From the playful mood of Swingsnug to the characterful personality of Trevor, the fonts below owe an undeniable debt to Comic Sans and Vincent Connare. If you’re not quite ready to give Comic Sans a second chance but want to channel its casual, comic-book spirit, read on to discover our selection of fonts similar to Comic Sans. Its informality and legibility have even resulted in unexpected and beneficial usages, such as its recommendation by the British Dyslexia Association and the Dyslexia Association of Ireland as an accessible font for dyslexic individuals (alongside another sans serif, Arial). However you feel about Comic Sans, you can’t deny that it represents a success story in social design. The enduring popularity of Comic Sans with Microsoft users seems to stand in stark opposition to the opinion of many designers, and in many ways its usage credits it a place in the history of successful designs. Type as Social Design: Comic Sans and Dyslexia Two graphic designers, Dave and Holly Combs, set up a website dedicated to a “Ban Comic Sans” campaign, while the creator of the original comic book lettering that had inspired the design, Dave Gibbons, has described Comic Sans as “a real mess”, with a “particularly ugly letterform”. Nonetheless, Connare seems to stand relatively alone in a world of vigilant Comic Sans haters. He went on to work for type foundry Dalton Maag in London, and says he “would love to make something again that everyone loved and others would hate” ( Dezeen, 2014). Image from Wikipedia Commons.Ĭomic Sans gravestones might have been the nail in the coffin (sorry) for the popularity of Comic Sans (google them-it’s a thing!), and circa 2000 Connare was receiving emails and letters from people who were genuinely angry about the widespread use of a font they deemed ugly, inappropriate, and ill-designed.Ĭonnare, however, has no regrets. Clear to read? Yes! A defibrillator case in Monaco with a label in Comic Sans. Originally the font of choice for children’s school projects, Comic Sans was soon being splashed across store signage, billboards, and even items that were a seemingly inappropriate fit for the casual, childlike font, such as job applications and tombstones.
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Perhaps because the handwriting style of Comic Sans made it stand out in a sea of traditional typefaces on Windows computers, computer users were incredibly quick to adopt the font for a range of homemade projects.
Comic Sans also became the default font for both Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Internet Explorer, paving its path towards world domination. The font was later included as a system font with the release of Microsoft 95.
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While Comic Sans inventor Connare was too late to have his font included in Microsoft Bob, the programmers of Microsoft 3D Movie Maker were quick to adopt it. Microsoft Bob’s assistant Rover required speech captions that had more informality than the tone offered by Times New Roman. Connare felt this font choice was too formal for a program that was intended to be user-friendly, so he started working on a typeface based on the style of lettering in comic books he had on his desk, such as The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. In the speech bubbles of cartoon characters, such as Bob’s ‘assistant’ Rover the dog, the programmers had opted for Times New Roman. In October 1994, Vincent Connare was shown a beta version of Microsoft Bob, a program that was intended to introduce computers to younger users. To understand and, indeed, to appreciate the font as an intrinsic feature of design history, we must turn back the clock to 1994. It’s the ways in which the font has been used for other, often unsuitable, purposes that have turned people so against Comic Sans, to the point that there are even websites and groups dedicated to banning the font from public use.
Whether you like, love, or loathe Comic Sans, it can be argued that it was created for a very specific purpose. In a 2014 interview, Connare said that “people who don’t like Comic Sans don’t know anything about design,” and that these individuals “don’t understand that in design you have a brief.” The Comic Sans inventor, Vincent Connare, speaking at a conference about his 'font marmite' creation in 2009. Designed by Microsoft type designer Vincent Connare and released by Microsoft in 1994, the font is inspired by comic book lettering.
What is Comic Sans, and who created it? Comic Sans is a sans serif script typeface. What do you mean, you hate this font? What Is Comic Sans? Looking for more fonts similar to Comic Sans, and other comic book fonts? Inject your designs with playfulness and fun with these fonts like Comic Sans on Envato Elements.