Latest / Ridiculous History / Fonts They Love to Hate, Part One: Origins of Comic Sans

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Fonts They Love to Hate, Part One: Origins of Comic Sans · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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  Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's give it up for the one
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  Speaker 1: and only super producer, mister Max Williams.
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  Speaker 2: Shut up, Noel.
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  Speaker 1: What's your favorite font?
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  Speaker 2: Oh? Papyrus obviously, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. If someone asked me, Ben, what's your favorite font,
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  Speaker 1: I gotta tell you I would not have a good
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  Speaker 1: answer I have. We both have a lot of very
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  Speaker 1: accomplished graphic design friends, and I think all three of
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  Speaker 1: us right, and graphic designers are pretty sensitive about fonts.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Seraphs. No seraphs, you know, my god,
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  Speaker 2: don't even get me started on turning. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I briefly sort of had a dalliance working in a
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  Speaker 3: graphic design company doing video stuff, and that's when I
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  Speaker 3: learned terms like like kerning and seraphs. I was just
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  Speaker 3: mainly taking elements that the actual graphic designers did and
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  Speaker 3: then converting them into like after effects animations. You know,
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  Speaker 3: we're text on screen for video type stuff. But anytime
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  Speaker 3: I made any adjustments to things like kerning in the
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  Speaker 3: design they sent me, for whatever reason, they clocked it instantly.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they got a spidery sense for me. And
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  Speaker 1: there needs to be some sort of discipline right for
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  Speaker 1: this conveyance of information. Look, no matter what language you speak,
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  Speaker 1: no matter where you live, in this wide world of ours,
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  Speaker 1: you are constantly inundated by type, by letters, by messages,
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  Speaker 1: by communication from some other thing to you. We played
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  Speaker 1: a dangerous and a weird game that max you would
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  Speaker 1: love back on stuff they don't want you to know.
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  Speaker 1: We're talking about insidious patterns of advertising. And this was
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  Speaker 1: a number of years ago. We tried to count how
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  Speaker 1: many ads we saw in twenty four hours. Everyone trying
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  Speaker 1: to play this game lost count.
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  Speaker 2: No one won.
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  Speaker 1: There are just too many type is everywhere.
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  Speaker 3: And that speaks to some of the tricksy methods that
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  Speaker 3: go into type setting. I use that as kind of
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  Speaker 3: an outdated term. Perhaps a font would be more the
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  Speaker 3: proper term now in the era of kind of digital
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  Speaker 3: graph design. But in the old days it was called
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  Speaker 3: a type set because it was literally a set of
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  Speaker 3: metal letters that were used on a printing press. You know,
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  Speaker 3: for every single letter that there was a type setter
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  Speaker 3: who had to go in and place those puzzle pieces in,
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  Speaker 3: you know, for every single page of a publication. Right,
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  Speaker 3: But you know, when we're seeing advertisements that make creative
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  Speaker 3: use of fonts, we always come back to Chick fil A.
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  Speaker 2: You know, think what you will up?
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  Speaker 3: Their politics whatever their ad campaigns are on point because
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  Speaker 3: they capitalize out a phenomenon that I believe is called disfluency,
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  Speaker 3: where because of their whole misspelling and kind of childlike
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  Speaker 3: handwritten signs, your eyes linger on it longer because it's
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  Speaker 3: sort of a puzzle to solve.
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  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, just so in the world of Chick fil A,
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  Speaker 1: cows want you to focus your genocidal tendencies on chickens, right,
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  Speaker 1: and so okay, this type is everywhere. Font or typeface
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  Speaker 1: is a crucial part of how we encounter information when
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  Speaker 1: we read it. And if you think back now, just
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  Speaker 1: through your day before you tuned in to this episode,
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  Speaker 1: you will have probably seen multiple different fonts in one
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  Speaker 1: instance or another, and they do affect us psychologically. But
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  Speaker 1: we rarely ask where these fonts came from. What's the providence,
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  Speaker 1: what's their origin story? This is a question that has
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  Speaker 1: haunted our good friend and research associate, Jeff Bartlett. So, Jeff,
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  Speaker 1: this one's this one's for you. He went to the
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  Speaker 1: mat on this. He's in the trenches with us, Sarah
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  Speaker 1: or Sands. This is a two part episode.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and we're not just talking about the providence of
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  Speaker 3: every run of the mill type font. We're specifically talking
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  Speaker 3: about fonts that have gotten, for better or worse, a bad.
