Yes, it turns out that the one thing Jesus and I have in common is a shared love of comic sans. He loves it because it will enable him to utilise its jaunty, comedic features on a worldwide leaflet drop on the Thursday after The Rapture thereby taking the sting out of the coming Armageddon. I love it because I know I don’t have to use it...

Everyone is a designer these days and all potential clients seem to know a kid that lives next door that will throw together a website using a knock-off copy of Dreamweaver for the price of a Curly Wurly and a can of Tab Clear. When we have to impart that, unfortunately, we could not conceive of working for less than a multipack of Wagon Wheels and a weeks supply of Um-Bongo, some may initially fail to see the benefit of using our services over those of little Johnny StreetUrchin. I can understand their thinking. £3.50 for a website or £500? Thirteen minutes of development time or a couple of weeks?

Thank fuck for Comic Sans then. Nothing says ‘you’ve gone cheap’ better than a standard size A4 leaflet dripping with Comic Sans, resplendent in retina burning shades of RGB with amazing imagery direct from ‘Clipart Explosion volume 166’. Add to that some fake marble effect horror-stock paper and a quick run through your desktop lexmark and there it is. You have exactly what you paid for although you might want to go back and request some extra drop shadows and bevels on the body copy.

I cannot bring myself to be too harsh on Comic Sans because it was never meant for me. It’s for the Vicar. It’s for my Dad. It’s for Johnny Urchin and his £10 flyer. Besides, as designers, we can only take so many shots at the untrained before they might start to question our right to be needlessly pretentious while wearing drainpipe jeans and a cravat indoors. Based on some places I have worked in my time, that makes you as much a designer as not using comic sans...