4 ms·
You're right, Comic Sans hatred is partially motivated by a designer's desire to advertise their refined taste. And Comic Sans, reeking of diapers and toddler s
by neilk 11y ago
You're right, Comic Sans hatred is partially motivated by a designer's desire to advertise their refined taste. And Comic Sans, reeking of diapers and toddler saliva, is also offensive to a freshly urban-outfitted adult.
But the masses also use Times Roman and Helvetica, a lot, which are okay choices, and you don't see hipster movements against them. The above critique is totally solid on the reasons why Comic Sans does have real flaws, even given its design goals.
When desktop publishing met a mass audience, none of the other fonts met these users' needs. Comic Sans has open counters, which is good for legibility. And many home users want signage or communication with a more informal feel.
To their credit, Microsoft figured out that their users needed these things and polished up something that they were already working on. It wasn't a perfect job, but I'm not sure what other options they had used at the time. At the time, I think Adobe and MS were still in a format war, and few fonts could meet Microsoft's demanding requirements for on-screen legibility with low-end computers.
- DonHopkins 11y agoComic Sans was perfect for Microsoft Comic Chat [1], described in David Kurlander's SIGGRAPH paper [2] and published by Microsoft for Internet Explorer in 1996. It was used to publish a synchronized streaming audio, text and comic strip version of NPR’s CarTalk show [3], and in 1998 to produce a web comic named Jerk City [4]. Jim Woodring drew some of the Comic Chat characters and background artwork! [5] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat [2] http://kurlander.net/DJ/Pubs/SIGGRAPH96.pdf http://kurlander.net/DJ/Pubs/SIGGRAPH96.pdf [3] http://kurlander.net/DJ/Videos/CarTalkComicChatVideo.shtml http://kurlander.net/DJ/Videos/CarTalkComicChatVideo.shtml [4] https://www.jerkcity.com/ https://www.jerkcity.com/ [5] http://alchetron.com/Jim-Woodring-913512-W http://alchetron.com/Jim-Woodring-913512-W
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoThe masses are more likely to use Arial than Helvetica, and that gets almost as much stick as Comic Sans. Of course the more advanced hipster can be snooty about Helvetica too if need be: http://www.fontbureau.com/nhg/ http://www.fontbureau.com/nhg/