So now, nearly every man, woman, child, and bake sale organizer find themselves armed with publishing power unlike civilization had ever seen; and few of them really had any design sense.
It used to be that if you lost your kitten, and wanted to make a poster, probably the most efficient way to make a flyer would be to draw one up with magic marker, cut out a picture of the cat, and go down to the nearest supermarket to make copies of it at 15 cents apiece. Then, you would post them up in your neighborhood; and — like a caveman — you would pick up a phone, call the newspaper, and place an ad to help find your kitten.
But now that you had Windows 95, a personal computer, and a printer, you could use Word to make your lost kitten poster, and print it out at home. And, wow! You could use any font you wanted. So, guess what font makes you think about your lost kitten? This is a monumental moment in history — right up there with the invention of printing — for common people to suddenly have the power to typeset and print documents.
No big deal for awhile: some people got to enjoy making their own Christmas cards, birthday party invitations, etc. But then, gradually, over the next 10 years or so, the internet got more and more popular. Now, any one person could write a message that could potentially be read by millions, in Comic Sans. This actually happened when Cleveland Caveliers owner, Dan Gilbert wrote a letter regarding the dramatic departure of LeBron James, in Comic Sans — resulting in a media storm over the poor font choice.
But where did all of this hatred come from? This made the production of high quality print design much cheaper, and much more viable for businesses to spend money on. So, with the increased demand for Graphic Design services, Design schools started churning out graduates at an unprecedented pace. Terrible font choices, poor kerning, haphazard color choices, and stupid concepts suddenly assault your eyes once you learn about design principles, color theory, typography, and concept development.
A large portion of conversations between myself and other self-righteous design students were — and still are — about how terribly designed everything is: campus wayfinding signage, the t-shirt for the latest toga party, and yes, lost kitten posters. But most of these design students were — and still are — blind to what a monumental, mammoth, incredible, revolutionary, huge thing was occurring. Their grandmother could typeset and print out as many lost kitten posters as she wanted.
Eventually, regular people got more familiar with this publishing power, desktop publishing applications — like Microsoft Publisher — became more widely available, and more people started to get the hang of publishing on their own. But the typeface it used was Times New Roman, which Connare judged to be a strange choice. It was a little harsh and schoolmasterly, not to say boring.
It was not something that would hold your hand in a welcoming way. Connare was a fan of the graphic novel, and was inspired by the speech bubbles to create something simple and rounded, letters that might have been created by cutting with blunt scissors the truth is he used a popular font-making software package.
His font, not yet called Comic Sans, was rejected for technical reasons it didn't fit the existing grids , but not long afterwards was adopted for the successful Microsoft Movie Maker. It was then included as a supplementary typeface in the Windows 95 operating system, where everyone with a PC could not only see it, but use it. And thus it became a global phenomenon, something that would inspire attention from Design Week magazine to the Wall St Journal. Connare later explained why it worked so well: "'Because it's sometimes better than Times New Roman, that's why.
One thing the Comic Sans debate has demonstrated beyond doubt is that one's choice of font is now a serious affair. Twenty years ago fonts were not something most of us gave much of a second thought.
Unless we were in the print or design industries, fonts were something we accepted rather than chose. The pull-down menu on our computers changed everything. Here was a way of expressing our intentions and emotions in a new way, a choice that stretched from digital updates of Garamond from the 16th Century up to modern screen fonts such as Georgia and Calibri.
We could employ the efficient Gill Sans for job applications or the more elegant Didot for wedding invitations. We could become familiar with the differences between serif faces and sans serifs, the former with feet and tips on their letters, the latter usually with a less formal air.
And we could unleash a seemingly harmless childlike new font on a defenceless world. Almost inevitably, the Comic Sans backlash has produced a backlash of its own. But it seems the biggest fan of Comic Sans is its creator, Vincent Connare — who called it "the greatest font in the world". Connare created Comic Sans in , when he needed a typeface for a talking cartoon dog application called Microsoft Bob.
So there we have it — Comic Sans might not be quite as bad as it seems. Next time we're feeling snarky about it, we'd do well to remember the serious accessibility benefits behind the less-than-serious typeface.
And while it isn't the most, er, professional-looking typeface around, not everything needs to look like a financial report — we've got plenty of fun fonts to liven up your design projects or financial reports, if you like. Daniel Piper is senior news editor at Creative Bloq, and an authority on all things art, design, branding and tech. He has a particular penchant for Apple products — some corners of the internet might call him an 'iSheep', but he's fine with this.
It doesn't bother him at all. Why would it? They're just really nicely designed products, okay? Daniel is also a comedian and national poetry slam champion, and his favourite Bond is, obviously, Sean Connery.
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