Comic Sans is known as the World’s Most Hated Font. Petitions to ban it entirely have been around for years, with some gathering more than 5000 signatures. So when I came across an article recently with the inflammatory title, “Hating Comic Sans is Ableist” (and for those who don’t know, “ableism” refers to discrimination against persons with disabilities), my clickbait radar immediately went off. Surely there was nothing wrong with a little (okay, a lot) of good-natured ribbing of the infamous typeface we all love to hate? But as I read on, I began to see where the writer, Lauren Hudgins, was coming from. Lauren’s sister is dyslexic; for her, most typefaces are illegible. But not Comic Sans.
Because of how distinct each letter in the font is, they are more recognisible to people who have trouble reading and interpreting words. It’s actually one of the only typefaces recommended by organisations like the British Dyslexia Association and the Dyslexia Association of Ireland. Maybe Comic Sans wasn’t designed for them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t repurposing it into a powerful tool. A tool that petitions with 5000 signatures would have them give up.
Seeing the Invisible
This made me think about invisible consumers: the people we don’t really think about when we’re marketing and designing, unless the product is specifically for them. These invisible people often end up being placed into a neat little box, with the assumption that we don’t need to consider them in any other context.
Another place this pops up frequently is in discussions about any of those absurdist late night infomercials we’ve all stumbled across. There are countless memes and threads dedicated to making fun of how silly, inept, or just plain lazy the people in those infomercials seem to be. We rarely ever consider that most of these products are targeted to people with disabilities, or older people who have difficulty doing everyday tasks. And even if they aren’t specifically created with those markets in mind, they still often end up reaching those markets disproportionately because of their capacity for making day to day activities easier.
Paying attention to these invisible markets can tell us things about our product that we might not have even realised. It might give us a new way to reach our consumers, to connect with them, to find out what they really need—and more importantly, who they are.
From The Mouth of Babes
Take, for example, another subset of the population we rarely think about (until we do): children. A while ago I read an article on how unsafe big cities were for children, because they were designed at an adult’s eye-level. The scenario they described was a 4ft tall hedge next to a roadway. Easily navigated by any adult looking for the safe moment to cross, but what about a 6 year old? Not so much.
Ad agency Grey Advertising Spain harnessed this under-examined perspective to great effect in their 2013 campaign for ANAR (Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk Foundation), which used lenticular printing to display one message at the eye level of someone above 5”4, and another at a child’s. The messaging at the adult level was simply, “Sometimes, child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it”, with an image of a sad child. But get down lower, and the image changes to reveal bruises on the child’s face and a different message: “If somebody hurts you, phone us and we’ll help you” along with the foundation’s contact information.
What it’s really saying is: I See You.
