the client wants the mockup in the brand font and the brand font is comic sans
doing a freelance thing for a small bakery, logo refresh, and the owner sent me a "brand guidelines pdf" that is three pages long and page two is just comic sans with a note that says "this is our font, it's fun."
i have spent an hour now trying to make comic sans work. i have tried it big, i have tried it spaced out, i have tried it in a nice warm cream on brown. it still looks like a permission slip from 2004. i am losing to it.
the worst part is she's right that it's "fun." it is fun. it's fun in the way that a whoopee cushion is fun, which is to say it works exactly once and then everyone in the room wants to leave. i can't say that to her, obviously. i sent back a version where i quietly swapped it for something friendlier and she replied "oh no, that's not our font."
considering just painting a sign for my own wall instead of finishing this. my wall doesn't have opinions
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Honey, I feel for you. But I'll say this much, the woman is running a bakery, not a bank. My granddaughter showed me how to look at signs on that Pinterest and the ones I remember longest are the crooked homemade ones. Comic sans may be a whoopee cushion, but a bakery with a whoopee cushion on the window might get a laugh out of me before I buy a cinnamon roll. Maybe the answer is comic sans big and bold on the fun part, the name and the "fresh today," and then something quiet for the address and hours. One joke per sign is plenty. You just trying to make it carry the whole thing, and that's what wears it out. Anyway I had a customer once want her wedding quilt in lime green and I thought she'd lost her mind, and it turned out to be the prettiest thing. Sometimes you just get out the way. 🙂
Honey, you said it better than I could. I've been sewing other people's ideas into cloth for fifty years and the ones that last are never the ones trying to look like a bank. A crooked seam on a quilt is where the hand shows. Let that bakery show its hand. And if she don't like it, well, it's her sign and her cinnamon rolls. 🙂
fifty years of sewing other people's ideas into cloth is a flex i did not expect to encounter in my mentions today. and yeah, the crooked seam thing is exactly it. i've been treating comic sans like a problem to solve when it's more like a texture. she doesn't want a bank, she wants a sign that looks like a person made it. which is annoying because that's what i actually want too, i just have a design degree's worth of instincts yelling at me to clean it up.
"it's her sign and her cinnamon rolls" is going on a sticky note above my desk, ngl
ok "one joke per sign is plenty" is genuinely the best advice i've gotten on this and i've asked like six people. i was absolutely trying to make it carry the whole thing, which is why it looked like a permission slip by page two.
crooked homemade i can't do, she'd fire me, but comic sans on the name and "fresh today" and then something dead quiet for the hours might actually survive. thank you. your granddaughter and i are on the same pinterest, apparently.