How a Dog Talks: The Surprising Redemption of Comic Sans [from Very Special Episodes]

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2:10Dana Schwartz:It's been called the cockroach of typefaces. a font of ill will, and the default punchline in the design community. We're talking about Comic Sans, that round, friendly, comic book-style font that everyone loves to hate. But why? How did hating Comic Sans become a kind of shorthand for good taste? And how did this particular font, one of only a few most people can name on site, end up as a cultural joke. Comic Sans was created for a very specific purpose at a very specific time, a time before social media algorithms, AI everything, and cyber trucks, when tech was trying to be approachable, accessible, friendlier, even fun.

3:06Dana Schwartz:An awful lot has changed since then. You hear news of slip dresses, CDs, and other 90s relics having a resurgence. Why not Comic Sans? Is it really fair to hate on a font so much? Because it's possible Comic Sans actually succeeded, just not in a way its critics ever imagined.

3:38Dana Schwartz:Welcome to Very Special Episodes, an iHeart Original Podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this is How a Dog Talks, The Surprising Redemption of Comic Sans.

3:57Hey, welcome back to Very Special Episodes. I'm Jason English. She is Dana Schwartz. Hey, hey. He is Zarin Burnett. I know you heard that. Do any of you have a Comic Sans subplot from your own lives?

4:10Dana Schwartz:You know what I'll say? I started resenting the Comic Sans backlash because it felt very lazy. I don't like when people just sort of bandwagon on a thing they're told to hate. when I'm like half the people, probably 90 % of the people pretending, you know, hating Comic Sans online. It's like, when have you ever had an opinion about a font? You're just making fun of people that you perceive to be like unsophisticated or not like in the know like you. So I just, I have a knee jerk reaction always to kind of defend the underdog against people looking for an opportunity just to be snarky. So I'm pro Comic Sans.

4:53I'm right there with you, Dan. And I threw the exact same reasoning. Like I always stick up for the underdog and Comic Sans is like the super underdog. I have a quick story. Very early in my career, I'm working as a junior copywriter, maybe even an intern copywriter at that point at an ad agency here in New York. And if you remember Chandler that season on Friends, I think that was me. And my brilliant British creative director boss had brought me into work on a kid's candy campaign. And we had all these headlines and I'm gathering them into a presentation. And because it's supposed to be coming out of the mouths of kids, I am using a Comic Sans font and I'm nervous anyway.

5:37This is again, very early on, right after college. And he comes in to review them in my little cube and I'm nervously scrolling and showing them on the screen. And he looks me right in the eye and says, I hate this font. And then that was it. Walked away. No comments on any of the work. Probably hours and hours, days. So I have been scarred by that. And I want to see a redemption here. Totally.

6:04Dana Schwartz:Amazing. Picture this. It's a sunny day in 1994. You're on the leafy campus of Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, not far from Seattle. Microsoft is already a behemoth. It's powerful, profitable, and poised. 1994 is the first year that Americans spend almost as much money on computers as they do on television sets. And this is just before Windows 95 changes everything. I think that they were growing fast. They were obviously very productive at that moment in time. They're cranking stuff out. Optimism is high in the 90s. That's Terrence, a type designer who worked on updating Comic Sans for 21st century use.

6:56My name is Terrence Winesrill. I am an executive creative director at Monotype. And Monotype designs, distributes, and manages fonts all over the world.

7:09Dana Schwartz:Even though he wasn't working at Microsoft back then, Terrence knows a bit about how fonts got made in those heady days of 1994. Comic Sans is very much a relic of the 90s, a time when computers were clunky, weird, and oddly optimistic. Before tech got sleek and intimidating, it was trying to be friendly. They were experimenting, and I think they were trying everything. And really, computer interfaces were new. And so something like Microsoft Bob and this skeuomorphism was really an extreme example of how can we take this new tool and make it as approachable as possible and make people want to learn it.

7:57Dana Schwartz:Skeuomorphism is a design strategy that brings something from the old into the new to make it more acceptable. Think of how the trash on your computer looks like a trash can. That strategy helped a lot of people in the early 90s when personal computers were new and scary. Bob took skeuomorphism and turned the dial all the way up, replacing your desktop with a cartoon room where every object had a job. When you open, Bob, you're greeted by a shiny gold door knocker on a bright red door. Let me see what I've got in here.

