THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Comic Discussion => QUESTIONABLE CONTENT => Topic started by: Wooglie on 20 Oct 2010, 04:00
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I spotted Faye in this article about comic sans:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11582548
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And I just told them that they should at least reference to the source. :-D
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I saw that too and came here to see if anyone else has! How bizarre. I bet they don't even know what they're using.
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Well, they should now. Only they've chosen not to publish my reply (probably because it was off-topic).
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I believe Jeph donated that image to bancomicsans.com years ago- it's been referenced (http://forums.questionablecontent.net/index.php/topic,22919.msg802113.html#msg802113) on this forum before- and so it's possible that the rights to it go with the website, and so the requisite source is indeed listed.
Although I'm not sure if it's still anywhere on the website, and also I have no idea how The Internet Laws work regarding who has to be referenced, but perhaps the author thought the image originally came from the website on which it was placed. I think it was used there with permission.
Anyway here (http://bancomicsans.com/main/pdf/bunnypunch.pdf)'s the full image I guess. (pdf, I don't know why)
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Shouldn't the discussion be about how it's quite cool to see Faye on the BBC, rather than wondering about whether or not to bust them for copyright?
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Too bad they haven't cited the source of that strip.
Although I'd preferred that BBC linked this strip from Achewood (http://achewood.com/index.php?date=07052007)
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Shouldn't the discussion be about how it's quite cool to see Faye on the BBC, rather than wondering about whether or not to bust them for copyright?
It would also be very nice if they could throw in a link, which is 65535 times more beneficial than any copyright issue might be.
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Yeah, having a link to QC would have been the appropriate thing to do. Oh well, whatcha gonna do?
Now, I know that I'm aesthetically challenged. But even so, I fail to grasp why everyone has a hate-on for comic sans. Papyrus, on the other hand...
And what is with books lately devoting a whole page to the history of the font?
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Yeah, having a link to QC would have been the appropriate thing to do. Oh well, whatcha gonna do?
Now, I know that I'm aesthetically challenged. But even so, I fail to grasp why everyone has a hate-on for comic sans. Papyrus, on the other hand...
And what is with books lately devoting a whole page to the history of the font?
Because it came to a head with the whole LeBron James and Cavaliers owner thing, where he wrote a furious letter that was impossible to take seriously because it was in Comic Sans (and because he sounded like a petulant child). Papyrus is overdone, but Comic Sans is an order of magnitude higher on the frequency of misuse scale (maintained by the National Typeface Observatory, with realtime updates on font misuse.)
Basically it's a casual font, to be used for casual purposes. It shouldn't be used for business writing or most advertising, but it is anyway.
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If the specific image came from bancomicsans.com to whom Jeph donated the image, and BCS don't have an attribution on their site, how exactly would the BBC even know to link QC? It's not like that Faye looks much like the current one...
As for why CS sucks; it doesn't. Much. At least, as a font, it's well put together with a definite theme and it's not completely unreadable like some of those atrocious "gothic" faces with ridiculous amounts of flourishes etc. so that you can't actually see the letter. It is however completely overused and totally inappropriate for communication of anything longer than a headline. Specifically, a headline about a county fair, or a new children's playground. It should never be used for the full text of anything, especially things you want people to read and retain.
The problem is that people writing these thing just don't get that, and use it in e-mails and official documents and other wildly inappropriate places.
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If the specific image came from bancomicsans.com to whom Jeph donated the image, and BCS don't have an attribution on their site, how exactly would the BBC even know to link QC? It's not like that Faye looks much like the current one...
True; I didn't know that.
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My mother's a graphic designer who works with fonts and the like on a professional level; she's taken entire courses in college studying the mechanics of fonts. She tells me that Comic Sans is aesthetically unpleasing on a fundamental level, childish in feel and functionality, and is horrendously misused by a lot of graphic designers who think that they can get a "comic book" feel to their work by using "Comic Sans" when Comic Sans is in reality very poorly suited to use in a comic environment.
So yeah, basically what everyone else has been saying, but confirmed by a professional graphic designer.
