Vincent Connare, Inventor Of 'The Most Hated Font,' Defends Himself

The Man Who Invented The 'Most Hated Font' Defends Himself

"Comic Sans looks like someone threw up on the keyboard and that's what came out," graphic designer Dave Combs told The Huffington Post.

Combs is one of the many haters of Comic Sans, a font that looks like the writing in an old-fashioned comic book, that was invented by Vincent Connare 20 years ago.

comic sans

Connare knows what he did. He calls comic sans "the most hated and most loved font in the world."

A typographic engineer, Connare was working at Microsoft in 1993, when he was asked for his input on a new program's fonts. "When I loaded the CD a little dog came up. He talked in a speech balloon like you would get in a newspaper cartoon strip, but it was in the system font Times New Roman," Connarre says. "I thought, 'That's silly. Dogs don't talk like that.' So I said it would look better if it looked like a comic book."

He drew some letters on the computer, and three days later Comic Sans was born. The font was featured in Windows 95, and soon ended up on every computer in the world.

Many hate the font, but graphic designing couple Holly and Dave Combs have gone as far as to create a website in an attempt to ban it. "Comic Sans is a blight on the landscape of typography," Dave says.

Their website, Ban Comic Sans, is a "campaign to eradicate the misuse of the font Comic Sans," Dave says. Connare himself put it best when he said "If you love it, you don't know much about typography, and if you hate Comic Sans you don't know very much about typography either, and you should probably get another hobby."

"You can't go anywhere without seeing Comic Sans," Connare says. Even in the south of France, he says, the only restaurant in town is using Comic Sans on its signs and menu. He points out that even the Vatican has used it in an official photo album.

Even though the font makes the Combses angry, if it weren't for their mutual hatred of it, they probably wouldn't have gotten together, and for that, Connare says he is quite proud.

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