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Last month, stocks in the much-loved and often disgusting Weatherspoon pub chain jumped after the UK group said sales had surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
This is great news if you’re in an even better horde for Tim Martin, the founder who raids a cut-price beer and grab pub to the company’s 800 or so pub and bounces back into its outspoken Brexit.
When I read about this development, I thought of Martin. He was placed in something like a chicken sale on “Clucking Good Performance.”
Specifically, I thought about the troubling aspects of his business that have been repeated in many articles written about him: Comic Suns.
The well-known controversial typeface is what I read, Martin’s longtime personal assistant uses to enter all his notes.
but why? If you are already one of the most polarized bosses in your industry, why do you double down in a split-slap move? Needless to say, there is a lack of severity?
I emailed Martin’s press team and quickly received a reply via his own assistant, with an email that looked like business-like arial.
“Comic Sands never bumped into my consciousness before your questions and I never deliberately specified a type of font,” Martin said.
He didn’t use emails himself, often texting, sending phone messages, sending to his assistant, Tina Coppitters, or turning it into email before sending it to his intended recipient.
Tina then sent me an email with an unauthorized Comic Sands. “To be clear, Tim has never asked to use any particular type of font.
It was there. The mystery has been solved. Spoon critics, who thought to be typical of Tim Martin, are to demand that they demand a cartoon that they need to think about again.
It all raises another question: what about people like me who have found unfortunate fonts loved by schools all over the world?
In my defense, I am not alone. I know a man who once had to gently persuade his boss and stop using Comic Sun in staff emails for fear that the leader’s thoughts would not be taken seriously.
It was also joked among graphic designers at first, to destroy what its founder calls “this typo evil.” The campaign began after Microsoft unleashed comic book-inspired designs in the 1990s via Windows software.
Fonts have become a global hit, but it wasn’t even supposed to be a typeface, but I’m writing Simon Garfield in my book about Type: Fonts. Its creator, former Microsoft designer Vincent Connare, has devised some of the company’s software to look more friendly and end up in Windows.
There is no real mystery as to why Comic Sans has become so popular. It’s easy and cheerful to read, so it’s very popular at school. But these same stunning features are what makes it a bottle when you get lost in a more formal environment, like war memorials, medical forms, courtrooms.
In a general investigation into the illegal prosecutions of hundreds of UK subpostmasters last year, the attackers were there when the lead lawyer in the investigation said the emails presented in a lawsuit written in Comic Sands “inducing headaches.”
A few months later, when Justice Islamabad overturned the conviction of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, several media outlets reported that the order was printed in Comic Sands.
We can’t confirm whether this is really true, but we were not surprised to see the harsh online responses drawn by the report.
“Comic Sands court documents… Pakistan…pls.” “(This) country is not that serious,” another country said.
That may be true, but there is no indication that decades of Comic Sands decline had any effect. The typeface continues to flourish, urging a continuous face plant from people who don’t like seeing it on street signs, advertisements, hotel Wheyers, supermarket signs.
I still argue that it is important to know how deeply the design affects a particular type of person in a particular type of context. But I admit that both the typeface and its inventor gave the final laugh. Enter “Vincent Connare” into Google and everything will appear in the glorious Comic Sands. He beats it, Helvetica.
