Why I created Comic Sans | Hacker News Reader

Why I created Comic Sans

connare.com

485 pointstwog130 comments

Comic Sans as a font needs no defense.

Just like a good band with bad fans, we don't balk at Comic Sans, we balk at the people who use comic sans for inappropriate things. (Or to use a more computery analogy, there's nothing wrong with capital letters or all-caps, but some users use them inappropriately).

City memo minutes should not be distributed in Comic Sans. Wedding invitations should probably not be in Comic Sans. The Surrey police should not have released a memo on rape and sexual assault in Comic Sans[1].

There are times when you do not want to be unserious and insincere, and some people are, and its embarrassing. Comic Sans is just a vector for that, but if you find fault with it, its still the people who are at fault.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/C6QY1yp.jpg

(The Surrey Police strike again! http://i.imgur.com/Kn68ubk.jpg)

(the compulsive designers in us will notice the logo at the top of that one is off-center, too)

There is definitely an internet lynch mob mentality on this even though the inappropriate use critique is spot on. You'd have to be a brave designer to use it, even in an befitting way. Apps like Balsamiq have dropped it and subbed in look-a-likes just so people have cover to say it isn't Comic Sans.

http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups/font

My professors used it on many lecture slides... very few people until it was pointed out to them, and once that happened then they couldn't focus!

It's a bit of a craze to mock things, we like to be pack animals feasting on the fresh carcus afterall. Just search Nickleback on Reddit.

However it's bizzarely useful in a way. Say you've got a trail version of an application, you can have a penalty of users who run the app for more than a month without a purchase. Simply flick the font in to Comic Sans. You gain geek credit, even some free blog advertising under the Comic Sans lol bandwagon.

That then creates more posative feedback, people like to read things they are already vaugely familiar with, so you get that natural circle of hate.

You can add the Pope's official commemorative photobook as another bad example.

(http://www.vatican.va/bxvi/omaggio/index_en.html)

Which font would you have used?

Something with more gravitas. Palatino?

Too "Romanesque", I would have gone with Webdings.

Zapf makes a mean font. IIRC I used his Chancery on my wedding invitations. Pity Sistina is all-caps otherwise that would have been apposite.

How about Trajan, the Movie Font?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t87QKdOJNv8

> Just like a good band with bad fans

Actually, as a band you have a certain say in which fans you'll going to have.

Depends on what you mean by "say"; if you mean gender I think is true. But if you consider people who like just one music genre and can stay motivated and loyal only because of that then you don't have too much say about who will be your fans, if you like trash metal it doesn't matter if you have a PHD from Harvard and your social circle is mostly composed by honored students, because the genre you may appel to a very wide range of people for which you have little to none control (unless you are wealthy and can create your own music label, gigs scenary and location, publicity and media exposure in general.

Kurt Cobain sure did. By cross-dressing he made Nirvana have a lot less appeal for the heavy metal fans.

also the atrocious guitar playing and constant mumbling helped a lot in that department. but we digress. on the topic: i like comic sans. it looks friendly. there, i said it.

> also the atrocious guitar playing

You're joking right? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoiUpe7N3D0

alright, i was (kinda) joking. but i don't think that the guitar playing was the unique selling value of nirvana. the song writing was stellar though.

Really? Heavy Metal fans were into cross dressing ever since the seventies. Including gay all-leather biker chic, long curly bubblegum hair and tights in the eighties...

Okay, I'm no expert on heave metal. Perhaps another kind of audience.

I think him releasing accessible anthems that had widespread popular appeal did far more to isolate Navana from the core metal elitists than any styling choices Kurt may have made.

Plus it's not as if metal bands were against 'glamming' up in the first place. In fact it became it's own sub-genre.

Heavy metal and grunge are two very different genres.

minor nitpick: it's thrash metal, from thrashing. not trash as in garbage.

Actually there are better alternatives which can replace Comic Sans entirely but to the newbie wannabe designer who wants to get something out, if you argue this, you get a response as if you've recommended ruby to a php developer (Ok, maybe not that strong). The activism against them look quite similar: http://www.sitepoint.com/friends-dont-let-friends-use-comic-... vs http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de... </stereotyping>

"Comic Sans as a font needs no defense."