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  Speaker 2: Reputation, you know, whether from a.
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  Speaker 3: Design perspective, a legibility perspective, or just kind of a
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  Speaker 3: bad taste perspective.
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  Speaker 2: So we were talking off air.
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  Speaker 3: The original title of this was stupid fucking fonts Lead
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  Speaker 3: me on that Max, but it changed, you know, because
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  Speaker 3: it's a family show to the fonts we love to hate.
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  Speaker 3: And I was joking when I said Papyrus. There's a
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  Speaker 3: really great that is, you know, among some of the
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  Speaker 3: one of the most hated fonts out there. And there's
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  Speaker 3: an amazing sketch or like a digital short on SNL
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  Speaker 3: with Ryan Gosling where he comes to the realization that
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  Speaker 3: the logo for the multi gazillion dollar grossing film Avatar
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  Speaker 3: from James Cameron. The text is literally just papyrus, which
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  Speaker 3: is kind of this, you know, it's meant to evoke feelings,
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  Speaker 3: I guess of like mystical ancient Egyptian tombs.
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  Speaker 1: It doesn't even really do to feel like you're reading
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  Speaker 1: a scroll. Yeah, all right, yeah, early early nineties video
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  Speaker 1: games loved it. Lots lots of blogs in the two
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  Speaker 1: thousands loved it.
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  Speaker 2: And in the short he kind of has an existential crisis.
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  Speaker 3: I'm like, you know, some designer, if you can even
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  Speaker 3: call them that, just highlighted the text and scrolled down
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  Speaker 3: and like a child pulling flowers.
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  Speaker 2: Off of trees as he passes.
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  Speaker 3: Willy Nilly just selected papyrus and hit you know, print.
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  Speaker 1: And I want to give it a shout out to
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  Speaker 1: my second favorite discourse about fonts, ever, which is from McSweeney's.
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  Speaker 1: All you have to do is, uh, since we're beeping
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  Speaker 1: already in this episode, all you have to do is
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  Speaker 1: type in the phrase I'm comic sands ask yeah, and
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  Speaker 1: you'll be in for a ride. So okay, I said typeface,
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  Speaker 1: I said font. They're a little bit different. Let's clarify
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  Speaker 1: the terminology here with some help from Ashworth. Creative typography
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  Speaker 1: is the art of creating letters that we use every
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  Speaker 1: day in any language. You design them. You decide what
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  Speaker 1: the A or the Z always looks like. And a
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  Speaker 1: font is a collection or set of those things. So
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  Speaker 1: they include the all the little garnishes of this weird
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  Speaker 1: English language, the semi colons, the dashes, the interrogatives and exclamations.
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  Speaker 1: So the typeface is the design you see, it's the
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  Speaker 1: style and look of a specific font. And you know,
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  Speaker 1: you raise a great point there, and Noel, the way
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  Speaker 1: the letters look play such a mission critical role in
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  Speaker 1: how people encounter the thing. Like imagine, okay, I was
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  Speaker 1: thinking about this. Imagine if you woke up one day,
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  Speaker 1: you're driving in traffic and all the road signs are
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  Speaker 1: in papyrus font.
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  Speaker 2: I would think I was having a stroke and entering
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  Speaker 2: some sort of fugue state.
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  Speaker 1: Most pretentious stop sign ever, it would be disgusted.
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  Speaker 3: Or even even worse or more chaotic would be you know,
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  Speaker 3: comic sands like as the whole world just gone stupid,
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  Speaker 3: you know, like that would be the implication there. Yeah,
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  Speaker 3: it's very interesting, Like the idea of the medium being
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  Speaker 3: the message right one hundred percent contained within the design
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  Speaker 3: aesthetic right of these fonts. There's a certain amount of
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  Speaker 3: intent communicated to the to the consumer, to the to
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  Speaker 3: the viewer, the reader or whatever, you know, whether they're
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  Speaker 3: wanting to an ad campaign or whatever, a sign, let's say,
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  Speaker 3: or a document, you know, like a legal document. They're
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  Speaker 3: going to have style guides, you know, for various law firms,
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  Speaker 3: like in terms of how they space things. You know
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  Speaker 3: that the font they use, you know, what words or
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  Speaker 3: headings are highlighted, you know how, because it's all meant
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  Speaker 3: to convey a sense of professionalism, but also a little
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  Speaker 3: bit of like this is our style. But when you're
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  Speaker 3: doing like let's say, a poster for a movie or
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  Speaker 3: you know, advertisement for a product, are you trying to
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  Speaker 3: convey a sense of fun, excitement, danger perhaps.