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Reading Comic Sans is like listening to Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, Michelle Bachmann and Christine O'Donnell; At first you understand all the words, and on a superficial level it kind of makes sense, but your gut tells you something is deeply wrong, even if you can't quite put your finger on it. And then you see more and it hit's you: Oh yeah, this was written by someone who is completely batshit insane!
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So... after reading the above, one might basically come to the conclusion that Comic Sans, while it has its merits, is suffering from people who don't know for which occasion, and which part of the document, should use it?
Makes sense to me... it boils down to what happened to document design when Desktop Publishing became available to the masses.
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Humanity is one of the few cases where the whole is actually less than the sum of its parts.
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That sounds like the statement of an incurable pessimist.
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Not a pessimist. I like people, and humanity in general. We're still capable of great things. Just not in large, cooperative groups.
Come to think of it, it's rare that there's such a thing as a large, cooperative group of people.
Which is why I gave up on assigning group projects in my classes!
I think the real problem is that I was raised by an historian...
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Not a pessimist. I like people, and humanity in general. We're still capable of great things. Just not in large, cooperative groups.
Hmm, that sounds like my fundamental stance on democracy.
Shit, now I have to sit down and *think*.
:D
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Humanity is one of the few cases where the whole is actually less than the sum of its parts.
Funnily enough, my Western Civ professor has told us that as well. I guess it's a historian thing?
Though I definitely agree.
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I've just bought the book that I think inspired the BBC News article (Just My Type by Simon Garfield) and the bunny image is reproduced in there too! Again, it's attributed to the Ban Comic Sans site.
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We're still capable of great things. Just not in large, cooperative groups.
Yes, large groups achieve nothing great... <rolls eyes> Of course you slipped in a useful escape-hatch in the extremely subjective word "great" but:
The pyramids of Egypt, the cathedrals of Europe, the eradication of smallpox, the Great Wall Of China, the Grand Canal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_(China)), the Apollo Program (and space exploration generally), the teaching hospital where I work*, and the very internet that allows me to send this message, are examples of arguably great achievements by cooperative groups. Of course groups can do great harm as well as good, but that simply emphasises the power of cooperation, rather than contradicting it.
Humanity is one of the few cases where the whole is actually less than the sum of its parts.
Funnily enough, my Western Civ professor has told us that as well. I guess it's a historian thing?
It sounds more like one of the sound-bites of which academics are all too fond. We'd obviously all be much better off if individuals lived in philosopher's caves and never formed groups. No villages, no towns, and, ironically, no universities. We'd achieve little more than grubbing for beetles, but at least we'd be keep our virtue intact, right? Group action is messy, hard work, as imperfect as any other human activity, and requires us to get our hands dirty, but it is the basis of all civilisation.
*Edit: I am not a medic (and don't play one on TV), I'm on the computer/technical services side of things.
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A mob is stupider than its components. A bureaucracy is an idiot savant, capable of remarkable things within a narrow range but falling apart when faced with change or exceptions.
The amazing thing about humans is that we can build semi-functional cooperative structures larger than the 40-100 person tribes we seem to be designed for.
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And so, by virtue of Akima's contribution, the question is sufficiently reduced to a question of definition.
If we define a large group as a random pile of human components without any organization whatsoever, we have a mob.
If we have a clearly-defined task, that, while too large or complex to be handled by a single individual, can be split up into sub-tasks that CAN be handled by an individual, and we have an organizational structure that monitors task progress and adapts as needed, then we have an organzation.
If we have a system of definitions of values that the group agrees on, we can then decide whether a large group is capable of creating Great Things.
Simply saying that large groups of humans cannot create Great Things assumes that people are unable to organise themselves, and that the Internet (a group effort if there ever was one) is a vile thing.
Some of the things that were created by large groups (such as the Internet) could *never* have come about from the efforts of a single individual.
So, yes, I think there's much more to this blanket statement than meets the historians' eyes. ;)
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and that the Internet (a group effort if there ever was one) is a vile thing.
Goatse, tub girl, all sorts of horrible porn, ...
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and that the Internet (a group effort if there ever was one) is a vile thing.
Goatse, tub girl, all sorts of horrible porn, ...
And Questionable Content, xkcd, S*P, ... :-D
Which all have nothing to do with the underlying infrastructure. That's the Internet.
