Another post in the "Randomly Occurring Periodic Post About Something Design Related" series.
I got an email from my mom this week, and she thought I'd be amused by a font case study. Guess what: not amused!
This is from the list serve for our programs--it references a document that we have to sign with all of the places where we place volunteers. Some programs are having a problem getting non-profit agencies to sign them--I thought you'd get a kick out the latest posting.
Oh, I got a kick out of it. As a matter of fact, you will too. After the jump...the post.
This is going to sound silly but ... When we changed the font on our MOU's from Times New Roman to Comic Sans we never had another problem. If your MOU looks like a legal document folks are going to treat it like a legal document.
Wow...where to begin? Apparently, they were having trouble getting non-profit organizations to sign their form because it was typeset in Times New Roman. In their words, it looked like a legal document. But when they typeset their form in Comic Sans, suddenly everyone took time to fill out the form, ostensibly because it was "friendlier" and "more inviting." Good lord.
And now this director has told the entire state listserv that if you want to get people to sign your MOU form, you need to typeset it in Comic Sans. Worse, people are listening. My mom, having raised a designer and knowing full well the horrible evil of Comic Sans, tried to set them straight but it fell on deaf ears. One of the responses to her attempts:
"Your son might be a 'designer', but if he hates Comic Sans he must not be a very good one. Using that font on my form saves me at least five hours a week in phone calls I now don't have to make to beg people to sign the thing. Who knew a font could make such a positive impact?"
You know what, I give up. I'm done.
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