Why We ‘Love to Hate’ Comic Sans

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The quirky, rounded, nominally sans-serif font of Comic Sans became a cultural phenomenon when it first burst onto the scene as a free option in Windows 95. Used in memes, kindergarten classrooms and sometimes even official signage, it’s become “the font everyone loves to hate.” So says Simon Garfield, author of a new biography of Comic Sans. And over its 30 years, the font became recommended by dyslexia organizations and can be used to chart a micro-history of online irony, comedy and backlash cycles. Garfield joins us to share why “no other font gets people so worked up” and how Comic Sans says a lot about how we express ourselves, online and off. Guests: Simon Garfield, author, “Comic Sans: The Biography of a Typeface” and “Just My Type: A Book About Fonts” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:31.6	Coming up on Forum, Comic Sans.
1:34.6	Yes, the typeface, with its rounded letters and uneven spacing,
1:38.9	that launched 30 years ago as a preloaded font on Windows 95.
1:48.0	Loved by kindergarten teachers, hated by designers. It's a typeface that everyone seems to have an opinion about,
1:51.0	and writer Simon Garfield set out to learn why.
1:55.0	In his new biography of Comic Sans, Garfield shows us how
1:59.0	Comic Sans made us recognize the power of typefaces,
2:02.7	and how its rise in popularity, fall, and possible rise again reflects the cultural shifts
	...

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