While LeBron James might have made sports history last night when he decided to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and join forces with the Miami Heat — after a long, dramatic buildup that included King James joining Twitter — he may have made an even more important contribution to the cultural canon: The return of comic sans.
A lot of people were naturally PO’d at James for turning coat and leaving his hometown team, but the most peeved was Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, who penned a long epistle on the team website tearing into James. The contents of the letter were certainly worthy of going viral — there were a lot of all-caps sentiments and more than a little ill will — but the font Gilbert chose was, for lack of a better word, awesome. Comic-freaking-sans. You know, that font we all thought was rad when we were, like, 12 years old.
The use of said font has sparked discussions across the web — it was a trending topic this morning on Twitter and The Washington Post even made mention of it — which leads us to wonder if it will make a true comeback sometime soon.
Since its inception in 1994 — it was created Vincent Connare — people have had mixed feelings about the child-like font. Apparently, there’s even been a “Ban Comic Sans” campaign going since 1999.
Still, we’ve seen the font coming back into the public eye rather whimsically of late — Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency even recently featured a short, imagined monologue titled “I’m Comic Sans, A**hole.”
I’ll admit that I’m a bit biased here, as I have a strange predilection for the goofy typeface — call it “I love the ugly puppy” syndrome — but it’s interesting to see it thrust into the public eye hand-in-hand with a sports-related incident. What do you think? They may have lost the King, but can the Cavs save Sans?
[img credit: keith allison]
More About: font, humor, popular-culture, social media, sports
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