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The public enemy no.1 of all graphic designers, Comic Sans still remains one of the most known and used fonts in the entire world. But what makes us dislike it so much? Here is a short story about Comic Sans, the font we all love to hate. So why not Comic Sans MS?
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Fun fact of the day: in 1999, graphic designers started a movement to ban the Comic Sans font. That’s how much they disliked the idea of it. From that moment on, the fuss behind the Comic Sans font was a part of our lives and our jokes repertoire.
Initially, Vincent Connare, font designer, created the font specially for the talking bubbles of a program called Microsoft Bob. This program taught people who were unfamiliar with technology how to use a computer. Unfortunately, the font wasn’t ready in time and they ended up using one of the classic fonts, Times New Roman.
However, alongside with the spread of Windows 95 in people’s houses, Comic Sans shortly became available to everyone who owned a computer. And this, my friends, is the moment when it all begun. Because it was different from all the other fonts, people started to put Comic Sans on everything: from Christmas cards all the way up to Missing Dog flyers.
It’s uneven. And if you really think about it, this might be the biggest issue when it comes to this font. Evenness is, in fact, a very important aspect when it comes to legibility and readability.
As we mentioned before, Comic Sans font was created for the talking bubbles of a computer program. This means that we weren’t supposed to use it outside of a very small case, as we unfortunately did. A block of text written in Comic Sans is pretty much disturbing for the human sight. It’s hard to read, mainly due to the visual weight of the letters and to its lack of balance. The very thick lines of the Comic Sans font make the reading experience extremely difficult.
Also, the way letters communicate with each other is not the happiest one. When Vincent Connare created Comic Sans, he left aside one important aspect: how letters relate to one another when they are part of a word. Thus being omitted, when it comes to this font, good kerning is out of discussion.
Last, but not least, it’s all about the tone of voice. These days, you simply know you can’t use Comic Sans font when you plan on talking about something important or serious. Also, by using Comic Sans, the message you want to transmit won’t become any kinder.
Check the New Comic Sans Font: Comic Neue
