An even meaner Comic Sans, somehow

I take it back. Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert's whiny open letter to Cleveland fans no longer holds the title of Most Ridiculously Out-of-Place Usage of Comic Sans of All Time. That honor now belongs to Museo de Armas (Weapons Museum) in Buenos Aires, where, beyond the rooms full of samurai swords and assault rifles, I spotted this gem:

Machetes. Comic Sans. Together. Oh, the humanity.

Cooper Black in Colonia

Cooper Black was among the last 12 typefaces I expected to find in the dusty cobblestone back roads of ultraquaint Colonia, Uruguay. But then this happened:

Sighting Cooper and its friendly bold serifs made me reflect on some of the more notable uses of the typeface in its almost 90-year history.

And there are no signs of stopping.

Evita in Impact

I observed the following signs at the July 26 march in Buenos Aires, in which members from various labor unions took to the streets in honor of the anniversary of Eva Perón's death. In a sea of signs, a few stood out:

Look to the right of the faces

Impactville, USA: Chapel Hill

I submit the following evidence in my nomination of Chapel Hill as Impactville, USA.

Outside a Walgreens

A sticker opposing Greenbridge, a controversial development

Back-to-back UNC sports books in Impact

On the other hand...

In a follow-up to yesterday's post, check out the front page of The Morning Journal from Lorain, Ohio. What's up, Impact?! You are considerably more professional than Comic Sans.

The New York Post gets in on the fun too:

The meanest Comic Sans you'll ever see

Comic Sans, the dinky typeface that is inexplicably one of the Core Fonts for the Web, has never looked more menacing. Cleveland Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert used the typeface Thursday night in his sour grapes open letter to Cavs fans shortly after LeBron James announced he was signing with Miami. 

Perhaps no font has inspired more ire and contempt than Comic Sans. As explained in the video below from Ban Comic Sans, a typeface should be like a crystal glass and not a golden, bejeweled goblet. In other words, it should be invisible and let its contents speak for themselves. When a typeface draws attention to itself, the writer has already lost. Comic Sans has done exactly that, and being one of the most recognizable fonts out there, it has easily become the most hated.


Comic Sans from Sam and Anita on Vimeo.

Typically Comic Sans is reserved for playful text and anything written by a 9-year-old, which makes Gilbert's use of the typeface all the more perplexing. Coupled with the fact that, as Deadspin put it, the letter contains "prose you normally find wrapped around a brick," this could be the oddest and most unjustifiable use of Comic Sans in its 16-year history. 

Rifling through

A baseball player strikes the ball with great force down the left field line. Using baseball lingo, you could say the player drove it, or lined it. But is it acceptable to say he "rifled" it?

I'm hearing more and more sports announcers using rifle as a verb meaning "to strike with great power (like a rifle shot)." It has made its way to soccer, as evidenced by Sunday's Galaxy-Sounders game. 

Dictionaries are split on the matter but tend not to favor the newer meaning. Most just stick to the traditional definitions of the verb, "to search" and "to ransack." (I even learned a new one: you are rifling when you are cutting grooves into a gun barrel.)

Last year, The New York Times criticized TBS announcer Chip Carey for his usage of "rifled" in a baseball playoff game, but it is unclear whether they objected to the verb in general or just in that situation. If the writer was against the definition, he should probably get used to hearing it more.

Impact on the wrestling mat

Cameo in 30 Rock

In an April episode of 30 Rock, Jack Donaghy brings janitor Khonani into his office to address the feud between  Khonani and another janitor over who gets the coveted 11:30 p.m. shift. This was an obvious parallel to the Conan O'Brien-Jay Leno feud, a parallel I completely missed and was unaware of until I researched this episode to learn how to spell Khonani's name. And now I just realized that Khonani sounds just like Conan. Hey, I couldn't help it. I was too transfixed by the nameplate on that Golf Daily magazine.

Rhythm & Typeface

Nina Simone's people knew exactly which typeface to use to reflect the soulstress's 2006 jazz-gospel-remix album.

This week in capitalization

Unless that event is for Army Privates, that P should be down.

