All About Comic Sans – History, Examples and Best Practices
There are a lot of well-designed fonts around and one of them is Comic Sans. In this post, I will tell you a little bit about the history of Comic Sans. You can also view the examples of designs using Comic Sans and you can find out when to use this great font.
The History of Comic Sans
Comic Sans is a script typeface designed by Vincent Connare. It was released in 1994 by Microsoft. The purpose of Comic Sans is to imitate comic book lettering. Comic Sans has been an included in every Microsoft Windows OS since Windows 95.
Comic Sans Documentary
This is a short documentary about the font Comic Sans. Created for a video production course and inspired by the film “Helvetica” by Gary Hustwit.
The Creator of Comic Sans, Vincent Connare
Font designer Vincent Connare talks about the history of his most famous work, Comic Sans.
15 Examples of Comic Sans in Design
When To Use Comic Sans
Most people don’t know when it is appropriate to use Comic Sans. The diagram below should greatly help those who want to know when to use this font.
Advice From ABC’s John Stossel About Comic Sans
Bonus: Comic Sans Goodness
Here are some more Comic Sans links from around the web. Feel free to share your own Comic Sans links in the comments.
- Comic Sans Flickr Group – Pictures of Comic Sans in public designs.
- Purchase Comic Sans – Comic Sans is on sale at MyFonts for $30. LOL!
- Ban Comic Sans – A website that is devoted to banning Comic Sans.
If you got a laugh out of this post, please leave a comment and share your thoughts about Comic Sans. After leaving a comment, subscribe to the RSS Feed and follow the Design Informer on Twitter. Thank you for viewing!
Design Informer does not suggest using Comic Sans in any design. We suggest deleting it completely from your harddrive. Don’t make the mistake that Hitler made by using Comic Sans.
Chris Wallace
November 11th, 2009 12:33 pmBEST ARTICLE EVAR.
.-= Chris Wallace´s latest Blog Entry – How to build a Social Networking Website with Drupal =-.
Jad Limcaco
November 11th, 2009 12:36 pm@Chris Wallace – Thanks! :)
Mario
November 11th, 2009 3:05 pmjust famous for being shipped with Windows
Michael Martin
November 13th, 2009 5:56 amWow, that was an amazing post! I can’t say I’d ever considered the history of Comic Sans before, but given it’s general hatred, I was curious to see. And the examples of it being used so well were fantastic, awesome post! :D
Edgar Leijs
November 13th, 2009 9:51 amGreat Great Great!!!
Comic Sans rules like html 4 :)Super article…
Ted Rex
November 13th, 2009 12:06 pmExcellent! I posted a link to this page on my daily design blog:
http://designthoughtfortheday.blogspot.com/
Ted
dlv
November 13th, 2009 9:29 pmI loved this post! i watch all the videos, really nice to see all this
thanks for share !!
Jad Limcaco
November 13th, 2009 11:41 pm@Ted – Thanks for the link.
Also, to everyone, thanks for all the comments. I’m glad that you all enjoyed this post.
mary fran
November 16th, 2009 12:22 pmI thought this was a serious post at first and I almost removed you from my feed, but once I read it all the way through and had a good chuckle, I was glad to see you have a sense of humor.
.-= mary fran´s latest Blog Entry – Friday Freebies – Business card templates =-.
Jad Limcaco
November 16th, 2009 1:24 pm@Mary – I’m glad you read all the way through, or I would have lost a feed subscriber. Maybe next time, I should let the reader know right away that it’s a joke? But there would be no fun in that.
BTW, your website looks pretty nice.
designi1
November 16th, 2009 4:51 pmReally nice post :D here we can see good nice examples that comic can be use for some circumstance… OFC now we´ve to many choice´s to used instance of comic sans :D
.-= designi1´s latest Blog Entry – Redesigning – Now need to make this title loger to try some new CSS features =-.
Jad Limcaco
November 16th, 2009 11:10 pm@Designi1 – Thanks! Although, I still wouldn’t really use Comic Sans under any circumstance.
