logo designs remain intact. They are still very much unique and identifiable. In most situations here, colour and form play a stronger role in creating an identifiable identity than font choice.
It certainly gets you thinking…
Visit http://www.comicsanscancer.com for more details. If you want to donate click here.