I disagree, it's just not a good font. It has zero contrast (not suitable for display text and print), no harmony (not suitable for body text), and it's poorly hinted (not suitable for screen text). It looks more like finger painting than comic lettering [1]. It's not even a true sans serif; in the article, the author admits to cheating.

There are way better fonts that Microsoft could've licensed for MS Bob, like Helvetica Rounded [2] or Dom Casual [3].

[1] http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/hanoded/inky-fingers/

[2] http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/helvetica-rounded/

[3] http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/paratype/dom-casual/

>I disagree, it's just not a good font. It has zero contrast (not suitable for display text and print), no harmony (not suitable for body text), and it's poorly hinted (not suitable for screen text).

Which is beside the point. It wasn't supposed to be used for body text or print in small sizes. And it doesn't have to be hinted because it's not meant to be used for long form screen text.

Would you call a title font "bad" because it's not suitable for body text?

As for it "not even being a true sans serif", there are several fonts that cross those boundaries while being perfectly fine. Not being a true "sans/serif" is not some badge of dishonour.

Comic Sans is a good font because it is perfectly suited to convey the message people use it for: child-like, friendliness, common folk-syness etc. As such it's great for personal posters, party invitations, signs, yard sales, elementary school signs, etc.

Notice that even if that wasn't the usage intended by its creators, it's still a good font, because it found it's own niche.

I found the last example pretty convincing: I did not recognise Chalkboard, and the first part seemed readable to me to the point I said myself "Well, Comic Sans is not so bad finally"... and then the last line instantly jumped at me due to kerning and baseline. Comic Sans glyphs seem to each stand on their own, unable to keep themselves together to form a word. Chalkboard is far from perfect (see k-e kern) but it is way more readable, even for small text or stand-alone words.

The case against Comic Sans in undue context is due to the funny glyphs, while the case against Comic Sans vs other comic fonts is due not to the glyphs but to the whitespace around them.

>Comic Sans glyphs seem to each stand on their own, unable to keep themselves together to form a word. The case against Comic Sans in undue context is due to the funny glyphs, while the case against Comic Sans vs other comic fonts is due not to the glyphs but to the whitespace around them.

This whitespace and keming problems though might add to the naive appeal of the font. Like, for example, bad perspective and distorted proportions make a drawing more child-like.

Absolutely. This is most probably wanted in the second graphic example, where the lo-fi aspect and the collage of pictures from different sources would make any form of rigor look uncanny.

> keming

Is that a typographical pun?

I'm not sure if it's technically a pun, but it's definitely a typographical joke.

You can make a lot of arguments against Comic Sans but these are either not the right ones, or you're going to need to back them up with some explanations what you really mean (because merely stating typographic jargon doesn't make it factual).

So, I'm just going to call you out on a few things. I might not know all about typography, but I do know quite a bit. I would say more than the average person, so if I don't get what you mean really, it's probably a good idea to expand on it, if you stand behind those statements. And if I got the wrong ideas from your short critique, please do educate us, I'm always willing to learn.

Hinting. Can you give me an example of how it's poorly hinted? From what I've always seen, Comic Sans is actually hinted rather well, and in my opinion actually gets better at smaller point sizes (mainly because with less pixels the shapes and kerning become more regular).

Contrast. Now about the zero contrast, I suppose what you really meant is that the lines are all equal thickness, which is something different than "contrast" because you're going to have appearance of heavier weight at the connections of the lines, which is why Helvetica and Arial actually have varying stroke widths, to give the appearance of uniform weight. You can argue this gives Comic Sans bad or uneven contrast, and I'd be inclined to agree. But zero contrast doesn't make sense to me when referring to Comic Sans.

Additionally, how does this automatically disqualify a font from print or display? Especially really large display, I've seen it in large rainbow coloured logos at children's daycare centres, and it works just fine there.

Harmony. I did some Googling to make sure, but the only typographical meaning of the term "harmony" that I've been able to find is the one that I already knew, and it's not something you can attribute to a font. It's to do with the rhythm and contrasts of spacing and weights (and more) on a page or part of a page. You can say it's hard to make a harmonious design with Comic Sans, but you cannot say Comic Sans does not "have" harmony.

