Commentary

Have A Snarkfest With Sartalics, The Font Designed For Sarcasm


Three BBH Barn interns in the New York office were tasked with creating a campaign using the theme, "change perception famously."

And so the font Sartalics was born.

Sartalics is a reverse italics font to be used when tweeting, emailing or updating your Facebook status with a sarcastic comment. I can't tell you how many sarcastic text messages I've had to explain with a follow-up phone call. Winds up defeating the purpose of the initial text. Sarcasm is a hard emotion to convey, when you're not face-to face with someone -- though this invention should help matters.

"Working around the creative brief for ten weeks, the interns really took the change perception part seriously. [They] knew that with communication going digital, it's impossible to... be sarcastic without having ... to clarify when people misunderstand," said June Kim, BBH Barn intern.

The interns are taking their creation a step further, hoping that Sartalics grabs the attention of major technology companies that can make Sartalics an official, adopted font.

Twitter users can visit Sartalics.com and authorize their Twitter account to act as a virtual signature approving the adopted use of Sartalics.

Once the interns receive 10,000 signatures, the messages will be sent to the personal Twitter accounts of executives at Twitter, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, YouTube, Apple and Tumblr, with hopes that Sartalics will become an actual font. Watch a tutorial here.

In addition, the interns also created "personalized videos for some influencers who have expressed a need for a sarcasm font," continued Kim.

Here's hoping Sartalics makes the cut. When was the last time a new font was added to Microsoft Word? Am I being serious or sarcastic? If only there was a font to determine that...

1 comment about "Have A Snarkfest With Sartalics, The Font Designed For Sarcasm".
Check to receive email when comments are posted.
  1. Garrett Moffitt from SoP, August 9, 2011 at 2:14 p.m.

    Why bother with the hassle of a new font? It's a pain to distribute, and get accepted.
    Why not use a preexisting character? The tilda(~) comes to mind.
    http://harns.blogspot.com/2008/04/garrett.html

Next story loading loading..