Dear world, please stop using Comic Sans

When one thinks to use a sans-serif font in their design, I really do pray to the design gods that they refrain at all costs from using... Comic Sans. Unfortunately, this font falls under the same category as beautiful fonts such as: Univers, Gotham, and Helvetica. Comic Sans in my opinion is no where close to being a brother or sister of these fonts. It's one of the second removed cousins that really shouldn't even be in the family yet is constantly invited to every family event a dreadfully is commonly the centre of attention... of bad design. Unfortunately, some people in the world have decided that this pre-installed font on their computer would look amazing on their company sign, product announcements, posters, chain e-mails, and even a public letter written by Cleveland Cavaliers' NBA owner, Dan Gilbert.


For some unknown reason he chose to use Comic Sans to address a very public note of seriousness and anger. This font should be left to elementary teachers and you would never guess... comic books! Do me favour... no do EVERYONE a favour, take the extra five minutes to chose a font that will make your design seem classy or that e-mail a little more professional.

The Helvetica Killer

Most people seem to have a love or hate relationship with Helvetica. Bruno Maag (of Dalton Maag) not only dislikes Helvetica, he has gone as far as to attempt to 'wipe it off the face of the planet'. Bruno Maag, and his team have created a new typeface which was created with intentions to replace Helvetica. It is called Aktiv Grotesk. He claims the problem with Helvetica (apart from being repeatedly misused and overused) is that it is poorly crafted, anything but a modernist font, and it is illegible for body copy (which for a Grotesk font, should be completely the opposite).

Bruno wanted to create something that was between Univers and Helvetica—"not as icy cold as Univers but devoid of all the quirks of Helvetica. To have a font that is beautifully crafted, spaced well, with not a chink in a curve or anything – perfectly drawn but hopefully with a bit of personality. We wanted to create something that could be used in a corporate environment but that has that bit of warmth that Univers doesn’t have...The x height is fractionally higher than Helvetica but the rounds have a little bit of squareness about them that Helvetica’s don't have. The differences are really subtle but give it just that bit of personality."

The following are comparisons between Helvetica (image 1) and Aktiv Grotesk (image 2).