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I was, in fact, talking about the phenomenon known as Groupthink (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink). Individual intelligence and creativity is often subsumed by the necessity of group coherence, it's an unconscious reacion to being part of a group.
Now, Akima makes a good point, great things have been done by large groups ogf people, but as Is it cold in here and peterh point out, these were directed groups brought together for that purpose; these things were all originally the thought of an individual who had the wherewithal (an emperor, pharoah, or other religious or political leader) to bring a large group to bear on a project.
And after that project is complete, the group is dissolved. Within that structure there's a great deal of room for individual creativeness to come through, as there are several problems that need to be solved by the group, and an individuals ideas can be brought to the fore, tested and adopted. But without the overarching architecture of the project, these ideas wouldn't even be necessary!
Your hospital has a charter, doesn't it? A guiding light, a purpose, a board of directors to make sure that purpose is fulfillied? And I've had a great deal of experiance with "wonderful" teaching hospitals in the last year. When faced with a "problem", they're as guilty of groupthink as the next mob! The show House is a myth - even the best doctors fall victim to this problem, and in the larger ones, you have the added problem of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. There's nothoing like a doctor admitting to you that they're not sure why they were even called in on your case!
Groups brought together for the purpose of leadership are a different matter, they tend to suffer from groupthink as much as most mobs do, but they have guidelines (e.g. Robert's rules of order) to keep things moving and get things done, whether they are well done or not.
And the internet is a different animal yet again! ARPANet was designed by some engineers for the simple purpose of academic communication, and it became a huge pile of unintended consequences...
Even this forum is a gathering of people brought together by the inspiration of one man's artistic endeavor, and his idea that "it might be neat to let people talk to each other about my comic".
And music, art, and god so many other things I'm sure he never thought would come up! Not to mention the need to lock threads and ban people...
All for the good of the group, of course.
So yes, I was using an oversimplified "soundbite". But not one without truth behind it!
TL;DR. You can get on with your lives, now.
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The show House is a myth
Oh say it isn't so! :-o You'll be telling me that Numbers isn't a documentary next!
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Sorry about that one, but when you're dealing with a mystery disease, you have no idea how often someone leans in close, and says "I bet you really could use someone like House about now".
It's still one of my favorite shows, but dammit, the dysfunctional teams of specialists we've been dealing with just ain't cuttin' it. And it's really disheartening to see the groupthink take hold at that level, when a loved one's life is on the line. Especially, like I said, at some of the world's "best" hospitals.
Numb3rs, on the other hand, is surprisingly like real life in a math department ;)
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"But I don't want to punch the bunny."
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Sorry about that one, but when you're dealing with a mystery disease, you have no idea how often someone leans in close, and says "I bet you really could use someone like House about now".
If I'm going to dish out jibes about academic sound-bites, I can take a few House M.D. hits. Besides, get a few drinks inside actual doctors, and listen to them rip into that show...
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It's never lupus.
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Except when it was (http://www.lupus.org/webmodules/webarticlesnet/templates/new_newsroomnews.aspx?articleid=1352&zoneid=59).
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So what font is Jeph using?
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I have seen that exact picture being used somewhere else. For the sake of simplicity, I will just repost my mail to Jeph.
Dear Mr. Jacques,
I recently stumbled upon a Russian website called http://zastuka.li/ (http://zastuka.li/), which quite obviously uses an earlier artwork of Faye on their front page (http://zastuka.li/images/save.gif (http://zastuka.li/images/save.gif)). The site is kinda like Bash, except it centers on stiuations where people got caught red-handed or caught somebody red-handed in whatever situation. The speech bubble says: "Each time you DON'T click 'like', I will beat this rabbit." The other text is "Save the rabbit. Click 'like'" with the footnote "Only you can do it."
I am not sure whether the site has permission to use the artwork and cannot find any means to contact them, but out of sheer curiousity, I would like to inquire whether Ms. Whitaker partakes in beating of canines for disciplinary purposes.
Thanks and goodbye,
<my name here>
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FTA:
"Most significant of all, it has become highly regarded by those who work with dyslexic children - one of the better uses for which it was never intended."
I found that rather interesting.