The Sydney Morning Herald kicked off a Twitter tantrum, after the 183-year-old newspaper had the tacky temerity to use Comic Sans on the front page.
To be fair, the typeface was used at least semi-appropriately: in cartoon speech bubbles. The Herald used Comic Sans to put opposing comments by two politicians on opposing sides of an Australian corruption scandal. That's probably a questionable layout decision in and of itself, but as originally designed by Vincent Connare for Microsoft's kid-friendly operating system, Bob, Comic Sans is designed to float inside a speech bubble. Unlike so many corporate memos and passive-aggressive notes on the office fridge, the Sydney Morning Herald actually used Comic Sans correctly.
But in the war of Comic Sans, there are no non-partisans. So Twitter, of course, has gone nuclear as support is divided into pro and anti-Comic Sans camps.
Even Buzzfeed wrote a story about it, in response to which the Sydney Morning Herald editor wrote this wonderful, Comic Sans laced email:
Leaving aside the issue of whether or not Comic Sans is a bad font--I personally say it isn't so much bad as misused--can we all focus on the real problem here? It's not that the Sydney Morning Herald used Comic Sans, it's the fact that they did so as ineptly as possible. Look at that horrible kerning and those wildly inconsistent margins! That, my friends, is the real design crime.
[h/t Buzzfeed]