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Comment by markandrewj | Hacker News Reader

It seems like this isn't very well known, but the design of Comic Sans is actually intended to help children with dyslexia. The creator of Comic Sans also talks about this in his lectures. Listening to him talk about the design of the typeface changed my perception of it.

Ref: Vincent Connare: Comic Sans is the Best Font in the World https://youtu.be/xXdzBTeYZlE

Ref: https://www.nothingcomicaboutdyslexia.com/

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Was it intended to?

I know it's useful for dyslexics but I've not seen anyone claim it was intentionally designed with that intent and I'm pretty sure that has been explained to be a happy coincidence in the past.

Ref2 doesn't state that, and I can't do video right now.

Edit: And neither does Ref1

Thank you for the correction. I thought I had read it was part of the initial design consideration at one point, but reading about it further again, I think the discovery that it helped dyslexic readers happened after the typeface was made public.

It is still an interesting aspect of the typeface that doesn't get much attention though, although there are other typefaces that also try to help with dyslexia.

If you are interested in design, I still recommend watching the talk when you have the time. It has been a while since I watched it, but the designer is well spoken.

There's a font called OpenDyslexic[1] that was actually designed to do that

[1] https://opendyslexic.org/

Some info about these fonts here https://www.edutopia.org/article/do-dyslexia-fonts-actually-...

Fwiw my dyslexic friends feel no benefit from these fonts. Would love to hear other experiences.

It is a good question, I have read mixed reports about the effectiveness as well. Besides specific typefaces, there are also techniques like bionic reading.

https://www.indwes.edu/adult-graduate/ng-blog/stories/what-i...

https://bionic-reading.com/

Sorry again, I thought I remembered the designer talking about this in the video I referenced. I should have watched it again before referencing it.

Interesting, my dyslexic sister absolutely swears by Dyslexie (a similar font) and has set her Kindle to use it all the time.

I wonder if there are different sub-variants of dyslexia that work on different principles?

Also, there's this open source font: https://www.lexend.com/

> It is still an interesting aspect of the typeface that doesn't get much attention though,

It gets mentioned in every single comment section I see on Comic Sans.

The story I've always heard (which is backed up by Wikipedia) is that Comic Sans was designed for the speech bubbles of characters in Microsoft Bob, to make them seem less "formal" and more relatable. The fact that the letterforms are "terribly proportioned," as u/crazygringo says, is what actually makes the letters easier for dyslexic people to distinguish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Sans#History

Also some of the issues that cause it to be badly formed/hinted/kerned in print and on decent resolution devices, are because it was specifically optimised to be readable on the low-res screens that were ubiquitous at the time (also a time when sub-pixel-rendering support wasn't a thing either, at least not on Windows, to increase the effective resolution).

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