An Unforgivable Sin?

After watching Helvetica the other day, I got to thinking about type and especially the Modernist movement.  You can’t help but want to go make a 50’s-60’s era poster after watching that movie…. Well, at least, I can’t.

So riding my wave of inspiration, I set out to do some research on one of my favorite designers, Josef Müller-Brockmann, whose control of the grid is unsurpassed.  What is it about these posters that makes them so successful?  Was it the simplicity of the design?  The strength of the grid?  Or was it the type itself?  I set out to answer that last question in what may be the stupidest (and perhaps most unforgivable) exercise in design ever committed.  I would red0 some of Müller-Brockmann’s famous posters, leaving the iconic grotesk font behind and replacing it with something a little more… grotesque (sorry I couldn’t resist).  The gag-inducing typeface we love to hate, Comic Sans MS.

First of all, this post is not intended to exonerate Comic Sans from it’s rightful status as a disgusting typeface that should be avoided at all costs.  I myself am far too humble to attempt to disprove a generation of rabid hatred towards the most reviled font on Earth, however I did feel it would be a fun test to see just how strong Muller-Brockmann’s designs hold up when subjected to Helvetica’s Akzidenz Grotesk’s antithesis.  Not to mention that although I share a hatred of the font, I’ve never tried to use it seriously.  Everything deserves its due diligence I suppose, even Comic Sans.

Next, a couple of observations about Comic Sans, and perhaps this may shed a little bit of a more geeky light on why this font is so terrible.  First of all, and probably most importantly, the spacing is god-awful straight out of the box.  I assume this is because it is meant for comics that the spacing is very wide and could remain readable at small sizes, however if it is going to be used seriously (ha) then it needed a healthy dose of tracking and an even healthier dose of kerning.  I first set my tracking at a still-fairly-loose -20 and then went about kerning just about every other letter pair.  Notoriously horrible are numbers and punctuation.  A period does not need a gulf of white space between the final letter and the mark.  Also, spaces (between words, sentences) were gigantic as well, and needed to be tightened heavily; a good proof of the one-space-after-a-period rule.  Also, the larger and bolder it gets, the more it suffers and begins to look (even more) ridiculous.  However, after all of this work, Comic sans may in fact be somewhat passable…

Two more attempts here.

First, a disclaimer:  I tried to be as exacting as I could be with the placement of type and the overall grid and design so as to just focus the experiment on the one variable that had changed.  I know they are not perfect, but I’d say close enough to evaluate the type on its own.  Also, on some of the source posters I was referencing, I couldn’t see the smallest type clearly enough to reproduce it perfectly, so I apologize in advance if I’ve seriously butchered some German here.

Honestly, I don’t think they are that terrible.  I’d even go as far to say that the Beethoven one doesn’t look half bad.  That is saying a lot about Muller-Brockmann’s original designs (and literally nothing about my design skills by the way – that’s not the point here).  They not only stand the test of time, but they stand the ruthless replacement of his original type.  I’d say, at the very least, it proves the strength of a simple and rigidly gridded design, and at the very most, gives Comic Sans a reason to feel good about itself until the next screed is unleashed (poor guy).

What do you think?  Does the design hold up?  Was Helvetica Akzidenz Grotesk (Update: Thanks Justin for correcting me!) such a critical part of the Modernist Design era that it’s absence actually would have precluded it’s existence?  Does it make you feel a bit better about Comic Sans?  Or does it still make you dry-heave a bit?  Have I committed an unforgivable sin in defacing Müller-Brockmann’s designs?  Sound off in the comments…