Helvettaca

My friends Lori and Matthew are graphic designers and they are bonafide typenerds. This shows in the fact that they named their sons after typefaces; Cooper Hudson and Holden Rockwell. Now, Cooper, who is 5, recently asked his teacher not to use Comic Sans in the classroom. The teacher, having a hard time making sense of Cooper’s typeface suggestion, sent this email to his parents:

You can’t make this stuff up. Oh, and watch Cooper (at age 3!) try to convince the internet that his dad loves Zapfino.

39 Comments leave a comment below

  1. Ha! And the email is even written in it! That is hilarious! “11. Thou Shalt Never-Not-Ever Use Comic Sans. Unless Thou Art Teaching a Lesson On “Bad Fonts”, In Which Case All Text Shalt Be Written in Red on a Black Background. Amen.”

  2. Brilliant stuff! If I came across a teacher like that I’d be tempted to offer her a few lessons in design so she doesn’t produce a class full of kids who think Comic Sans is the future!

  3. From my teacher friends, preschools and elementary schools use comic sans because its the only (readily available) font where the “a” is shown the way children write (single story instead of double story).

  4. On Windows, Century Gothic is often available and has a suitable lowercase “a”.

  5. Haha that is just totally precious. Thanks for sharing!

  6. As much as I loathe it, I’d pick Comic Sans over Century Gothic for long texts. Besides, preschool is the one place where Comic Sans fits.

  7. Why didn’t Cooper suggest Cooper Black?!

  8. Comic Sans burns my soul.

  9. Glad to see no one is elitist. I’m sure a teacher with a BA in design is someone far more preferable to teach your children. Perhaps then they wouldn’t grow up to be narcissistic designers.

  10. @asshat: Too late.

  11. Really cute. But slightly sad to think those kids are yet another generation exposed to bad typography from the start. Makes our job so much harder.

  12. Oh god, comic sans is worse that cancer! Amirite guys?

    If I can just break up this design circlejerk for a moment, I can think of worse things for kids to be exposed to at a young age that we should care about.

  13. *than

    Inevitable.

  14. Never been motivated to leave a comment before, but this post’s “hipster-than-though’ attitude irritates me. And to think that, in your instructions on how to leave comments, you ask people to ‘Please, be nice!’. asshat’s comment hit the nail on the head.

  15. Talk about parents living vicariously through their kids.

  16. While we may all hate the aesthetics of Comic Sans, research shows that its use may improve learning and memory. Totally appropriate for a teacher.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-05-30/ugly-font-may-improve-learning/2737810

  17. @FR @OT @asshat (really?)

    t was not my intention to ridicule anyone and I can see how teachers might be offended. My apologies. I was more humored by the fact that Cooper at age 5 would pay attention to such a thing. I can see though how this post could be taken the wrong way. I hugely respect teachers and the work they do, and didn’t mean to come across otherwise. And yes, we designers tend to take our world a tad bit too seriously at times. Also, I am sure teachers have their equivalent of a ‘comic sans joke’ when talking about parents. :)

    And please allow me one thing: It’s ok leaving a critical comment, but *please* don’t do it anonymously. It’s such a coward thing to do.

  18. Hi they should use

    http://www.fontshop.com/search/?q=ff+schulbuch

    Like helvetica but with a single stack “a”.

    :-)

  19. great!!! Cooper is gonna be a great designer….. :) I love the email, thanks!!!!

  20. I love everything about this!

  21. Naming your kids after fonts is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. This is why I love graphic design but can’t stand to be around most designers.

    The kid sounds like a brat too. Poor teacher, working for little money and having to waste her time with this nonsense.

    Nothing about this story is charming to me.

  22. This post made me laugh out load this morning..so cute Thanks Tina!

  23. I’m dyslexic, and for dyslexics the rules of font readability get flipped-turned-upside-down. Serif fonts are pure evil–the identical serifs make blocks of text look like a huge jumble of noise instead of letters and words. Sans-serif is better. But best of all are fonts where each letter has distinguishing characteristics–script and handwriting fonts.

    So Comic Sans is incredibly easy to read when you’re dyslexic. There’s a free downloadable font called Lexia that improves readability further. It’s based on Comic Sans. It’s slightly less garish, but still doesn’t have the fancy good looks of regular fonts.

    I have a problem: I’m a typography snob to the core, and I am also dyslexic. So although it hurts my soul, I’ve configured my browser and my OS to display *everything* in Lexia. So that I can actually read large blocks of text without getting brain drain. The sacrifices we make…

    Sometimes I turn off the custom font just to gaze at the beautiful typography. Then I turn it back on so I can actually read the dang thing.

  24. whitewhine.com!

  25. Comic Sans is good for little ones and dyslexics. Who would’ve thought. Good choice by the teacher. Thanks a lot for the insight, @JR. Now hipsters and haters, you both chill out and stop being uppity. There’s room for Helvettaca (rename!!) and Comic Sans.

    And designer here: Question #1 when designing/type-setting/writing: Who is the audience? And, what is the function? Thanks to to JR, I now hage a use for Comic Sans.

  26. Bless this teacher, and all those who happily use bad typefaces. If everyone had amazing design sense, I would be sleeping in a cardboard box instead of making my living choosing nice typefaces :)

  27. Nothing about this pretentious post “made me smile.”

    It was nice to learn about the comic sans/lexia font being helpful to dyslexics, though, so I thank the person who commented above for that bit of useful information.

  28. There is time and place for everything ;D Even for Comic Sans. Comic Sans is propably one of the most famous fonts ever…

  29. this is fake, mac doesnt comes with comic sans so the mail couldnt be dsiplayed in that font, hilarious anyway :)

  30. @pol – I could be mistaken, but I am pretty certain that comic sans is on most macs, though it may not be on a brand new clean install of os x. Very few users do not have MS Office installed, and this is where comic sans comes from.

  31. I have to throw my two cents in here:
    As a teacher, I thought this post was hilarious, not offensive. Granted I work in the high school setting, but regardless, I get annoyed by the obnoxiously cutesy too fonts, bulletin boards and stationary too. Contrary to popular belief, teachers do have interests and ideas not related to the classroom.

    Yes, we work hard for hardly any money, but I’ll take a kid whose a design “snob” and has parents with a sense of humor over blank, bored stares any day.

  32. *cutesy fonts, not cutesy too.

  33. Chill out, if you please. This post wasn’t making fun of the teacher, at all. It was merely a funny thing that a little kid did.

  34. Wait, this post is not from The Onion? Ha!

  35. is this a joke :)

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  37. thank you There is time and place for everything ;D Even for Comic Sans. Comic Sans is propably one of the most famous fonts ever…

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