Comic Sans, one of the world’s most (in)famous fonts.
It really is a Marmite-esque thing, you either love it or you hate it. Me, personally, I don’t mind it.
But what about you? Love it? Hate it?
Regardless of your stance, here are some cool facts about Comic Sans.
Enjoy, haters and lovers alike.
Comic Sans owes its existence and creation to the epic failure of Microsoft Bob. Bob was a yellow cartoon, Bill Gates-glasses-wearing user ‘guide’, designed to help people bend their heads around PCs. The text in Bob’s speech bubbles was intended to be written in Times New Roman, but designer Vincent Connare thought such a serious text for a cartoon was ridiculous. So he set out to create a more kid-friendly font, and so it was that Comic Sans was born.
Vincent Connare himself has admitted that whilst designing Comic Sans he had two comics in his office – The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. He looked at the print in these comics and decided to adapt their fonts to make Comic Sans.
The movement to ban Comic Sans is the biggest anti-font movement in the world. At the time of writing this post, the ‘Ban Comic Sans’ online petition has over 5,000 signatures!
Connare also has no sense of humor when it comes to all the Comic Sans haters out there. He once said “People don’t know why it was made. If they did they would realize that it was what design is about — designing for a product with an appropriate design. Not Times New Roman. They also need to pull their heads from their arses… it pisses me off”… Jeez.
Connare did design some other famous fonts too. He’s responsible for Trebuchet, Marlett, Magpie, and some of the Webdings.
In 2004, a study called Comic Sans a ‘childish’ font. However, in 2010 a study conducted at Princeton University in America revealed that students who studied materials in harder-to-read fonts, such as Comic Sans, were more likely to retain the info.
In Skype messenger, if you change your font to Comic Sans then the emoticon next to the text-field turns into a frowny, disapproving face. But if you change it to any other font then the smiley face returns.
In-between Apple IIGS and the iPod, Apple grew so jealous of Comic Sans they swiped it for themselves. In 2000, they introduced free electronic postcards called iCards, for which the default font was Comic Sans. Soon enough they stopped ripping Comic Sans off and made their own knockoff version, Chalkboard. However, Chalkboard lacked the letter J and a Question Mark.
Ever since 2009, DJs on Dutch radio stations have celebrated the first Friday of every July as Comic Sans Day, encouraging their listeners to “send all your mails, print all your reports and all your sticker address labels in this illustrious font”.
In 2013, Dutch airline giant KLM even decided to get in on the fun, changing the font on their website to Comic Sans and offering people named C. Sans the chance to win free plane tickets!
Comic Sans is available on 99.13% of Windows computers and 90.91% of Macs. Only an estimated 61% of Linux users have Comic Sans, however.
If you’re unlucky enough to be one of the 0.87% of Windows users who doesn’t have Comic Sans, you can buy it, but at a high price. Comic Sans is readily on sale at $30. And no, that’s not a joke, if you want it and you gotta pay for it then you gotta pay the full $30!
