So over the past month or two I have given two lightning talks about Comic Sans. Yep, that Comic Sans. I know it sounds like a sick joke, that a designer would even consider to broach such a topic, but I feel like this little font needs someone in it’s corner, fighting for it’s true cause.
It’s been 25 years since Comic Sans was created, and in that time it has achieved a bit of a reputation. Back in the late 90s and early 00s, I would have considered it very popular choice of font with the everyday person. But since then it’s evolved into one of the most hated typefaces of all time. Why? Well that’s what I wanted to find out.
I wanted to understand what happened in the past two decades that has made people so passionate about a font. These strong opinions on typefaces are something usually reserved for designers, but in Comic Sans’ case, there is a universal hate across the board. From your nephew to your boss, everybody loves to hate it.
So I started by delving into the history of Comic Sans. Way back to 1994, when Vincent Connare was working at Microsoft, he was involved in a piece of software called Microsoft Bob, which included a cartoon dog as part of it’s interface. This dog prompted the user with some actions, and these prompts took the form of speech bubbles. The only problem – the dog was ‘speaking’ in Times New Roman. Connare looked at this and was having none of it, this piece of UI was aimed at kids, and in his mind dogs didn’t speak in Times New Roman, especially in the context of Microsoft Bob. So, like any designer, he started looking for inspiration. He went to the comics he loved such as ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ and ‘Watchmen’, now I don’t really consider these ‘kid friendly’ but regardless, Connare realised that in comics, the speech was always in a handwritten style font.
And thus… Comic Sans was created. Based on comic book style fonts, Connare created his typeface with the intention for it to be used for Microsoft Bob. Unfortunately, like we designers are all familiar with, he missed the deadline and Comic Sans didn’t make it into the programme. Bummer.
However, it did make it into Microsoft 3D Movie Maker, not to be confused with Windows Movie Maker. This is a piece of software I hold very dear to my heart, my Dad bought a ‘Tiny’ computer, and it came with a bundle of CD Roms including 3D Movie Maker. I genuinely think if I hadn’t gone into design, I’d have gone into some form of video editing because of it. I spent hours upon hours with this game. When I look back now, I had no idea that I was actually witnessing Comic Sans first outing into the world. It was slotted perfectly into the game too, making it’s way into speech bubbles from the game’s helpful assistant McZee, and into some of the interactive UI. The cartoon format of the games characters and the font gelled as if the typeface had been designed specifically for the programme.
However, a storm was brewing. Something that Vincent Connare wasn’t really aware would happen – Comic Sans was shipped on every Windows 95 machine… for everyone in the world to use and abuse.
From that point forward, Comic Sans made appearances in every corner of the world, and in the strangest of places. Shop signs, warning signs, restaurant menus, your homework, house signs, legal documents. You name it, Comic Sans has been used to create it before.
And it struck me that this is where all the hate has stemmed from. The typeface itself isn’t inherently bad, it’s not particularly amazing either, but it’s definitely not worth the hate it gets. The animosity towards this font is because of the ways the everyday person has been using it. Vincent Connare did not create Comic Sans to be misused in word processing and graphics, he simply designed it so a cartoon dog would appear more friendly to kids.
What I find really interesting is in the past few years, is that Comic Sans has actually been seen in a more positive light by a small group of people. The British Dyslexia Foundation has approved Comic Sans as a dyslexia friendly font, which is huge. Accessibility is vastly important and has been largely overlooked until recently, especially in web design. Whilst it may not be everybody’s cup of tea, if it helps people access written word more easily then why hate on Comic Sans? Even a few weeks ago I stumbled upon a tweet that said, if you are writing then try using Comic Sans as your font and you’ll find the words come out at rapid speed. I thought I’d try it myself, so I’m writing this blog on Google Docs in Comic Sans, and you know what? They’re right! This font is so disarming that you focus on nothing else but the words. If you choose a more final font, one that you want to publish the piece in, you’ll find yourself wanting to write more “polished” than “productive”. Honestly, give it a go, even if you hate looking at the screen.
Now as a big of a segue, and as a designer, I feel like the design community likes to hate on a lot of things. People are very quick to critique a piece of design with little to no context about the project. It seems every time a rebrand happens, we swarm. Recently Slack rebranded, and the knee jerk reaction from the design and tech community whenever this happens is to jump straight to negativity. However, what Slack did in anticipation of this was to write up a hugely detailed blog post about the reasons why. Once that got found, negative opinions dissipated and now, some months down the line we’ve all forgotten about it. I hate to see designers foster this knee jerk reaction to things, because we get it enough from clients, and colleagues and even ourselves. Twitter and the like give us all an open avenue to have an opinion on things, but if all of those opinions are negative then I’m sorry, but what’s the point?
So, in the case of Comic Sans, no I haven’t used it since 2003 (excluding the past few months), but aren’t there more important things we can spend our time and energy being passionate about? Spend your time hating on Morrissey, or Brexit, or the tram system in Nottingham, or your landlord increasing your rent, or transphobes, or Mark Zuckerberg, or pineapple on pizza, or the piece of popcorn stuck in between your teeth that you just can’t get out… but let’s not hate on Comic Sans. After all, it wasn’t designed for you, it was designed for a little cartoon dog.
If you want to see my slides from my Comic Sans lightning talks, you can check out my Speaker page
I’ve also make some ridiculous stickers, so if you’d like to see those, hit me up on Twitter – @loftio
