When he first had the idea to "save" Comic Sans, Rozynski thought that the project would take him a month to complete it actually took three years. He wanted to refine the original letter forms to make them more sophisticated, to create "a version you couldn't easily fault", while "maintaining the honesty that made Comic Sans so popular."
Comic Sans has been called "the world's most reviled typeface," and Rozynski aimed to update Comic Sans to be more suitable to the modern generation and more widely acceptable, including "the typographically savvy." Rozynski based his design on the original glyphs of Comic Sans and have them "beaten into shape" to create a new typeface. The rest is, well, history.Comparison of Comic Sans and Comic Neue in creating the new typeface, Rozynski made the strokes straighter and more regularĬomic Neue was designed by Craig Rozynski, an Australian graphic designer living in Japan, who wanted to create an informal script typeface similar to the controversial Microsoft font Comic Sans, which was created by Vincent Connare in the 1990s.
He said that was how Comic Sans became a part of the Microsoft Windows system fonts. Then he started to look at two comic books in his office, from where he patterned and tweaked the Comic Sans. There was a need for these fun fonts at Microsoft at the time," he explained.
"I had been working with the Creative Writer team in the Consumer division at the same time supplying them with fonts for Kids software, things like fonts looking like Pizza, monsters and ones with snow. "The designers and engineers at Microsoft spent lots of time drawing and coding the interface for MS Bob with comic characters but didn't bother to use a cartoon or comic font," he said, noting how he thought that was a mistake.
It was a comic software package that had a dog called Rover at the beginning and he had a balloon with messages using Times New Roman," Connare narrated. "Comic Sans was designed because when I was working at Microsoft I received a beta version of Microsoft Bob. He said the inspiration only came when he saw the font Times New Roman used in an inappropriate way. Also, it wasn't supposedly included in other applications but only to those designed for children. Comic Sans was the typeface he used to communicate the message. Surprisingly, there was no intention of making Comic Sans a typeface but rather a solution to a technical problem in the interface of a computer program, Connare said. With all the bashing and bullying the Comic Sans have received online since its inception in the 90s, have people ever really wondered what was behind the creation of the typeface? If I give it a fully realised set of glyphs and fine tune it, I may offer that for sale," Rozynski said.
What's online now for download will be free forever. "I put so much work into it (it was a three year side-project) that one part of me wants to charge a fee for it, while the other, realistic part of me concedes it will never be ubiquitous if it comes with a price tag.
The makeover font can be downloaded for free, but Rozynski said people have been asking for a full written disclaimer from him before they touch it and he hasn't decided on that yet. The website said the new font is perfect for marking up comments, for passive aggressive office memos, or simply as a display face. As the name suggests, Comic Neue Angular, however, have angular terminals instead of the round ones.
The two variants have regular, light, bold weights, along with oblique equivalents.
The makeover font has two variants: Comic Neue and Comic Neue Angular. "The squashed, wonky, and weird glyphs of Comic Sans have been beaten into shape while maintaining the honesty that made Comic Sans so popular." "Comic Neue aspires to be the casual script choice for everyone including the typographically savvy," stated in the new font's official website. He said he was just like any other graphic designer who dreams of creating a typeface, reason why he created the Comic Neue. Regardless of these negative feedbacks, he wondered if Comic Sans could still be saved or could have a makeover. Also, filmmaker Errol Morris has conducted an informal study on the infamous font, which suggested that when information is presented in Comic Sans, people are less likely to believe it. Recall that there is even an online community, Ban Comic Sans, created to push for the font's abolishment. Rozynski, an Australian digital designer based in Japan, remembered witnessing the Comic Sans font being bashed online a few years ago.