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  Speaker 1: Or normality exactly or consequence. So this week we wanted
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  Speaker 1: to hang out and talk about not all fonts, not
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  Speaker 1: the necessarily the history of all fonts hashtag not all fons,
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  Speaker 1: hashtag not all fonts, or hashtag no tall fonts. English
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  Speaker 1: is so weird, it's We wanted to talk about the
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  Speaker 1: fonts that get hated on. We named some of them.
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  Speaker 1: You know, there's this sort of feedback loop in this
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  Speaker 1: the age of ubiquitous communication. Anything that becomes too popular
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  Speaker 1: too quickly inevitably gets haters. So on behalf of these
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  Speaker 1: very hated fonts, We're gonna say condolences to haters. Let's
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  Speaker 1: learn more about their history. Nola, you set up comic
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  Speaker 1: Sands beautifully. Let's talk about comic sands. I can't believe
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  Speaker 1: I'm saying this. I thought originally we're digging in on this.
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  Speaker 1: I thought comic Sans made in nineteen ninety four. That's
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  Speaker 1: pretty recent. And I was politely diplomatically reminded that nineteen
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  Speaker 1: ninety four was a long long time ago.
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  Speaker 2: It is. Yeah, it's weird to think, right the nineties.
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  Speaker 3: You know, they're like children now again, say children who
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  Speaker 3: are able to vote and.
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  Speaker 2: Like buy alcohol who were born in the nineties. It's weird, man.
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  Speaker 3: They just keep you know, we just keep getting older
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  Speaker 3: and they stay the same age. No, they get older too.
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  Speaker 3: Max is well one hundred percent, and there's nothing wrong
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  Speaker 3: with that. Max, go with God.
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  Speaker 2: We wish you the very best, at least in the
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  Speaker 2: early nineties ninety one. So I'm like, you know, I
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  Speaker 2: had a tape a set player in my car.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, okay, bully for you, young Max, Bully for you.
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  Speaker 2: You know, why is that? Why is that the street cred?
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  Speaker 1: You'd have a phonograph in your car?
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  Speaker 2: Get it? You have an eight track? Come on. But no,
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  Speaker 2: But here's the thing. I mean the nineties.
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  Speaker 3: Of course, you know, as you can see with pop
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  Speaker 3: culture and stuff, anytime a new decade begins, it's basically
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  Speaker 3: kind of a trickle down remnants of the previous decade. So, honestly, Max,
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  Speaker 3: the early nineties still very much felt like the eighties. So, uh,
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  Speaker 3: you're good in my book, buddy, you're good in my book.
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  Speaker 1: So Comic Sands, there's this guy, his name's Vincent Knarre
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  Speaker 1: con n ar E. He designs Comic Sands, which is
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  Speaker 1: a sort of thicker line for the letters, and it
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  Speaker 1: doesn't have seraphs. You've heard us use the phrase seraph.
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  Speaker 1: A seraf is the little deally bopped yeah, that goes
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  Speaker 1: on the edges of letters in other fonts. Times New
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  Speaker 1: Roman loves a seraph.
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  Speaker 3: It can kind of make things feel a little more adorned.
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  Speaker 3: Perhaps they're a little more ornamental, or in the case
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  Speaker 3: of Times New Roman, almost give the sense of that
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  Speaker 3: you might have gotten from like a stone cut type
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  Speaker 3: type faces carved.
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  Speaker 1: That's the idea. Yeah, that's great, that's a good way
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  Speaker 1: to put it. It's just that slight projection, that slight
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  Speaker 1: protuberance off the stroke of a letter.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and so it makes me think of something naughty,
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  Speaker 3: I don't know what.
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  Speaker 1: So so apparently our pal Vinson said, no naughty protuberances
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  Speaker 1: in my thoughts, and this was he designed it based
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  Speaker 1: off the fantastic craft of letterers a hand.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, comic books in the world, comic comscripts.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, if anyone out there's a fanographic novels,
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  Speaker 3: comic books, whatever, you'll know that there is a credited letterer.