I do agree it's not particularly suitable for body text (unless you happen to have dyslexia, but there's prettier fonts that help there, unfortunately they're not free).

(Sans) serif. Not a true sans-serif, how is this bad? The author explains his choice and I think that particular choice was a great one. In today's digital world, differences between Il|1 can be crucial, and can't always be inferred from context, most typographical conventions followed out of a need for medium-specific legibility, and I'm afraid you're going to have to deal with the fact that mixing serif and sans-serif is now a valid design choice.

I still don't particularly like Comic Sans myself either, but for different reasons (that I explained elsewhere in this thread).

Studies show kids prefer Comic Sans for screen reading vs. common serif and sans-serif fonts (namely, Arial, Times, Courier). They prefer it for both appearance and readability: http://t.co/P3ebZjUi

So, if you're designing for kids, these things seem to matter less. Perhaps there's a better alternative not explored (marker felt, etc.) but there are use cases for these typefaces that adults disagree with for technical reasons.

The study you linked to found that kids read text set in Arial and Comic Sans at the same speed.

The kids did indicate they found Comic Sans most attractive, but their options were limited to Times, Courier, Arial and Comic Sans. I'm willing to bet that if Comic Sans had been substituted by any other cartoon or paintbrush font, the result would've been the same.

Because kids can't read at high speeds yet, sans serif fonts at large sizes work best for them. That's why so many K-8 schoolbooks and illustrated children's books use Gill Sans [1], a much better font for the purpose, in my opinion.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill_Sans

I use Gill Sans on Presentations! Interesting bit of trivia/factoid about Gill Sans!

If you want interesting trivia, try the "personal life" section of Eric Gill's Wikipedia article though I warn you, it may well put you off using his fonts.

That bit of trivia about the font creator (as opposed to the font) I definitely didn't need to know. Blecchhh!

I ought to have, (but didn't heed) your warning, and you are so right! Now I am really torn! At what point does one disassociate the person(ality) from the art? (similar to any discussion on Wagner's works today!)

>> it may well put you off using his fonts

I believe you are very right there! I am actually pretty pissed off with the man and his works now!

"There are times when you do not want to be unserious and insincere, and some people are, and its embarrassing. Comic Sans is just a vector for that, but if you find fault with it, its still the people who are at fault."

I don't understand what this means, could you clarify please?

I love your Surrey Police links and comments. I'm not sure if it's in poor taste to laugh, but frankly I find them hysterical!

> there's nothing wrong with capital letters or all-caps

In the transportation world, all-caps is known to be harder to read than mixed-case in fixed-message signs:

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5892/is-all-caps...

All-caps is also generally less legible than all-lower-case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_caps (in particular reference 7, Tinker, Miles A. (1963). Legibility of Print. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press. p. 65. ISBN 6316674.)

My point is that it isn't just a matter of taste. There are known, quantified ways in which all-caps is worse. Ditto Comic Sans, if you read another response to your post.

Re: transportation, there's a lot of interesting data collected on the design of Clearview, the new typeface for the US interstate road system:

http://clearviewhwy.com/ResearchAndDesign/legibilityStudies....

Sad that Mr. Connare feels the need to defend the creation of one of the most popular typefaces of all time. I can't help but feel like some point has been missed.

When I think about all the serious thought and energy that went into the fonts available to us, and the ratio by which the average person chooses comic sans or papyrus after scrolling through their long, user-hostile list of typefaces, I feel like a market is underserved.

One of the reasons people don't like Comic Sans is because it was overused, largely thanks to being included with a bunch of default Microsoft tools. It was also use in the wrong contexts.

Amusingly, I think the same holds true of the typeface that sparked the whole thing: Time New Roman. Far too many people use it for far too much, sometimes in the wrong context. So maybe we should all use Times less too! (I tend to use Palatino or Garamond myself.)

I'm tired of seeing the same few fonts everywhere. For whatever reason Times and Comic Sans really stand out, but this really holds for all the "web-safe" fonts--which also happen to be the fonts everyone used to flock to in Microsoft Word.

Please consider branching out and using something else for your next document.

