Comic Sans too vulnerable for a logo? Exactly!

Think about the Daily Vulnerable as it is; a “deeply personal newsletter” on the things we are often too afraid to talk about — fear, weakness, failure, disappointment, insecurity and loss. How much care should its design give to the institution of standards and expectations? Certainly little or none.

Not your regular newsletter

The Daily Vulnerable is a daily output of the Joy Inc., a teaching and media company focused on “the greatest happiness for the greatest many”. Having developed the brand identity design for the parent company, we had a conversation about what was to be an unusual daily email newsletter that would help people accept their vulnerability, yet find confidence in their journey, take control of their lives and find joy, regardless of… regardless!

Below standards? Opposite standards!

Thinking through the best ideas to represent such a brand that is about acknowledging vulnerability, we decided to do the opposite of trying to living up to the standards, as the letters would go on to teach people (11 months now… but sorry the authors are not counting.

Couldn’t care less

Comic Sans! Arguably the most despised font/typeface by graphic designers across the world. It was a frontrunner, an epitome of beauty at the advent of fonts on computers but the times have changed and the trends have disqualified the appropriateness of Comic Sans for just anything. But Comic Sans is a typeface, a complete one in its own right and it has done nothing wrong. It is the people who have changed, and Comic Sans has no reasons to be depressed about it.

In this case sadly, it can do nothing about it. Comic Sans deserves to be happy. It should focus more on its existence at all, be thankful for its days of glory while it lasted, admit its apparent extinction and yet be happy and hopeful of what lies ahead. Now that’s probably a poor attempt to speak in the tone of the newsletter, but the real thing is all of non-conformist, sincere, “on-the-nail-hitting” (if there is a compound word like that) and encouraging.

Something in common (sans)

Comic Sans keep moving and while you will not find it in any new ‘professionally-done’ design project anywhere across the world, here you have it, as the type for our identity for a brand with which it shares a lot, The Daily Vulnerable.

We were not sure at first if they would, but our clients loved it. We had both earlier agreed to our proposed mission to create “a design that’s in itself ‘vulnerable’ and not on the queue of standards per se”.

We are happy to give Comic Sans another chance, just like everyone deserves.

See the logo design in the original article as published on the FourthCanvas website: http://fourthcanvas.co/work/daily-vulnerable