I just had to take a moment and share with you all an amazing little monologue published by McSweeney’s called I’m Comic Sans, Asshole (Click the red title to read the monologue). After taking a few publishing classes, I found that I am a moderate typographile, but nowhere near the die-hard typographist that some people are. And there are some unfortunate fonts that bear the brunt of their wrath–Comic Sans and Papyrus being two prime examples.

And yes, some of these fonts are over-used, or unimaginative. I get that. But why do people get so upset at these poor fonts? They have served us well over the years, particularly on school reports. I have a roommate that gets irrationally irate whenever he see Papyrus, so I tend to drop it in front of him whenever I can.

But then there are fonts, like Helvetica, that are lauded beyond all fonts. In fact, they have whole snooze-inducing documentaries about them!

But these lauded, stripped down fonts are boring. Yes, it’s fantastically useful and readable for signs and menues and all of that, but when you want to give your project some oomf, and are completely font illiterate, Comic Sans and Papyrus are not criminal offenses.

Basically, I think while you are free to love whatever fonts you love, and dislike whatever fonts you dislike, just remember that I am going to laugh my ass off whenever you get your panties in a twist over a font that is basically indistinguishable from others. And I will do my best to put it in front of you whenever I can.

But, if you’re tired of the basic fonts on your machine, check out a site like Dafont for some free alternative fonts. Of course, they may not be quite as refined as the over-used fonts on your machine (Here’s looking at you, Times New Roman), but they can be fun from a design point of view.