The story
The story of the world’s most misunderstood font.
Birth
Vincent Connare, a designer at Microsoft, creates Comic Sans MS for Microsoft Bob. The dog Rover was speaking in Times New Roman… Connare finds that absurd. He draws inspiration from comics (Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns) to create an informal, friendly, readable font.
The invasion
Bundled with Windows 95 and then Internet Explorer, Comic Sans becomes the universal «friendly» font. Available by default on every PC, it is used everywhere: schools, shops, government offices, announcements, CVs… The problem: it was designed for speech bubbles, not for body text.
The revolt
Holly and David Combs launch «Ban Comic Sans». The Comic Sans Criminal website «convicts» improper uses. The font becomes a meme, a symbol of typographic bad taste. Designers make it a social marker: if you use Comic Sans, you understand nothing about design.
(Partial) rehabilitation
Studies show that Comic Sans is more readable for certain dyslexic profiles: asymmetric letters, no b/d confusion, natural spacing. CERN announces the discovery of the Higgs boson… in Comic Sans. Vincent Connare himself: “If you love Comic Sans you don’t know much about typography. And if you hate it, you need a new hobby.”
Today
Comic Neue, Comic Relief: more «acceptable» successors have appeared. But the original Comic Sans remains unrivalled across the urban, administrative and digital landscape worldwide. And Comic Sans Frontières is here to document it.