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  Speaker 3: And that in comics like for example, in The Sandman,
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  Speaker 3: which I think we all love, the text in the
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  Speaker 3: speech bubbles for Morpheus look a certain way that like
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  Speaker 3: have this kind of dreamy quality like everything he's saying,
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  Speaker 3: Even the bubbles themselves are a little jagged on the edges,
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  Speaker 3: and the text looks like ancient. And then you know,
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  Speaker 3: texts from other speakers might just be more of that
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  Speaker 3: normal kind of that traditional comic lettering, which, like you said,
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  Speaker 3: is very sans Saraphi. But what if we took that
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  Speaker 3: that craft of hand lettering and just kind of slapped
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  Speaker 3: it into a font set and called it a day.
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  Speaker 2: Who's gonna stop us?
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  Speaker 3: God? Anyway, So some people just want to watch the
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  Speaker 3: world burn, then, right, right agents to chaos.
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  Speaker 1: So there's an excellent article in the Guardian how we
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  Speaker 1: made the typeface comic Sands, and it has an interview
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  Speaker 1: with our pal Vincent, and Vincent gives first hand reporting
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  Speaker 1: of how he figured this out. He says, I was
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  Speaker 1: working for Microsoft's typography team and they had a lot
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  Speaker 1: of dealings with people from other applications in Karta, which
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  Speaker 1: was a thing, creative writer, which was a thing.
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  Speaker 2: Cardo was Maps, right, I.
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  Speaker 1: Believe, so yeah, Maps Learning, Encyclopedia publisher. And so Vincent's
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  Speaker 1: in this weird situation because all these different stakeholders went
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  Speaker 1: all kinds of different fonts, and he says a lot
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  Speaker 1: of these fonts felt strange and childlike to him. One
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  Speaker 1: program was called Microsoft Bob Bob and here's why.
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  Speaker 2: Here's why.
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  Speaker 1: Apparently Microsoft Bob was a program designed to make computers
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  Speaker 1: more accessible, less intimidating to children. And he he said,
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  Speaker 1: let's give you the quote. He says, I booted it
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  Speaker 1: up and outwalked this cartoon dog talking with a speech
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  Speaker 1: bubble in Times New Roman and then Vincent says, dogs
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  Speaker 1: don't talk in Times New Roman. Conceptually, it made no sense,
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  Speaker 1: which I don't know how to explain it, but I
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  Speaker 1: get it. I don't feel like dogs speak in Times
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  Speaker 1: New Roman.
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  Speaker 3: No, you're right, absolutely, especially what I guess would be
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  Speaker 3: considered a cartoon dog. Right, a cartoon dog was speaking
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  Speaker 3: the language of cartoons.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we said, yeah, maybe my Senta Stasia is
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  Speaker 1: coming out here, but maybe Vincent has Sena Stasia. But
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  Speaker 1: I totally get it, and I think we all do.
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  Speaker 1: So he says he had this idea to make a
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  Speaker 1: comic style text and he started looking at Dark Knight Returns,
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  Speaker 1: Awesome Watchmen, the graphic novels of the class stations.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, Dark Knight Returns is I believe Frank Miller, very cool,
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  Speaker 3: stylized noir, gritty Batman story and obviously Watchman, hugely important
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  Speaker 3: graphic novel series by Alan Moore, The Notorious League, Cranky
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  Speaker 3: and witchy Alan Moore. But again, excellent examples of exactly
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  Speaker 3: what we're talking about in those like using the fonts
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  Speaker 3: and using the hand lettering style in ways to kind
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  Speaker 3: of speak to the characters and their motivations. So, you know,
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  Speaker 3: to our typographer his point, Vincent Kunnair's no, a cartoon
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  Speaker 3: dog wouldn't speak in Times New Romans He's right. Conceptually,
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  Speaker 3: it needed to be something that felt like congruous.
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  Speaker 1: Right mm hmmm, yeah, yeah, and points for congruis though.
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  Speaker 3: We're having a wordy day, we're having word we're talking
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  Speaker 3: about letters. We're going to drop some words because you know.
