After weeks of deliberation, the Victoria University School of Architecture has surprised many by announcing its official typeface for all official material henceforth to be Comic Sans MS.
“Every time I get an email in 14pt navy blue Comic Sans it puts a smile on my face and lights a fire in my heart!” Head of School Toby Rockwell said. “I assume it’s the same for everyone.”
The move comes as part of a rebranding undertaken by the school as an attempt to attract younger, wealthier students.
“We had that Rotis thing going on for so long.” Rockwell said. “We don’t talk about that anymore.
“We had weeks of meetings, and were getting nowhere. To be honest, I just let my granddaughters choose and told the rest of the faculty my word was final.”
Senior lecturer Georgia Messing was enthusiastic about the change.
“[The staff] love it! We’ve even requested that that typewriter noise thing in Powerpoint becomes default. You know the one? When every letter comes up with that hammering typewriter sound? I just think it’s so charming!” she said. “I think the Tech guys are still working on that.”
“We were worried that not everyone might be for it,” said Messing. “But we solved that problem by removing every other font on the system.”
“I’ve been using Comic Sans for years,” boasted Head of Landscape Architecture Paul Segoe.
“Whenever I wanted to encourage people to come along to my—may I say—notorious office parties,” Segoe smirked, “I dust off Comic Sans. Throw in some drop shadow, add a couple of rainbow gradients and we’re away!
“I always find it goes nicely with that typewriter sound you can get Picturepoint to do, do you know that one?” he said.
A representative of Victoria’s School of Design, which shares the old Air New Zealand building, was reluctant to comment on the change.
“Well, I mean, they have their tastes—it’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it? It’s not like that’s all they’re using—that is all they’re using? Well may God help us all.”
The school has reinstated the traditional Friday afternoon sausage sizzle in order to cover the costs of the licence fees.
“Of course, we had to get that new fancy one with the Euro symbol in it,” Messing said. “It is important one maintains an air of professionalism when one deals with an international market.”