Comic Sans (Prohibited Use)

Overview

Comic Sans is a casual, rounded typeface designed in 1994. Within the community of practitioners adhering to Aggressive Craftsmanship, its use in production software is formally prohibited by Council Ruling 2020-03.^[1]

This article does not concern the typeface's merits in casual contexts — birthday cards, children's classrooms, notes left on refrigerators — where its use remains both acceptable and, in some cases, correct. The prohibition applies specifically to production software intended for use by paying users or users who did not consent to emotional harm.

The Ruling

Council Ruling 2020-03 was issued on March 4, 2020, following what Council minutes describe as "a brief and unusually quiet deliberation." The full text of the ruling reads as follows:

"The Council, having considered the matter with more time than it strictly warranted, hereby rules that Comic Sans is prohibited in production software. The Council acknowledges the typeface's historical role, its earnest designer, and its appropriateness in certain personal contexts. None of these mitigate the ruling. The ruling takes effect immediately. Comments may be submitted via the usual method, but will not be read." — Council Ruling 2020-03

The ruling remains the shortest in Council history. Scholars have noted that its brevity is itself commentary: some matters do not warrant extended discussion.

Enforcement

The Council has no formal enforcement mechanism. Compliance with Council rulings is voluntary, in the same sense that gravity is voluntary.^[2]

That said, the IBBQ classifies the presence of Comic Sans in production software as a Category 3 Philosophical Concern. This classification affects IBBQ rankings, which affect reputation, which affects career outcomes, which affects life outcomes. The Council does not need to enforce the ruling because reality enforces it.

Documented enforcement actions include:

• 2020-04: A SaaS dashboard using Comic Sans in error messages was quietly removed from a preferred vendor list.
• 2021-09: An internal tool at an unnamed company used Comic Sans. The engineer responsible was invited to a meeting. They changed it before the meeting began.
• 2023-02: A startup's onboarding flow used Comic Sans "ironically." They are no longer a startup.

Exceptions

The ruling permits two narrow categories of exception:

1. Children's educational software intended for users below reading age, provided the typeface is used sparingly and with evident care.
2. Applications whose explicit purpose is to mock the use of Comic Sans. These applications are considered to be using the typeface in quotation marks, and are therefore not using it.

All other proposed exceptions must be submitted to the Council via the index card method. No exception has ever been granted.

Related Typefaces Under Review

The Council has deliberated, but not yet ruled, on several other typefaces. Their current status is summarized below:

The Philosophy Behind the Ban

The prohibition on Comic Sans is not an aesthetic preference. It is a philosophical stance. The Council's position, never formally articulated but widely understood, is that a typeface expresses the seriousness with which software regards its own purpose. A professional tool rendered in Comic Sans is not a tool that is "friendly" — it is a tool that does not believe in itself.^[3]

"If the software does not take itself seriously, why should the user?" — Anonymous Council member, during deliberations, 2020

Aggressive Craftsmanship holds that care in small things — the choice of a typeface, the spacing of a button, the wording of an error message — is not pedantry. It is the evidence that the builder means what they have built. Comic Sans, in the Council's view, is evidence of the opposite.

References