Of Course Trump’s Lawyer Uses Comic Sans

Of Course Trump’s Lawyer Uses Comic Sans

After Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI regarding conversations with Russia last year, Trump’s lawyers were “left scrambling” to dissociate the President from potential evidence of wrongdoing.

So when Trump’s lawyer Ty Cobb took to Twitter to respond to Flynn’s plea, make no mistake–it was a major moment in presidential history. Our commander-in-chief’s legal team had to work quickly to cut away the connection between Trump and the guilty anchor that is Flynn, which could theoretically pull down the whole presidential cabinet.

And for this moment–for this forceful statement–Cobb chose a font for the ages. Not the stoic Times New Roman. Not the respectable Arial. As Taxi points out, he chose Comic Sans, perhaps the most maligned typeface in history. It’s a child’s font at best, and an adult still drawing with crayons at worst.

Trump’s lawyer Ty Cobb: "Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn." pic.twitter.com/vk7Hx9pOm0

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) December 1, 2017

As Co.Design pointed out in 2014, in our story on the psychology behind Comic Sans, the oft-repulsed reaction to Comic Sans isn’t just snobbery; it’s science. When a typeface seems wrong for its context, you just know. And Comic Sans, the font of childhood and naïveté, is just so seldom right. As Eric Jaffe wrote:

People also tend to have an innate sense of when a type fits a situation. Participants taking speed identification tests respond faster when a font is paired with an matching description (the word “heavy” in a bulky font) than when there’s a mismatch (the word “heavy” in an airy font).

But there’s no font that could balance all of it: the Trump administration’s dealings with Russia, the reality TV star crying “fake news,” the horror of looming nuclear apocalypse, the hateful racism of the travel ban, or the confessions of lecherous assaults on women grabbed by their genitalia as a pickup move. So I guess we can’t fault Cobb for picking a font that represents a grown baby drooling into his bucket of KFC while the world around him burns. He’s right. Comic Sans is the perfect font for the job.

Original article and pictures take www.fastcodesign.com site