Comic sans-core

If you are reading this post on windows, macos, or linux and you’ve taken the time to install microsoft fonts, you will notice that the site is set in comic sans. This is the aspect of the site design that i have received the most comments on since i added that one line to my css file a few months ago.

I added it around the same time that i decided to start writing more regularly. Part of the reason was as an indicator to myself that i want to move away from having an attractive site with no content to having a site with actual content. I think that’s how comic sans ends up so often in the wild: it’s not used by professional designers, but by people who have a message they want to print somewhere, and want to use something other than the slightly serious looking serif or sans-serif default.

The interesting thing about the comments i’ve received is that they have all been positive. No-one has told me it’s a bad or ugly choice. People have said they like it, sometimes genuinely, and sometimes with slight surprise. Apparently a lot of people who don’t have a design background still just like it; my girlfriend chose it for the font on her own website because she said it looked cute.

When i started writing more, i set myself the rule that i am not allowed to change the backend of this website until 2027. That means one year of using the same method to generate the website. I am allowed to make changes to the code, and i am allowed to make changes to the styling, but i am not allowed to use anything other than org-static-blog, because otherwise i will start messing around with that, and stop writing.

A few times since then, i’ve thought about changing the design of the site, simply because that is a thing that i find enjoyable. But when i open up the css and see that i’ve defined comic sans as the font, so far that has stopped me from changing it. I know that a lot of people like it, and probably more people don’t care. People on mobile devices don’t even get to see it.

So like, even though comic sans has a reputation, and even though i am very unlikely to use it in any proper designing that i’m doing, having it on this little site is a small joy for me.