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  Speaker 3: It's also remember too that in these these days, these
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  Speaker 3: fonts all had to be installed on your computer, and
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  Speaker 3: they still do to a degree if you're doing design stuff. Now,
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  Speaker 3: you know a lot of things are just rendered graphics
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  Speaker 3: that are like vector based, and you don't necessarily always
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  Speaker 3: have to have the fonts installed to see, you know,
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  Speaker 3: stuff on the internet. You know it might, yeah, but
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  Speaker 3: in these days you absolutely did. And so they had
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  Speaker 3: to create it couldn't just be a design element that
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  Speaker 3: was hard baked into the you know, the actual design.
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  Speaker 3: They had to make something that would be installed on
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  Speaker 3: every system.
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  Speaker 1: And Vincent says, he's looking at these graphic novels. He
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  Speaker 1: loves the hand lettering, he loves the consistency of it,
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  Speaker 1: and I suspect the disfluency to a larger He says,
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  Speaker 1: I could have just scanned it in and I could
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  Speaker 1: have copied what they were doing, but it felt unethical.
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  Speaker 1: So he looked at specific letters over and over again,
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  Speaker 1: different instances of them, and he mimicked them on his computer.
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  Speaker 1: He didn't sketch it, he said, it was just me
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  Speaker 1: drawing with a mouse, deleting whatever was wrong. And while
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  Speaker 1: he was doing that, he was breaking all the rules
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  Speaker 1: of orthodox typography. So like one of the one of
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  Speaker 1: the old school rules for creating a font or a
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  Speaker 1: typeface is the idea that there should be a certain symmetry.
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  Speaker 1: Your ps are gonna your lower case ps are going
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  Speaker 1: to look like your lowercase cues with just turned in
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  Speaker 1: different directions. And Max, thank you for the hand signals there.
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  Speaker 1: It's sad that we're just an audio show for now.
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  Speaker 1: But Max is doing a great, a great gesture interpretation
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  Speaker 1: of this, and so our buddy Vincent. He says, no,
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  Speaker 1: I like this disfluency. I want I want the P
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  Speaker 1: and the queue to look different. And he doesn't get
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  Speaker 1: there in time for Microsoft Bob, but he says, this
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  Speaker 1: is what's nuts. A lot of people don't know this
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  Speaker 1: about comic Sands. When it first came out, a lot
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  Speaker 1: of people in Microsoft loved it. It felt fun, you know, zippy.
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  Speaker 1: It was bang pal kaboom kind of stuff.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly.
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  Speaker 3: It kind of made you feel like you were able
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  Speaker 3: to communicate the same sort of excitement and whimsy as
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  Speaker 3: you know comic.
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  Speaker 1: Strips, and and Vincent says, this is not us, This
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  Speaker 1: is coming straight from Vincent. He says, our office administrators
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  Speaker 1: started using the font. Even though it didn't make it
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  Speaker 1: into Microsoft Bob. They started using it in internal email
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  Speaker 1: for birthday parties, for a little get togethers, and comic
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  Speaker 1: Sands was just fun if it, you know, you get
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  Speaker 1: an email, it's in a different font, and it's it's
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  Speaker 1: not asking you to turn in some work. It's not
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  Speaker 1: reminding you about a deadline. It's saying, hey, we're getting
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  Speaker 1: we're getting together. You know, we're gonna have some like
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  Speaker 1: casadillas or something, because that defines a party.
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  Speaker 3: To me, And uh, ain't no party like a Casadia party,
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  Speaker 3: because the Casadia party goes hot.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it goes around like a clock. Oh my god,
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  Speaker 1: they're so great. They're so great anyway, So eventually this
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  Speaker 1: becomes so internally popular that they include comic Sands in
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  Speaker 1: Windows ninety five, and Vincent says he begins to see
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  Speaker 1: it everywhere, and then the backlash began.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and like it's because, like you said, Ben, anything
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  Speaker 3: that has a sense of over adoption, let's just call it.
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  Speaker 3: You know, it's going to start having some backlash. But
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  Speaker 3: a lot of the backlash also just had to do
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: with people kind of misusing the font right in ways
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: that wasn't appropriate. Because remember, like we said, you know,
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: sometimes that font set is used to communicate like a
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: certain emotion or idea. So what if, like you said earlier, too, Ben,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: all the traffic signs were in comic sands, it would
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: impart a certain lack of authority to those those things,
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: you know that you were supposed to fear or at
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: the very least pay attention to, not a birthday party invitation.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Right right?
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: I like that because now we're picturing, I know, all
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: of us listening today, we're picturing different fonts on traffic signs,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: and that is such a trip right now, a Pyrus
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: comic sands.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Dare I say wing ding?
