
In the meantime, Comic Neue offers us one more opportunity to decide if we really need a comic font for that all-important business document.First, let’s talk a bit about Comic Sans, the world’s most reviled font. So can legitimacy be granted to a family of fonts that, by their very nature, are designed for fun? The remains to be seen. Papyrus, a font which many hate as much as Comic Sans, remains a mainstay for many designers. Yet other much maligned typefaces are regularly used. But few of these have ever made it into the mainstream. The internet enables access to a seemingly endless selection of “comic” typefaces: Janda Manatee Smart Kid Action Man Cartwheel Rudiment or even the rather unwieldly-named Year Supply of Fairy Cakes. The reputation of the comic typefaces may well be irreversibly tainted forever.
COMIC NEUE PROFESSIONAL
While the changes made to it to create Comic Neue do contribute to a more professional tone, there is no way to tell if the typeface will be more socially accepted. It incites laughter in some people and rage in others. Your neue best friend?Ĭomic Sans is arguably the most misused typeface in history. These small changes, combined with a thinner stroke throughout, convey a slightly more professional tone. The vertical strokes are perfectly vertical and the counters are uniformly rounded. Where Comic Sans strokes are often crooked, Comic Neue strokes are exact. What separates Comic Neue from Comic Sans, however, is the perfection found within each character. Generally speaking, the more a typeface resembles handwritten text, the more it is perceived as casual.Īll of these casual attributes can be found in both Comic Sans and Comic Neue. There are numerous different characteristics of the typeface that convey this tone. Friendly fontĬomic Neue is a sans serif typeface designed to appear casual and friendly. It is this ridicule that prompted Craig Rozynski to redesign the typeface into the new Comic Neue.

People feel so strongly about the typeface that there is even a website devoted to banning Comic Sans entirely. Since then, the typeface has been used for everything from physics presentations to papal documents and its popularity is only matched by the disdain some people have for it.

COMIC NEUE SERIES
He used the hand-drawn characters found in popular comic books like The Dark Knight Returns and the Watchmen series as inspiration for what would later become Comic Sans. Connare decided that comic dogs probably wouldn’t “speak” that way, and went to work designing something more interesting. In the initial version of Bob, the dog offered assistance in speech bubbles using Times New Roman.

Microsoft Bob came with a dog that would interact with the user.

The typeface, now approaching its 20th anniversary, was originally designed by Vincent Connare for Microsoft Bob, Microsoft’s 1995 interface for various iterations of Windows. If you are an experienced designer, it’s the last typeface you’d ever use, unless you want to be ridiculed without mercy. If you are an amateur designer, it’s the go-to typeface for just about any occasion that requires a relaxed approach.