The St. Petersburg Times: not an Impact affiliate

A casual look at the St. Petersburg Times's website, tampabay.com, suggests the newspaper may be using Impact in its online masthead.

But upon closer inspection, it fails the Impact test. Check out the discrepancies between tampabay.com's typeface (top), and the real Impact:

The big difference is in the width, height and roundedness of the counters, or white spaces, in enclosed or partially enclosed letters like p, b, m and o. Impact's counters are skinnier, taller and rounder than tampabay's typeface. They also differ in their 'a' bowls (the part that sticks out to the left): While Impact's 'a' bowl rigidly lines up with the a's finial, tampabay's curves beyond, coming dangerously close to touching the preceding letter (look how close the 'p' and 'a' in 'tampa' come to grazing each other).

Verdict: Not Impact

Impact, sharply dressed

Comedy troupe Stella used Impact in the opening credits to its tragically short-lived Comedy Central show, and stellafans.com uses the typeface extensively. 

I'll never forget the time they went turkey hunting, in camouflaged suits and ties, of course.

Impact in the news

Nice to see the classic Courier New Bold employed in the word "Toxic." 


I'm curious as to what typeface is used at the bottom. It's much more modern than Stencil, evidenced by the lack of serifs and more uniform letter thinness. 


The most important use of Stencil in my world:

Also, T.J. looks eerily like a professional ticket scalper.

Impact goes prime time

Tittle not included.

Power to the 'pacters

And for fun, count the uses of Impact on the company's website!

Save 50 cents in style

Near miss in Montreal

I thought this Montreal Canadiens fan was boasting an Impactful towel during Thursday's N.H.L. Eastern Conference Finals game against the Philadelphia Flyers. But upon closer inspection, the capital Gs lack the descending hash and the Os are octagonal rather than rounded. Close call in a not-so-close game. 

Impact in South Park

The typeface appeared at another point in the show as well, but it was in the message "YOU'RE FAGS!" written on tiny flags planted in Eric Cartman's turd, and that's not the message I.O.I. is trying to send the children.


I objected to the episode, and not because of the liberal use of the word "fag." I acknowledge the point the writers made: several different groups have been targeted with the word "fag" throughout time, and to today's youth, "fag" doesn't mean gay person as much as at it means loud annoying douche bag. But they lost me at the part when the characters tried to persuade dictionary writers to change the formal definition of the word. 


As if a change in the dictionary definition would somehow magically change everyone's use of the word. Changes in definition follow widespread shifts in usage, not the other way around. A word means whatever the people who use it say it means. So even if the characters all understood "fag" to mean a Harley-riding douche, the majority of people who would use the word would still have a different understanding of it.


If you want to change a word's meaning, don't call up the dictionary editors, just start using the word differently, and the world may or may not catch on. 


To put it simply: The dictionary doesn't determine our speech. Our speech determines the dictionary.


/gets off high horse

Even silver-chested magicians in trench coats are doing it

Am I right, ladies?

Impact in the Big Apple

Moments before I boarded the subway car, a boisterously forthcoming banner caught my eye through the railing.

This week in typos

In what was almost an epic use of 11th-grade vocab words, Isabella embarrasses her family by misspelling "transcends" and "picturesque" in her guestbook comment.

Still a pretty formidable string of words. Although I have a sneaking suspicion she's really using her comment to satirize the inanity and pretentiousness of art criticism. Make your own judgment.

Papyrus in Asheville

What really caught me off guard was the use of Papyrus throughout the town, especially in its art galleries. Apparently, what Impact is  to snarky placard designers, Papyrus is to artists.

Impact in Asheville

My trip to Asheville, NC, provided me with plenty of Impact sightings. It also provided my cousin Evan, visiting from Bogotá, Colombia, a firsthand peek into the American typeface subculture. 

After a few minutes in a bookstore, he really started to get a feel for it. 

Head shops are Impact's bread and butter, though (case in point). Luckily for us, Asheville had 2,000 of them. Impact enthusiasts the world over can rejoice.