Mandaory Blog Post #11 - Fonts can be distracting and stuff

Our discussion of fonts in class the other day got me to thinking about the uses of each of the many font styles available to us. When writing an academic paper I typically write in Time New Roman because it is the standard and isn't distracting. It cuts straight to the point and doesn't detract form my message. I understand that people use different fonts when writing for a certain audience, but when I am writing an academic paper, I do not want the professor to pay more attention to my font than to my message.  If a font is too pronounced, then it can simply get in the way.

To show this, I created a custom font with my friend, which consists of my handwriting. I do not have the best handwriting and I often find that it is too difficult to read and distracts the reader form what is actually being said. I apparently have handwriting that closely resembles Comic sans, so we entitled the font JomicSansBS. It should show up on all of your browsers as it is embedded within the HTML.

So, here we go.

Hi everyone, this is my tenth post on blogger. I have to make two posts every week: one about in-class content, the other about anything of my choice. I like to relate the free posts to class discussions or something relating to the digital age. My blog posts are often times ignored by the class, either because my name falls somewhere on the blog list where they don't often look, or my posts and opinions are simply not interesting.

I don't tackle controversial issues pertaining to society, but I do like writing about things I enjoy. I don't enjoy being negative and placing blame on anything and then proposing a solution that will require several exceptions to actually work. I do, however,  like talking about comic books, video games and doing silly things like making my own font and seeing if people continue reading past the first few sentences.

I like my readers to be able to read something that will make them think about things in a new way, like my post about Scott McCloud and the infinite canvas (you should read it). I don't want to guilt trip anyone, I simply want to expose them to something new. This post is a good example. I doubt that any of my readers have thought about incorporating their own customs fonts into their posts, but thanks to this, they might be inspired to do so. 

See? I do write about interesting things, I just do it in a different way. You can find tutorials for making your own font online. Click over there, to the right of this:  http://lmgtfy.com/?q=creating+your+own+font

I hope that you were able to read all of this.

I bet all of that was pretty hard to get through, content or font. If so, you were most likely distracted by the font itself and you either stopped reading or forced yourself through my handwriting. Fonts can be pretty distracting, but if I have to say that I learned one thing from this, it would have to be...

Be careful of what kinds of fonts you use. Some people may be too distracted by them to actually finish reading what you have to say.