Microsoft did partly address that by making Cambria and Calibri its default header and body fonts.

But really, basic knowledge about Typography would help a great deal in creating decent looking content. A Serif title with Sans body-text for the web makes content easier to read, and the inverse is true for print.

>> Cambria and Calibri its default header and body fonts.

>> A Serif title with Sans body-text for the web makes content easier to read, and the inverse is true for print.

You are very correct. So, in a way, Microsoft got it all mixed up in the font selection thing mentioned above, no?

Cambia is a serif, while Calibiri is a sans. How is it mixed up?

A Serif title with Sans body-text for the web

the inverse is true for print. i.e., Sans for header and Serif for body for print documents.

Now, re-read this: Microsoft did partly address that by making Cambria and Calibri its default header and body fonts (for Word)

Did they get it mixed up? I think so.

I would think that was a conscious choice. My impression is that people print much less today than ten years ago.

Oh dear, this is turning into one of those "You say Tomahto, I say tomato" kind of discussion.... even though I did not intend it to be.

Personally, I think there is no point splitting hairs over whether they goofed up or whether it was intended... MS-Word as a product is intended for the "write it, and then print it" market (whether the actual printing happens or not is another thing altogether), and for that demographic, the typographic convention is Serif for body text and Sans (not a necessary condition, though) for heading [0]. And from that point of view, the design choice is mixed up. Right or Wrong, that was the only point I was trying to make.

[0] Again, I am aware that "is serif readable?" is a different can-of-worms altogether.

The parent poster seems to imply that Word nowadays is not intended for the "write it, and then print it" market anymore - while it was aimed for that a dozen years ago, currently MS is deliberately targeting it more towards creating non-printable documents.

I.e., it's not the design choice that's wrong, but the assumptions about who Word is now intended for.

Not sure you read my reply? (note the italics part below)

>> MS-Word as a product is intended for the "write it, and then print it" market (whether the actual printing happens or not is another thing altogether), and for that demographic, the typographic convention is Serif for body text

Same convention holds true for typesetting packages like Quark/InDesign/LaTeX, etc. The established convention for documents cranked out is what I mentioned earlier... So regardless of parent poster's/your opinions [0] on this topic, the choice is mixed up because body text ought to be Serif (and heading something else if needed).

[0] it's not the design choice that's wrong, but the assumptions about who Word is now intended for

I read your reply, but what I mean is exactly contradicting your statements: I'm saying that right now MS-Word is NOT a product intended (by its makers) for that market and the "same established convention" simply does not hold true anymore for MS Office.

And the evidence for this position is this design choice made by Microsoft. I'm treating it not as a mistake, but as part of proof that they've consciously chosen screen-viewing instead of printing as their goal, and applied that convention for their apps.

What evidence is there that the current MS Word is aimed at printing primarily, and because of that its "body text ought to be Serif" ? It has been aimed at printing a dozen years ago, sure, but why you're reasoning that it still is now?

In Word 2013, Calibri Light is used for header instead of Cambria.

>A Serif title with Sans body-text for the web makes content easier to read, and the inverse is true for print.

For whatever it's worth, these conventions are largely unfounded.

With respect to readability or legibility alone, a majority of any research of a sans vs a serif has been weak or contradictory; you can't make a conclusion either way. These studies are often cited which continues to perpetuate the myth,

While I admittedly do prefer these conventions, they're largely arbitrary and shaped by historical precedent and evolved over time. For example, poor resolution screens were the primary reason to use serifs, yet I've heard plenty of questionable rationale for it over time

Thanks. This is what I wanted to say as well. I am heartily sick of Times/Arial/Comic as you rightly said. Hell, I even saw it on some road sign/car parking bays where some kind of large Sans (Highway Sans??) is legally obligatory! Now Times as replace the venerable Courier New in US govt. documents.... Oh the horror!

For me it was anything but those. :-) +1 for Palatino/Garamond. I also read somewhere that Garamond uses less ink too (but readability on A5 for fonts less than 11 pt is somewhat hard)

Serif: I am partial to Century Schoolbook myself because it is eminently readable by all ages (on 10pt no less!) on A5 sizes. (I read somewhere that this was the first font that launched Knuth's imagination on kerning, etc. (in a nice way), and his life long fascination for typography)

Sans-Serif: Century Gothic - thin but very readable on small sizes as well. I later found out that this font takes up less printer ink while being printed as well. So double yay!

