Comic Sans Criminality

I'm in the process of designing a logo and deciding which font to use for my online identity. It's quite easy to know which fonts are wrong but I'm getting absolutely nowhere with deciding which fonts are right. At the risk of sounding like Stuart from The Apprentice, I'm branding myself - well the online persona of me as a front end developer anyway. There are two problems with this. The first one being that I need to learn more about typography and the second and most important that my new brand should reflect it's personality and that's where things get tricky.

With my last venture I had a very clear vision of exactly what my business was and knew it's personality so my branding was fairly straight forward. It was almost like buying an outfit. You know your size and which types of clothes you like. I knew what suited my business and it was easy to steer clear of anything that wasn't right. I knew nothing about design and had never even heard of typography and my corporate font was chosen from the available fonts on my mac.That font was the infamous Comic Sans.

As a rule of thumb if you're dealing with the under tens then Comic Sans may be an option for you - using it for anything else is probably a bad idea. Luckily I opened a shop selling children's clothes and toys which meant that Comic Sans was acceptable (I hope) but there are a lot of other instances where the use of this font can be deemed inappropriate and sometimes just plain wrong. This link takes you to a place which can explain the horrors far better than I can Comic Sans Criminal The people who created this site have used humour as a way of highlighting a bad habit that people have got into. It helps to educate the masses about our Comic Sans habits and helps people understand the importance of typography.

The problem with knowledge is that it sucks the fun out of ignorance. When you don't know any better you roll along quite happily. Once you know that you might do something wrong then the pressure is on to do it right. If I'm not comic sans - what am I? I'd like to be some kind of script. Classy and elegant but that's not really me. That's who I'd like to be but isn't who I really am. That's the equivilent of seeing me in a ballgown and heels but the real me is far more likely to be seen in jeans and a hoodie. Now that we've established that I don't want to be a Comic Sans Criminal I now need to figure out what I should be. It's easy to see fonts that aren't me, but a lot harder to find ones which are. How much of my personality do I want to include in my business and how much of my business do I want in my typography?

Ignorance really is bliss. How do I say that I'm smart, dedicated and professional with a sense of humour through a font?

Answers on a postcard

Complaining In Another Language

Yesterday Mr WorthyOnTheWeb asked me what I was doing (and why was I muttering and swearing) I replied that I was emulating a server so that I could run my scripts. I then proceeded to whine about the fact that I was using Xampp, Apache and MySQL were running but it still wasn't working. At this point, he retreated and left the rambling weirdo to her swear words and nerd speak. Not particularly surprising. Not long ago I wouldn't have understood any of the things I'd said either, in fact I wouldn't have even heard of it. I'm complaining because I'm struggling to do something that I hadn't even heard of six weeks ago.

If I fast forward three months into the future I won't have to fight with Xampp because I won't keep making whatever mistakes I keep making at the moment. Unfortunately I'm currently a whiny swearing impatient muppet who can't get things to do what she wants them to quickly enough. Learning new things take time. I know that, but the reality is that I don't want it to take time. I want to be shown once and be able to get on with it. Not at all practical, achievable or even particularly useful. Faster isn't always better.

As well as the web development I also take a class in dressmaking (Not as part of my degree, combined honours doesn't stretch quite that far) Although there's a part of me that wants to be able to do everything straight away to an excellent standard - my brain seems to understand that I can't run before I can walk. So I don't. I hardly ever swear when I'm dressmaking. I just take my time and work at my own pace. The question is - why can't / won't I do the same with my web development. They're both hands on skills that need to be learnt and they both need practice, so why do I respond so differently? Is it because one's a hobby and one's going to pay my mortgage one day?

I'll let you know if I figure out the answer but for now I've got a fake server to do battle with.