Kris Efe
November 17th, 2009 10:48 amGreat article!
I translated it to portuguese and I’ve posted on my blog for newbies on design field:
http://krisefeblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/tudo-sobre-comic-sans.html
Just couldn’t find the videos with subtitles. Hope my readers will understand!
Phil D.
December 2nd, 2009 7:31 pmthis is awesome! haha
.-= Phil D.´s latest Blog Entry – Phillysoul11: new twitter background/theme. Also, 25 of the Best Free Fonts from Deviant Art – http://bit.ly/4BZYeT (via @designinformer) =-.
Jad Limcaco
December 3rd, 2009 2:30 pm@Kris Efe – Sure thing! :)
@Phil – Glad you liked it.
Gipsz Jakab
December 15th, 2009 11:38 amSince Comic Sans is one of the default typefaces of Windows there’s is nothing to talk about. It’s there, it’s free, and it’s different from Times New Roman (as the video also rightly concludes).
Most people absolutely don’t have any kind of taste, they just don’t care what kind of typeface is suitable to their “design” purposes. If Windows would contain Helvetica or any other perfectly designed font, people would use that – and we could live in a bit better (or at least nicer) world.
Anyway, Comic Sans is a really ugly typeface indeed.
Jad Limcaco
December 21st, 2009 1:37 pmHaha! Thanks for your support. LET’S BAN COMIC SANS! :lol:
Steven Williams
December 18th, 2009 8:10 amHaha nice article. Good old comic sans…
Jad Limcaco
January 20th, 2010 1:14 pmThanks Steven!
Thibault
December 24th, 2009 8:10 amSO fun to see all those examples… Thanks for sharing.
Jad Limcaco
January 20th, 2010 1:16 pmYep, the examples are cool, but I love that chart about when you should use Comic Sans.
scarlett
January 19th, 2010 5:24 pmI am strangely drawn to the design examples :D
Brilliant post! Have linked you from Posterous =)
Jad Limcaco
January 20th, 2010 1:16 pmLOL! That’s very strange. Thanks for linking to the post. I appreciate it.
Monmaker
January 19th, 2010 5:44 pmI happen to like Comic sans. >_>
Jad Limcaco
January 20th, 2010 1:15 pmWOW! Really? Very funny joke. :D
rb231
January 20th, 2010 6:03 amSurely in a history of this dreaded and maligned font, you can’t leave out the association of Dave Gibbons, Watchmen illustrator, in its origin.
Jad Limcaco
January 20th, 2010 1:15 pmI definitely should have included a reference to those as well. Thanks for bringing that up.
Aman L. Anderson
January 21st, 2010 1:53 pmThis is Awesome Jad! I just wrote an article about Comic Sans on my site! LOL, at http://www.pulchry.com/pulchryzine/thoughts-on-comic-sans I posted a link on the comments there. Thanks for this collection :)
Jad Limcaco
February 24th, 2010 3:22 amLOL! Very cool article Aman. I love the style of your blog. Excellent job and thanks for sharing!
Aman L. Anderson
February 24th, 2010 9:56 amYour welcome Jad! No problem man! I hope to write some more!
Lemon
February 8th, 2010 4:27 pmcomic sans is the font I love to hate the most!
.-= Lemon´s latest Blog Entry – The History of Beagles =-.
Jad Limcaco
February 24th, 2010 3:23 amReally? Me too.
lee
April 20th, 2010 6:23 amadd papyrus font to the list
aShocka
May 13th, 2010 6:37 amGreat article, I think that Comic Sans should be given a break. I mean, it is an awful font, but still, IE 6 is an awful piece of software and developers still program for it.
Why not just ignore old Microsoft’s fails? ;)
Dean
July 29th, 2010 8:10 pmI like Comic Sans. The banner for this article looks fine. What’s wrong with it, one thing tell me???
Kitten
October 28th, 2010 10:13 pmComic sans is used innapropriately 99.9% of the time.
bianca@historyofwatches
January 16th, 2011 5:30 pmi don’t know about that