8:43Dana Schwartz:Knock and suddenly you're inside a cozy, if garish, living room. There's a roaring fireplace, a striped armchair, a coffee table, and helpful props everywhere. A Rolodex, a wall calendar, a checkbook resting nearby. Bob's goal was to make using your computer simple, friendly, and clear. Want to balance your checkbook? Click the checkbook. Need to see your schedule? Tap the calendar. Looking for someone's number? Obviously, the Rolodex. And this wasn't some fringe side project. Bob had serious people behind it. The marketing manager was Melinda French, who had just married Bill Gates. She might have had something to do with Bob's tagline, introducing hardworking, easygoing software everyone will use.

9:40Dana Schwartz:That didn't quite work out. Bob was supposed to be so easy to use that it didn't even come with a manual. It did, however, ship with a copy of Bob magazine, including a feature describing a perfect day with Bob, writing letters, paying bills, planning reunions, ordering pizza, and still getting to bed by 11.

10:07Dana Schwartz:But the key part of Bob for our story is that it came with assistants, officially known as the Friends of Bob. They helped you use the program and customize your space. Options included Chaos the Cat, Orbi the Globe, Java the Coffee-Drinking Reptile, and Scuzz the Rat. Scuzz would occasionally rummage through a garbage can. But the default assistant was Rover, an easy-to-work-with golden retriever. Clicking on him would bring up a dialogue bubble with Rover saying, I can dig up information and fetch whatever you need. Oh, and I'll stay off the furniture. And it's those dialogue bubbles from Rover that we have to thank for Comic Sans.

10:57Yeah, so Vinny is at Microsoft and he sees this cartoon dog speaking in Times-Roman. And like any good typographer or type designer, he thinks to himself, this doesn't fit. The vibe of this typeface doesn't match the rest of the interface.

11:12Dana Schwartz:Vinny is type designer Vincent Conner, who joined Microsoft in 1993. Vincent told us he's now retired from doing interviews about Comic Sans. But when Twitter user at Rectrek97 asked him, why did you create Comic Sans, bro? He replied, the Microsoft Bob team asked me what I thought of their dog talking in Times New Roman. He told them, that is not how a dog talks. Vincent had a fair bit of freedom at Microsoft. He told the author Simon Garfield, quote,

12:09Dana Schwartz:Vincent didn't steal anything to create Comic Sans, but he did have inspirations. So he's inspired by comic book lettering and he has some comic books in his office. So he designs Comic Sans to replace Times and Roman in this specific kind of use case with this cartoon. And apparently he made it very quickly and he drew it with a digital pen only. Vincent has said that he drew the font in a program called Macromedia Fontographer. A big fan of comics and graphic novels, he was particularly inspired by the lettering in Watchmen and Batman The Dark Knight Returns. The font was meant to be friendly, not perfect.

12:58Dana Schwartz:At first, it wasn't even a complete typeface. The spacing was inconsistent. The shapes didn't all match. Lowercase p wasn't a mirror opposite of q, as it often is in sans-serif fonts. In other words, Comic Sans broke all the rules. Vincent has said, The joy for me was not making it right or perfect or straight. His boss at Microsoft, Robert Norton, reportedly offered suggestions for tightening things up. But Vincent liked the wonkiness, with each letter its own shape. Alas, Comic Sans never actually made it into Bob. Rover kept on speaking in Time's New Roman, perhaps because Comic Sans didn't quite fit inside the speech bubbles.

13:48Dana Schwartz:Bob itself was a massive, memorable flop. Time magazine named it among the 50 worst inventions, alongside New Coke and Subprime Mortgages. The flop wasn't because of its fonts. Bob was incompatible with most computers of its time. For one thing, the program required 8 megabytes of memory, about twice the typical amount of many home PCs then. Plus, reviewers found the program and its cartoon helpers infantilizing. It seemed better suited for kids than smart adult who just needed an on-ramp to a new technology. But Comic Sans didn't sync with Bob. The font showed up in a program called 3D Movie Maker and was released as a bonus product to Windows 95, then a full system font.

14:45Dana Schwartz:It also ended up on Microsoft products designed for Macs. So it gets bundled into Windows 95, which is a smashing success, right? There are just millions of copies of Windows 95 going out and Comic Sans goes along with it. So the most important part of the popularity of Comic Sans is, frankly, the distribution. Comic Sans is on millions of computers in the hands of millions of people who are not classically trained graphic designers. And so they're going to choose typefaces at free will. That's when it goes wild. Comic Sans didn't become popular because it was perfect. It became popular because it was everywhere.

15:30Dana Schwartz:At Microsoft, Vincent noticed people using Comic Sans for birthday party invitations and event signups. There were only a handful of font choices on Windows 95. Ariel, Courier New, a few others. Comic Sans was the only one that felt like it had a pulse. And so if you think about Comic Sans is really standing out in a room full of suits, other formal typefaces, Comic Sans is like the denim on the rack. And it stands out as being the most human, the most casual, the most approachable, the most humble, the most friendly typeface in that list. But once Comic Sans escaped into the wild, something unexpected happened.

