Why We Love to Hate Comic Sans
By: Danielle Mcclune
Tags: Microsoft, Design, Creators, Accessibility, Typography

“Dogs don’t talk in Times New Roman.” With these immortal words, Microsoft font designer Vinnie Connare unleashed Comic Sans on the world. A font so revolutionary, so disruptive, that we’re still reconciling its existence 25 years later. People tend to hate Comic Sans, and no one with more wrath than designers. To a designer, Comic Sans is always a bug, never a feature. It is impossible to customize. It is irredeemably unprofessional. It has no place in modern design and should be banished from this earth.

But this opinion ignores a complex heritage. Back when font choices — and the supporting technology — were limited, Comic Sans was the first glimmer of expressive design for the masses. It called upon the natural feel of handwriting, the rounded shape of a fat marker on construction paper. It spoke to being young with a comic book under a flashlight. And more intentionally: its designers built it to be exceedingly legible on the web. Comic Sans has every right to make a comeback. But first: a little history.

The fun begins

It starts with Microsoft Bob in 1994. We were ready to launch Windows 95 — what would become the paradigm for the home computer. Microsoft Bob was a native application that introduced people to the newfangled concept of an operating system. “It’s like a house!” we said, triumphant. “An operating system is like exploring different rooms!”

Rover, star of the Microsoft Bob application circa 1994

During Bob’s beta release, Vinnie got a glimpse of the interface. The first thing Vinnie noticed was Rover, the friendly cartoon dog who trots around the app as your guide. Rover’s pretty cute. But his speech balloons hosted Times New Roman. Ultimately there was no time for a fix before Microsoft Bob launched, but it did not sit well with Vinnie.

“I’m not going to try to get in his head, but overall we got the green light to have Vinnie work on a comic type for the team,” said Greg Hitchcock. Dogs don’t talk in Times New Roman.

Greg has been an engineer at Microsoft for 33 years (33 years!) and holds these kinds of memories like a vault. He’s the self-proclaimed tech person on the original team of Microsoft font designers, deciphering technical issues and navigating the complexities of font development. His office is stacked with factory-sealed boxes of software like Microsoft Plus! 95 (emphasis ours, as was the fashion of the day), which included extra goodies like screen savers, Internet Explorer 1.0, and of course, font packs. This is where Comic Sans broke through to our hearts and homes.

Greg Hitchcock, 33-year font veteran at Microsoft

“Windows 3.1 had no fonts,” said Greg. “All documents had to be this Helvetica-ish font or Times New Roman. That was it. So we bring this new font system in and make all these fonts available in Plus!, and people just ate it up.”

Hidden among the goodies in Plus! 95 was our dear friend Comic Sans. “I remember summer of ’95, emails in the company started popping up with Comic Sans, and people would say, ‘I love this font.’ It had a very casual feel to it, which I think was attractive to people. You could send a fun email to someone else, and comic type conveyed that fun.”

And there it is, the contentious aesthetic of Comic Sans: it’s fun.

Playful with a purpose

Ask any designer today how they feel about Comic Sans, and you’ll get an involuntary “ugh,” maybe a laugh if they’re feeling generous. The reason behind the disdain comes down to the comical nature of it all.

“It has its place,” said Emily Johnson, Art Director for the Edge browser. “But it’s not something I would use in 99% of the ways it’s actually used today.” This is the crux of Comic Sans’s demise. As a respected font, its heyday quickly spurred its rejection due to sheer overuse.

“It’s kind of like when you hear the same song on the radio like 50 times a week,” Emily said. “It just gets overdone.”

This is no one’s fault, and it’s certainly not the font’s fault. We loved it too hard and then immediately turned our backs.

“When people use it in a correct way, or even just looking at it — it is playful,” said Ryan Vulk, Senior Designer on Windows. “There are some qualities to it that are very jovial. It kind of lightens the mood, even when it’s used incorrectly.”