>> Please consider branching out and using something else for your next document

Very true. At least in this day and age of fontsquirrel, dafont, urbanfont, etc. etc.... there is no excuse to spend at least 15 mins to look for some interesting fonts. :-)

Thanks for pointing out the Century Schoolbook. I stumbled on it on some old hardware and liked the numbers very much. Now I know the name of the font.

Latex has a package for New Century Schoolbook. After I found that, I used it for all my University work. It is just that awesome, and if you are pressed for space, you can make the size quite small without anybody noticing.

I still haven't found a free version of it on the net though.

If you are looking for "free" alternatives for other plaforms, here are some close relatives and provide the same 'features' that one expects from Century. Plus, they are free. :-)

You're welcome. ;-)

These sets below, are complete (R, SC, B ,IT, B+IT...) fonts AFAIK.

http://www.dafont.com/justus.font

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Latin-Modern-Roman

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/TeX-Gyre-Schola

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/TeX-Gyre-Bonum -- Bookman clone.

These are not complete, but they are close relatives.

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Theano-Didot

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/foundry/Alexey-Kryukov

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Old-Standard-TT

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Bentham

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/DubielPlain

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Theano-Modern

Here are some ripoff fonts...

http://www.fonts101.com/search/bodoni

> fontsquirrel, dafont, urbanfont

while these sites are fine if you're looking for a cool display font for a poster or something, it's quite hard to find fonts there suitable for heavy use because many of them are really (really) badly kerned and miss many glyphs you need in most texts.

there's probably a few to be found there (especially on FontSquirrel), but it's real hard to tell before downloading and trying them on a full paragraph, as the sites are very specifically designed to answer the question "does my short title / logo look good in this font?" instead of "is it a good font to use in Word?".

:-) Tell me about it!

I've found a few good ones on them (see my reply to Century clones elsewhere on this post) and a looooot of bad ones as you mentioned. And sadly, poster/logo is not my area, but body text is.

> but it's real hard to tell before downloading and trying them on a full paragraph

+1 :-/ I know what you mean. (Mido comes to mind immediately!)

Perhaps Smashing Magazine is not very popular around here(?), but I check back now and then with them, since they provide links to some very interesting and complete fonts from time to time.

"I am heartily sick of Times/Arial/Comic..."

When Microsoft released Windows Vista in 2007, it included new typefaces some of which I think are really nice.

- Calibri (a lovely sans-serif design) and Consolas (a monospace typeface) were designed by Dutch type designer Lucas De Groot [1]

- Cambria (a serif typeface) was designed by the Dutch type designer Jelle Bosma, Steve Matteson (who designed the popular Google-commisioned font Open Sans) and Robin Nicholas.

- Constantia (another serif typeface) by the Canada-based type designer John Hudson

To see examples of all of these fonts, see http://www.ascendercorp.com/catalog/microsoft/clear-type-fon...

There's no need for Windows' users to default to Arial or Times New Roman anymore. Excellent aletrnatives that come with the OS have been available for many years.

1. http://www.lucasfonts.com/case-studies/calibri-consolas/

Yes. I love that Consolas is included in Windows now. I always set my code text editors to use it when I'm on Windows, and try to get other folks to try it too. Such a pleasant fixed-width font to use when coding. It can also be used on the Mac.

Office for Mac 2011 defaults to Calibri. It's a nice font.

I don't really understand the hate on Times. It's more or less the perfect neutral font when you want to say "I didn't make a choice because this document is of a nature where a design choice need not or should not be made." It is sufficiently serious that the reader is not distracted from the content of the writing by the character of the letter forms. It's neutral, and a non-choice, in my opinion.

No one has ever been fired for choosing Times ;)

Seriously, people don't care and they don't choose Time as much as it is either the default or the only font they know of.

