How memes have developed strict design rules Going viral: Freewheeling online art form develops its own specific structure

The Doge meme is the only place where Comic Sans is an acceptable typeface. The website Know Your Meme has tracked the popularity of Doge and other memes. The Doge meme is the only place where Comic Sans is an acceptable typeface. The website Know Your Meme has tracked the popularity of Doge and other memes. Photo: Knowyourmeme.com Photo: Knowyourmeme.com Image 1 of / 18 Caption Close How memes have developed strict design rules 1 / 18 Back to Gallery

Comic Sans has a certain reputation as a typeface.

"Using Comic Sans means the person's a little bit clueless," said Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger, a popular Internet meme site.

It's the typeface of takeout menus and chain e-mails from weird uncles. Designers and savvy media consumers are taught to look down their noses at it.

Then why is it plastered across many of the most popular images on the Internet?

Oft-maligned typefaces like Comic Sans and Impact shot into everyday life when they were included in basic word-processing software in the 1990s. But they quickly became hackneyed through overuse in PowerPoint presentations, WordArt and school posters.

In today's Helvetica world, blogs are dedicated to tracking inappropriate use of Comic Sans in serious places, like signs about gun safety and funeral services. Impact is a mainstay on lists of most hated typefaces. Career advisers urge job applicants to avoid using either on a resume lest it end up immediately in the recycling bin.

But when it comes to writing nonsensical phrases around an adorable dog, or one-liners around the guy from the Dos Equis commercial, nothing else will do.

The two have found a new life in Internet memes - humorous images shared around the Web like inside jokes - where they are not only celebrated but have become an integral part of meme culture.

Sharing memes

A meme's definition depends on whom you ask. Broadly, the term refers to a shareable idea - a concept, style or behavior that is passed around and mimicked.

Online, though, meme images have strict design rules.

"I guess you could consider me more of a meme purist," viral image site Imgur CEO Alan Schaaf said last week. "The standard format has a static background, with text on top and text on bottom. And the only appropriate font for that meme is Impact."

Many memes follow this format - a set-up line at the top of the image and a punch line at the bottom. Equally specific is the tenor of the joke. The Socially Awkward Penguin meme always describes an awkward social situation with a clumsy response, both written in Impact, over a graphic of a stiff-looking penguin. (Example: "Be polite, hold the door / They're slightly too far away.") Success Kid describes a mundane situation that goes slightly better than expected. (Example: "Late to work / Boss was even later.")

And Comic Sans, a childlike typeface so disdained that McSweeney's magazine ran a satirical defense written from its perspective, has found a home in "internal monologue" memes. The most popular is Doge, a photo of a smiling Shiba Inu dog that's confused and amazed by the world around it - and expresses it with multicolored lowercase Comic Sans, poor grammar and key descriptors like "such," "wow" and "many." Internet cool kids find joy in the pup's innocent wonder, and alter the text to create different gags.

Graphic designers who aim for subtlety and clarity in their work would never use either typeface in a serious project. But Comic Sans and Impact are ideal for the rawness of the Internet - a world short on attention span and nuance but ready for a quick punch.

"It really makes you want to puke, when you look at it from a design standpoint," said Jung Paek, a 28-year-old design graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University. "But for the kicks and jokes and giggles online, it works so well."

As a meme, doge and its Comic Sans thoughts have even expanded to serious applications. Jackson Palmer, a San Francisco software engineer, used the meme to make Dogecoin, a branded crypto-currency. Its tagline: "wow much coin how money so crypto." Palmer said doge's "interesting innocence and cheekiness" gives Dogecoin a friendly face and attracts users who might not otherwise be interested in the crypto-currency.

"People are used to seeing the Doge meme on Twitter, on Facebook, so it kind of makes the whole thing more accessible, more approachable," Palmer said.

On the site KnowYourMeme.com, an encyclopedic guide to established memes, users have even debated whether Impact itself deserves to be dubbed a meme for its role in early meme formatting. Users debate whether the typeface's qualities - thick, legible letters that are tightly packed and space-efficient - are a factor in the making of a meme.

"Without it there will be no advice dog, lolcats, epic fails, all those memes that use impact font would be nothing at all so that's the specific reason long story shorts what gives a pictures its lols," one user wrote in impassioned defense.

But rules are rules. Impact is a tool for making memes, users decided, not a meme itself. Huh, whose Cheezburger company owns KnowYourMeme.com, agrees - and says the strict design rules in the meme world are important for fostering new ideas.

"Too much choice is a creativity killer," Huh said. "If you force people into a box in a very smart way, they'll figure out how to hack it."

'Standard format'

Schaaf agrees. Memes have "absolutely a standard format to every type, and no one likes a misused meme." If users make a Success Kid meme but don't have a joke that fits the understood pattern, the meme community will reject it.

"It won't be a good meme," Schaaf said. "They'll downvote you on Imgur."

But standard memes might have already jumped the shark. Lolcats, funny images of cats with Impact captions, have been around since 2007. Many of the standard two-line memes were made three or four years ago, and Doge, dubbed by some as the best meme of 2013, may soon reach the point where "such wow" becomes tired.

Schaaf thinks the next frontier in memes is with groups of images, not one static picture. Animated GIFs and multipicture albums already populate much of Imgur's "front page" - the ever-changing gallery of top-ranked viral images of the day. And investors are clearly interested - Imgur announced Thursday that Andreessen Horowitz led a $40 million funding round in the company - in whatever might be next in the meme landscape.

And that landscape might not include Impact or Comic Sans at all.

"People are starting to realize that they can say more with a simple animated GIF and a headline then they can in any other form," Schaaf said. "It all goes back to 'a picture is worth a thousand words.' This GIF and this headline can tell a perfect story."

What is a meme?

See more at www.sfgate.com/business.