16:15Dana Schwartz:because when everybody suddenly has access to the same tools, not everyone agrees on how they should be used or who should be using them.

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18:28Baja Mar, life spectacular. Early type designing and setting was so laborious that it is a blasphemy to the history of the craft that any fool can sit down at their personal computer and design their own typeface. Technological advances have transformed typography into a tawdry triviality.

18:51Dana Schwartz:That screed comes from the Ban Comic Sans Facebook page. It's a place where users gather to trade what they see as the most egregious uses of the font. A war monument in Cherbourg. A hospital referral form. A mosaic in Italy. A condolence notice. A church bulletin. Places where the tone is supposed to be solemn, and suddenly it's not. where the wrong typeface doesn't just look bad, it feels like a violation. Comic Sans wasn't just showing up, it was showing up in all the wrong places. That text didn't just live on Facebook either. It originally appeared on the website for the Ban Comic Sans campaign.

19:43Dana Schwartz:Started in 2002, the campaign included a manifesto, posters, and stickers, a small arsenal of typographic enforcement. And it all went back to one man. When I first experienced Comic Sans, I thought it was poorly designed. I thought it was kind of childish and silly. That man is Dave Combs. I'm a graphic designer, artist, publisher, a bit of a miscreant, an instigator in some ways. I'm a typography nerd, I guess you could say. Dave noticed that Comic Sans was being used in serious contexts. Such as medical information, important flyers, and things that people should take seriously. And that offended me as a typography, you know, kind of aficionado, I guess you would say.

20:44And so I kind of knee-jerk reaction started a campaign to ban it.

20:51Dana Schwartz:To people who care deeply about design, typography is a signal. It tells you what's serious, what's casual, what deserves respect. And Dave wasn't alone in objecting to these uses of comic sans. When his partner, Holly, a fellow graphic designer, got a gig working for a museum in Indianapolis, she discovered that they wanted text for an entire exhibit set in Comic Sans. This was very offensive, like, to her sensibilities. And so when she brought it to me and told me that's what she was doing, that also sparked the impetus to, like, what are we going to do about this? So I was like, well, no sense to complain and let's just ban Comic Sans.

21:41Dana Schwartz:He became, in his words, the self-appointed typography police. No badge, no jurisdiction, no warrants, but he did have stickers. Dave made a run of them that said, ban Comic Sans. Some included an image of Vincent Conner's face. He placed them on a doctor's office sign that said accepting new patients in Comic Sans. The result? The office switched to Times New Roman. Dave silk-screened t-shirts saying, Ban Comic Sans. He made mugs. He created a website with downloadable stickers that anyone could print. Before long, the Ban Comic Sans campaign reached a wider audience than Dave or Holly could have imagined.

22:30Dana Schwartz:Emails poured in from graphic designers and typography enthusiasts worldwide. The press noticed. One of the first mentions of the campaign came in 2004. Canada's National Post quoted the movement's manifesto, comparing the use of Comic Sans in serious contexts to showing up at a black tie event dressed as a clown. It's a metaphor that only works if you already know the dress code, And Comic Sans became a quick way to tell who did and who didn't. Not knowing when to use Comic Sans was a cultural shorthand, signaling taste, education, belonging, or lack thereof. If you knew, you knew. If you didn't, it showed.

23:20Dana Schwartz:What almost no one was talking about in those conversations was who gets left out when taste gets policed. And it didn't stop with Dave's stickers. There were message boards and online groups devoted entirely to mocking Comic Sans. People shared sightings and photos, like birdwatchers but angrier. Chrome extensions were built to erase it from websites. One design agency even released a Flash-based shooting game called Kill Comic Sans, which is a lot of energy for a font. But why did Comic Sans provoke such ire, even among people who don't consider themselves to be font nerds? One typography expert has some thoughts.

24:15I'm Thomas Finney, and I do fonts. And I kind of do everything to do with fonts in one stripe or another.

24:24Dana Schwartz:Thomas is quick to note that he is not part of the backlash movement. I think Comic Sans is perfectly fine for some uses. Was it overused? Sure. Were the reasons it was overused understandable? Why, yes. But the backlash, I think, happened precisely because it was used so heavily and because it was at least some of the time used in situations where it was perhaps inappropriate. And on top of that, though, it really feels like there was some sort of bandwagon effect. And some of the people who turned up their noses at Comic Sans got a kick out of pointing out how knowledgeable and superior they were or something.