And honestly, I use the default pretty much all the time (which seldom is Times nowadays). Back in early school I was told Verdana was better and since it was more spacious that made a strong argument for it as well, since it was easier to fill a page... I truly don't feel that I can say that a font is better than another one. It might look better but that might just as well be in a comic-sans way which would just be a disaster. Afraid of that I keep to the default.

Word processors should be much better at communicating this, the only thing they do is give you a default but other than that offer no help. For the typical person that whole font list would be better off removed entirely (and yet it has always had such a high priority among the GUI settings).

Verdana is the font I'm reading these comments in.

This bring up a good point. When reading documents (not so much posters, etc), I'd rather put the user in control of the display font. They can choose whatever is easiest for them to read, and it's uniform everywhere they go. For example, a friend of mine has his firefox set to use a fixed-width font on all pages. This is something no graphic designer would ever do, but he likes it.

Speaking of fonts losing favor because of overuse, look what's happened to Gotham since the Obama campaign used it in their 2008 campaign. I first saw it used in the old Chicago 2016 olympics pitches [1], and then started seeing it more and more, but after the presidential campaign [2], it started showing up everywhere [3] to the point that it's lost much of its original power and mystique.

[1] http://sarabot2000.typepad.com/sara/images/2007/06/05/chicag...

[2] http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4tQRaybbR9Q/TVIPdMUeGhI/AAAAAAAAA9...

[3] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4tQRaybbR9Q/TVIUjyKhjsI/AAAAAAAAA_...

If you know how to select Comic Sans, you know how to select a different serif like Times. In default Windows installs there's at least 3-5 other choices for "serious serif font". And people do that, also the less tech-savvy ones: if they just want to type their homework, it's Times (or Arial), no second thought. But if it's something they want to "stand out" or be different they can easily pick a substitute like Georgia from the list.

But if people just write a note, or anything they intend to come across as "not too stern, not too serious, but also not too boring" there is just Comic Sans, in the default list of Windows fonts.

Like another commenter said, it's like a market is underserved. Except it's not a market, because it's Windows' default font list (there's enough alternatives on the market). It needs another informal, slightly quirky font if you want to break the reign of Comic Sans. They might have gone a bit in this direction with Calibri (subtly rounded) and Candara (playful) but those are way too subtle to notice in the (oddly tiny) font selection lists.

And something else, IMO, Times News Roman is for me the example that, apart from popularity and being an over-used default font, there is something extra wrong with Comic Sans. After all those years of being negatively conditioned with Times as the default Apache 404 Error font, and so many other places, all that's caused is a strong notion of neutrality and blandness. I don't dislike Times, and I also believe there is no discussion on that it's strictly better designed than Comic Sans: it's got more glyphs, the letter forms are more constant and harmonious, etc. And with some thought[0], you can combine it with another font (Arial being the obvious choice) and use it in a headline/body text combo, and it actually doesn't even look half bad. Somebody put some thought in that, it looks clean and they just happen to be two of the most-used fonts. I challenge anyone to pull that off with Comic Sans, even in combination with another font.

Personally I think, add just one cool informal font to the Windows default list, and IMO it will be fine. Really the thing that bothers me most about Comic Sans is that it's the only choice [for people not savvy enough to install extra fonts], so I can't really fault anyone for using it because any alternative I could suggest involves quite a bit of extra work for them (in addition it might revert to some default font on the next office PC where it's not available).

[0] this almost always means: whitespace

What about Mistral? Do you think it's been abused? I'm from Montreal and it's been use everywhere. Just look at this and tell me it's hasn't been used a lot! Maybe more than Comic Sans and we never hear about it. http://www.mattsoar.org/gallery/Mistral

Everything from movie posters(Drive,Flashdance), to asian restaurants and much more.

And here I thought it was just to piss off pretentious typography fascists and give self-righteous design snobs something to huff about.

Really, I've always been a defender of comic sans as appropriate where the intent is to be casual or personal.

One critical comment by a BBC article reader:

"The main problem I have with Comic Sans is that it makes everything written in it look like a parish newsletter pinned to a noticeboard outside the local church."

Exactly. Isn't that the point?

Criticizing this font is like criticizing a 5 year old child's handwriting on a birthday card, and asking why he didn't have professionally calligraphy.