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: People would die?
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: I want to know more about the history of wing dings,
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: who came up with those and who has ever used
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: them success? I guess they're kind of just early clip
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: art if you think about it. You know, use the
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: little pointing hands as borders in your newsletter, whoever it
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: might be.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, we'll get the wing ding. That might be part two,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: but we'll get the wing ding. We want to sew
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: up comic Sands here real quick. Vincent's a good guy,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: smart dude. He made a cool thought. He's proud of it,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: but he I don't know. It just stinks to make
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: something on a lark, something fun, something communicative, and then
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: have people band together and bond not because they like
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: what you made, but because they hate it. It didn't
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: take long for a group called ban Comic Sands to form,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: and their whole thing was that they wanted to educate
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: people about the uses of typeface. Though in their defense
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: they did They did email Vince earlier and ask him
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: if it was okay for them to start the group,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: and he's so interesting. Yeah, he said it seems silly,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: but you know, go nuts with it.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: Well, because he cared about the use as well, like
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: he was very key to There's a really great quote from
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: him saying, you know, when people use it inappropriately, if
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: they don't understand how type works, it won't have any
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: power or meaning to them. He describes a guy at
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: a roth Coo art show. Rothko, you know who does
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: a lot of like assembly kind of you know, collage pieces.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: And you know, we've always heard, we've heard of this
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: about this guy. Say I could have done that, you know, yeah,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: but you didn't do that. And just because something maybe
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: seems rough hewn like. For example, Van Go's art style
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: is very you know, childlike in many ways. But that's
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: a man who who comes from a background of classical
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: style painting. He chose stylistically to present the work that
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: he presented. And the same with Rothko. And that's because
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: style matters. Style is a communication tool onto itself, beyond
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: the words that are actually being typed.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: And let's make space for an anecdote that Vincing gives us.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: That's so cool. In his personal life, he used comic
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Sands one time. He said he was having trouble changing
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: his broadband provider, so he wrote to them and he
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: sent the He sent the letter in comic Sands and
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: it said how disappointed he was, and he got he
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: got a refund.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: He said, I recommend it for these cases, his basic
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: theory being the following. He says, typography should not shout,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: but comic sands shouts.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: I agree with it.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe like should we start sending important emails.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Like at our day Jame memos.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: During this recording, we're gonna We're gonna send No one
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: is gonna take you seriously.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Max takes me serious. Now, oh come, now you're very seriously.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you should see that guy at Monster Jam.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: He's in it.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Uh so, he says that he being Vincent, the creator
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: of Comic Sands, says that people did take to it
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: on their own. He said it didn't take any marketing
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: from Microsoft, and it often gets misused in the creator's opinion,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: because someone just digs it they vibe with it. He says, Uh,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: you know, he's very clear that Comic Sands is not,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: in his opinion appropriate for all things. There was a
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: slideshow at CERN right like a a deck basically where
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: they announced the discovery of the Higgs Boson, huge moment
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: in physics, huge moment in human history. The presentation was
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: in Comic Sands, and even Vincent, the guy who made
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Comic Sands a thing, saw that and thought, hm, tut.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: And that's the thing that's so interesting about this. I
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: mean this, Vincent is a typographer. You know, he is
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: someone who is very well read on the rules, you know,
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: and like you said, Ben, when he was making the font,
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: he actively ignored those rules on purpose to achieve a result.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: And then because it just became so obnoxiously ubiquitous, people
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: using this font, you know, not really understanding its power.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: Like we said, it became hated. And I'll tell you
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: in particular because of the very reasons that Vincent outlines.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: And he knows this particularly hated by designers because they
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: just find it to be just cliche, and not to
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: mention that he broke all the rules of the aesthetic
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: of it, so they just find it to be kind
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: of just gaudy and just you know, he just it
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: makes them cringe.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's it's very in vogue to dislike that
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: font in particular. And we want to give a shout
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: out to David cadavi Over on design for hackers dot com.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: He he knows something I thought was pretty insightful. He
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: said to he's a Comic Sans hater. Sorry, David, it's fine.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Your opinions are your own. He says that Comic Sans
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: has poor fundamentals, and he compares it to a much
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: more beloved font called Helvetica, and Helvetica has like you
