Move over Comic Sans. Say hello to Comic Neue.
Many may have considered it as the most-hated font ever created, but is it really time to say goodbye to the comical font?
Comic Sans, created by Vincent Connare, has trended on Twitter on April 7, following the announcement of a makeover font called Comic Neue by designer Craig Rozynski.
Rozynski, an Australian digital designer based in Japan, remembered witnessing the Comic Sans font being bashed online a few years ago.
Recall that there is even an online community, Ban Comic Sans, created to push for the font's abolishment. Also, filmmaker Errol Morris has conducted an informal study on the infamous font, which suggested that when information is presented in Comic Sans, people are less likely to believe it.
Regardless of these negative feedbacks, he wondered if Comic Sans could still be saved or could have a makeover. He said he was just like any other graphic designer who dreams of creating a typeface, reason why he created the Comic Neue.
"Comic Neue aspires to be the casual script choice for everyone including the typographically savvy," stated in the new font's official website. "The squashed, wonky, and weird glyphs of Comic Sans have been beaten into shape while maintaining the honesty that made Comic Sans so popular."
The makeover font has two variants: Comic Neue and Comic Neue Angular. The two variants have regular, light, bold weights, along with oblique equivalents. As the name suggests, Comic Neue Angular, however, have angular terminals instead of the round ones.
The website said the new font is perfect for marking up comments, for passive aggressive office memos, or simply as a display face.
The makeover font can be downloaded for free, but Rozynski said people have been asking for a full written disclaimer from him before they touch it and he hasn't decided on that yet.
"I put so much work into it (it was a three year side-project) that one part of me wants to charge a fee for it, while the other, realistic part of me concedes it will never be ubiquitous if it comes with a price tag. What's online now for download will be free forever. If I give it a fully realised set of glyphs and fine tune it, I may offer that for sale," Rozynski said.
With all the bashing and bullying the Comic Sans have received online since its inception in the 90s, have people ever really wondered what was behind the creation of the typeface?
Surprisingly, there was no intention of making Comic Sans a typeface but rather a solution to a technical problem in the interface of a computer program, Connare said. Comic Sans was the typeface he used to communicate the message. Also, it wasn't supposedly included in other applications but only to those designed for children. He said the inspiration only came when he saw the font Times New Roman used in an inappropriate way.
"Comic Sans was designed because when I was working at Microsoft I received a beta version of Microsoft Bob. It was a comic software package that had a dog called Rover at the beginning and he had a balloon with messages using Times New Roman," Connare narrated.
"The designers and engineers at Microsoft spent lots of time drawing and coding the interface for MS Bob with comic characters but didn't bother to use a cartoon or comic font," he said, noting how he thought that was a mistake.
"I had been working with the Creative Writer team in the Consumer division at the same time supplying them with fonts for Kids software, things like fonts looking like Pizza, monsters and ones with snow. There was a need for these fun fonts at Microsoft at the time," he explained.
Then he started to look at two comic books in his office, from where he patterned and tweaked the Comic Sans. He said that was how Comic Sans became a part of the Microsoft Windows system fonts. The rest is, well, history.