I don't think even the most pretentious of designers would ever scoff at the use of Comic Sans where it was appropriate and fitting, such as on the invitation to a 6 year old's birthday party. That's where is fits, it exudes 'fun'.

Where 'pretentious' designers do begin to huff is when it is used in a clearly inappropriately context such as on police notices raising awareness of rape.

The handwriting example isn't particularly good because learning calligraphy is a skill that I assume takes a decent amount of time to reach proficiency in. Making a couple of extra clicks in a word processor and selecting something like Arial is not.

http://inappropriatecomicsans.tumblr.com/day/2012/03/17

As mentioned in the original link, Times New Roman and every font has inappropriate and appropriate uses, though that in itself is an absolute judgement we can probably do without.

Those inappropriate uses involving Comic Sans may be more funny, but other than that, it's hard to argue pretentious designers have not had a bit too much fun bagging on Comic Sans simply out of schadenfreude.

That site also list appropriate uses too. [1][2][3]

In these cases the intended audience is children, where Comic Sans is totally okay.

[1]: http://inappropriatecomicsans.tumblr.com/image/19581183110

[2]: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1m7zmD2ot1rs2h1co1_500.pn...

[3]: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m135odVzpV1rs2h1co1_500.pn...

I actually really kind of like the one about the lion.

Dude. Creative Writer changed my life. I had forgotten about it until I read this article. I was experimenting with long-form fiction writing and screenplays at like 7 or 8 years old thanks largely to that program.

Putting backgrounds on my English essays in school, with Creative Writer, got me extra marks.

Back then, different fonts weren't used at all.

Now, we have more fonts than we can shake a stick at, but still no easy way for lay people to access new/different fonts. System fonts rule on for a while longer.

Same here, although Fine Artist was just important to me. Did all my homework in them when I just started primary school. Everyone else handwrote theirs :)

What I really want to see is an article on "Why I created Microsoft Bob"

Simon Garfield wrote a great book called "Just My Type"[1] which dives deep into the history of landmark fonts. Includes a full chapter on Comic Sans, highly recommended read.

You forgot your footnote.

Yup obstacle did forget his footnote which I was also interested in.

Making a guess that it is going to be a link to Amazon, let me steal that chance: http://www.amazon.com/Just-My-Type-About-Fonts/dp/1592407463...

Sorry! I messed up, I did mean to post an amazon link. Thanks for picking up where I'm slacking.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole

There is nothing wrong with Comic Sans, it's the overuse and inappropriate use that is the problem.

Just like guns and sugar.

and just about anything else.

Speaking of Comic Sans…here's a $100,000 rebranding for a town in Ontario - Port Hope.

http://www.designedgecanada.com/news/2013/20130115688.shtml

yay Canad! I'm from Toronto and went to US :) Live in Seattle and work at Amazon... Missing my poutine...

Canada has some interesting towns. I wonder if a Comic Sans rebranding would do anything for "Swastika, Ontario" - the sort of naming equivalent for radioactivity - for example! :)

"Design for hackers" also has an interesting section about comic sans that can be found here as a blog post:

http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/why-you-hate-comic-sans/

Especially interesting is the discussion that comic sans is actually a good font when it comes to aliasing. ("Comic Sans isn’t Used as Intended")

Amusing: one (pidgin) interpretation of "Comic Sans" is "without humour."

Similarly, the font assembled from scans of the lettering in xkcd comics is called "Humour Sans".

Last night I heard a comedian described Dane Cook as sans comic.

http://achewood.com/index.php?date=07052007

> Because it's sometimes better than Times New Roman, that's why.

Isn't this why most things exist? Because sometimes they are better than other similar thing?

That fails to account for things which everything else is always better, such as Windows ME.

On a side note, Comic Sans was used in the (possibly early) Samsung Galaxy phones for quite a while in their UI (Settings etc.)

A UI that were terrible and that the Samsung management spent ages comparing to the iPhone UI and pointing out how terrible it was.

Shameless plug: Where Errol Morris discovers Comic Sans makes you disbelieve things. By a tiny amount.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-...