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: can pull these up if you want to play along home.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Helvetica feels much more distinguished, you know, much more more uh,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: much more proper. Max obviously hates it. Max is not
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: a Helvetica guy, uh and and Noel, maybe you could
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: describe just the vibe of Helvetica. I think when we
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: talk thoughts, we're talking vibes, right.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: We super are Helvetica is just it's it's very clean, right,
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: it's very legible. It is also it's it's both clean
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: and bold. Right, it has this imparts authority to it,
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: very European. Yeah, he describes it as as such. Though
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: the strokes of Helvetica's letter forms are unmodulated, some adjustments
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: are made to improve it legibility. For example, notice how
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: the stroke on Helvetica gets thinner or the shoulder meets
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: the stem on this letter and he's like in lowercase
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: R as well, one hundred percent, So this helps to
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: give the letter and more even visual weight. Notice how
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: Comic Sands is this way. If you squit your eyes, though,
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: there is a disproportionately heavy area where these strokes meet
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: on Comic Sands. Well, how Vetica's way is more evenly distributed.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: The ironic thing about this destinction is that comic Sands
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: is actually influenced from a drawing tool around felt tipped
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: pen or marker, but the stroke of the tool is unmodulated. Meanwhile,
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: the letter forms of Helvetica are rationalized from predecessors without
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: apparent influence of a drawing tool.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Deep water. Yeah we're in deep water. We're under the
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: hood on fonts.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: And we're gonna move on to other font surely. But
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: I just wanted to end this segment. I thought we
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: could read off a couple of things that might be
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: on the poster for the Comic Sands Sucks movie.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, these are coming from pre pressure dot com. How
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: about we round robin, you can do it.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the AOL of fonts.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: Max.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: I can't wait for the sound user gobbet Zip's is
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: the dirt bastard of the same world.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: An email written in this font makes the sender seem
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: ridiculous and out of touch.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: I honestly think when I see comics hands that the
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: person has a lower than average intelligence level.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: It's not that it's a terrible font, it's rather that
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: it suits non designers far better than those of the
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: sense of the esthetic with like.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Gol. That's the snobbiest quote I've ever round.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: I don't want to hang out with that person. Can
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: you imagine them talking about beer or coffee?
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: And again, I think we're all fans of design here.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: You know, we're all fans of aesthetic, and obviously we
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: wouldn't like write our emails and comic sands either. But
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: the level of venom attached to it I find kind
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: of mind boggling, and I find it performative. It is
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: a little bit yeah, I think so too, as are
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: a lot of things, because again, you know, fonts are
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: designed to do a thing, and I think Jeff did
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: a fantastic job in finding us some really cool contexts
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: from the creator himself, who is very much a student
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: of font of typography, of design, who made this for
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: a very specific reason that you could argue he did successfully.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: But then it's like the way it gets misused and
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: misappropriated that create the hate.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: And you know what, if anybody listening today, fellow ridiculous historians,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: if you are a letterer, if you are a designer,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: if you are beefed up with comic sands, you know
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: all thet to you, We're just giving you the facts.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: We also have to point out, in all fairness, folks,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: you're obsessed with it, You're fascinated by it. We are
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: making this a two part episode because we needed to
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: spend the first part on comic sands.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, come on, right, no, back me up here.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: Well, not only on comic Sands, but I think we
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: had to set the stage for the whole larger conversation,
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: you know, talking a bit about just the history of
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: fonts and all of that stuff. And then within the
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: conversation of comic Sans, I think we kind of hopefully
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: established sort of a bigger framework as to where we're heading.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: So we're gonna make part two a little bit more
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: of a grab bag. So maybe part one would be, like,
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: you know, fonts we love to hate. Part one the
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: comic Sans story.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: There we go.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I also, I've got to figure out a way to
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: publish this and play with thoughts. I don't know if
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: we could. I don't know if the technology is there yet,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: but if it is, uh, prepare, prepare to be uh.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: You know, we hope you give you We give you
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: a chuckle. We also hope that you tune in for
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: our further exploration of fonts. Big big thanks to super
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: producer mister Max wing Ding Williams, Big big thanks to
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: our research associate Jeff San Sarah Bartlett. I'm just I'm
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: passing out font nicknames, NOL, what do you what's a
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: good win for Jonathan Strickland got.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: To be Oh, the put me on the spot. I
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: don't know enough fought names. I'm not a font nerd.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to to dig into some more though, on
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: the next episode. We'll see you next time, folks.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.