THE WORLD OF WRITING

Fonts have fan clubs

sk any designer what they think about Comic Sans and they’ll look at you as if you’d thrown up on their artfully arranged desk. But beyond the elevated aesthetics of design professionals, whoever expected fonts to trend on Twitter? When author Sean Richardson () tweeted ‘Please reveal the deepest part of yourself: Which font and which size do you write in?’ on 26 January, fonts went viral, with the Twittersphere awash with writers proclaiming their favourites. Times New Roman came out as top of the font pops. The serif typeface was commissioned by in 1931 and designed by stopped using Times New Roman in 1972. Despite a dignified and illustrious history that includes being the font used for the , Twitter user summed up its appeal by saying ‘It’s all about that adorable lower case f’. Though to be fair, no-one’s ever going to say that about Comic Sans.