Offtopic semi-ignorant question: As a non-designer, can someone explain to me why I'd ever need more than a single serif font, a single sans-serif font, a single monospace font (and ok, a single "fun" font)? Why should I care about the differences between Times New Roman and Garamond, or between Arial and Verdana? Even when I look closely I struggle to see the differences within categories, so I find it hard to believe that my document or logo or whatever will be perceived differently by a reader because it uses the wrong font within the correct category.

You can't not communicate with a typeface - they always have a certain feel, which is why there's a whole lot of them. Typefaces also have characteristics that make them more suitable for certain situations. For example, Georgia is designed for the screen with a tall x-height but Garamond looks better in print with its small x-height. Then there's condensed fonts, small caps.. It's certainly hard for a non-designer to catch all the visual differences but I believe they are sensed subconsciously by all.

I agree with everything you say. That said, it's also true that there are an awful lot of fonts out there but a relatively small number are used for most day to day screen and print use. I know that when I have a project such as a book, I tend to end up spending a bunch of time fussing around--and, at the end of the day, I usually go back to some variant of the standby fonts I routinely use.

Regarding Comic Sans misuse, I suspect many people are looking for a "handwritten" font, of which Comic Sans is often the first similar sort of thing, and people gravitate to it.

I'm shocked and awed that this magnificent internet battle has been waged for years and I never noticed it.

Is it too late for me to have an opinion on whether or not I hate Comic Sans?

It's never quite too late, but you might want to really rage about it, to make up for all the lost time.

> There was no intention to include the font in other applications other than those designed for children when I designed Comic Sans.

End of discussion.

Teachers like to use Comic Sans because of the little 'a'. It's the same as the one you learn to write.

All the other fonts use the weird typewriter 'a.

This argument doesn't fly when you are only taught to write in cursive, as is the case everywhere here in Belgium (and surrounding countries?), as far as I am aware. It still got overused here as well. I remember one teacher in highschool claiming Comic Sans was better (more readable) for people with dyslexia. I never checked that out, but I don't attribute much truth to it.

One of the things that will be harder to justify is the use of raw white text on raw black background.

Wait, let me first put my Comic Sans T-Shirt on...

http://bit.ly/WVck0J

(Sorry, could not resist)

Anyway, happy to see that even the font's creator agrees that it shouldn't be used for anything more serious than educational software and birthday invitations.

It kind of surprises me that a photographer and typeface designer would choose #ffffff text on a #000000 background, something that the average person can only stand to look at for a few seconds before needing to rest his or her eyes.

Comic Sans is the Justin Bieber of fonts - hated by a lot, yet incredibly popular.

In both cases those that hate them spend far too much time expressing their hatred.

I know when its appropriate for me to use Comic Sans but not sure when its appropriate for me to listen to Justin Bieber's music.

Mad props for creating one of the most recognized and discussed fonts.

That image at the bottom says it's Comic Sans, but it's Chalkboard.

Only the last line is Comic Sans, that's the point.

is it weird how I could tell the difference between the apple imitation and the Microsoft's original version (noticed it right after I read the "If")? In all honesty, I think that the apple version has a little bit more balance and neatness to it, but I have nothing against comic sans. I guess I qualify as a mediocre, amateur designer, since I dabble with design often out of fun, even earned money from it a few times, but I am not sure if my naive opinion counts.

Now I've read that article I can clearly hear myself saying "Comic Sans is the typeface of a talking dog" countless times over the next rest of my life.

Design of the OP's web page. That is all.

Comic sans has a place as a font which may be easier for dyslexic students to read.

Why is the uppercase D so droopy? That's the one character I hate in the font.

Whither Comic Serif?

It exists! (And it's not bad, either.)

http://www.dafont.com/hvd-comic-serif.font

Comic Sans: Because some of us run lemonade stands.

Why am I not surprised that his grammar sucks?

Of course this blog has poor typography: small font size with no attention paid to margins or readability. You may design typefaces, but you sir are no type designer.

According to the copyright at the bottom, the page was written 10 years ago, when most screens used smaller resolutions.

I have so much more important things to worry about than the withertos and whyfors of fonts.

Apple: Windows started it! (copying)

Microsoft: Apple started it!

Linux: Come here you two, no dessert for either of you tonight

(sorry, couldn't resist :P)

What would BSD say?

When I was your age...

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