When all you’ve got are the fonts your office programme provides, and the option is between super-serious Garamond, clear but tactless Arial, or jolly old Comic Sans, sometimes it really is the best option out of a bad crowd. It doesn’t look like your bog standard textbook typefaces it looks like actual human handwriting – endearingly, if pathetically, flawed and therefore relatable.
What’s more, this informality is the reason why so many people like it so much. The idea was to have something informal that would hold up at a very small size on the screen, which Comic Sans admittedly does. It was originally meant to appear in the speech bubbles of a talking dog who had the same function as the Microsoft Word Paperclip, in a desktop navigation programme called ‘Bob’, but it wasn’t finished in time. And it’s just so incessantly, irritatingly friendly.īut here’s the thing… that was more or less the creator’s intention.Ĭomic sans was inspired by the lettering from old school comic books (the clue is in the title!) which used to be hand-written by the artists. It’s unsophisticated, simple, even clumsy, like a kid did it in MS Paint. The kerning (the gaps between the letters) are all weird and uneven, there appear to be fat bits and thin bits despite the fact that the line they’re drawn with is the same width. People have spent vast amounts of time breaking down exactly why it hurts their sensibilities so much. But despite this unmatched fame, typographers and designers around the globe hear it’s name and roll their eyes. I’ve used it (I was seven at the time, but it happened). It’s even part of the Microsoft Office font package, which is probably where you came across it in the first place. It pops up in advertising, packaging, notices and shop signs all the time. Taking this fact into consideration, when compared to Garamond, which wasn’t originally designed for the screen, Comic Sans fares quite well concerning readability.Since it’s release in 1994, Vincent Connare’s much maligned sans serif typeface has become it’s very own cliché, and yet remains one of the most popular fonts in the world. Without anti-aliasing, fonts look jagged - as if they were made of LEGOS. Anti-aliasing is the technology that makes fonts looks smooth on-screen. And at that time most personal use computers didn’t have anti-aliasing. Anti AliasingĬomic sans was designed to be used on a screen. And nothing looked more novel than comic sans at that time. We as human beings are always in search of novelty. Comic sans was unlike any other font in the 90’s that people were used to seeing. (Might be the case in some alternate reality, Cpapyrus, with a silent “C” :p) It was one of a kind (then)Īnother reason is owing to its peculiar structure. If Papyrus was instead given a name starting with C, who knows, it could have been another Comic Sans. People didn’t have to scroll a lot to come across Comic Sans. That is somewhere on the top of the list of default Microsoft font. It started with CĬomic Sans starts with a C. But, did they know anything about fonts? Off course not, this was the first time ever that this was happening. This gave the ordinary people the immense power to write, print, publish whatever they wanted, in whatever font they wished. Every household could now afford to buy a personal computer and a printer. What are the factors that could have made this mediocre font into an all-purpose font?🤔 Digital RevolutionĬomputers were getting cheaper.
#COMIC NEUE VS COMIC SANS SOFTWARE#
But, Microsoft anyways decided to ship it along with all its Windows 95 software (To many, this might sound like the moment when Pandora’s box was unleashed). However, the font wasn’t completed on time to be used in the program. Inspired by comics, Connare created the now infamous script font, Comic Sans. He felt that Times New Roman would make it look too formal for a software targeting the younger audience at that time. One man named Vincent Connare took notice of this. It featured a small cartoon dog named Rover, and Rover spoke in Times New Roman. In 1994, Microsoft was working on a program called Bob. It is so hated that there is a website dedicated to its demise. “If you love it, you don’t know much about typography If you hate it, you really don’t know much about typography either and you should get another hobby”įast forward to today, Comic Sans has been one of the most hated and widely used fonts of all time.
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