---
title: "Comic Sans (1994) — Vincent Connare"
description: "Comic Sans was designed by Vincent Connare in 1994. What it signals, where you have seen it."
url: https://atoneplace.net/font/comic-sans/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Comic Sans

**Comic Sans: Vincent Connare, 1994**

Display · A hospital notice, a village hall poster, or a joke about typography.

Connare drew it in a few days for Microsoft Bob, where a cartoon dog was speaking in Times New Roman, which looked absurd. It missed that deadline, shipped with Windows 95 Plus! instead, and became the most hated typeface in the world. It is also genuinely easier for many dyslexic readers, because its letters are irregular enough to be hard to confuse with each other, which is why the campaign against it has always been more complicated than it looks.

## The facts

- **Designed by:** Vincent Connare
- **Released:** 1994
- **Classification:** Display
- **What it signals now:** A hospital notice, a village hall poster, or a joke about typography.

## Where you have seen it

- Microsoft Bob, which it was drawn for and never shipped in
- Every school newsletter
- The 2012 announcement of the Higgs boson discovery

## Other typefaces from the 1990s

| Typeface | Year | Designer | What it signals |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| FF Meta | 1991 | Erik Spiekermann | The 1990s doing corporate identity properly. Warm, readable, slightly quirky. |
| Verdana | 1996 | Matthew Carter | A website designed between 1998 and 2008. |
| Georgia | 1996 | Matthew Carter | A blog, a newspaper website, or long-form reading on screen. |

> This page describes the typeface rather than showing it. Displaying a specimen requires a licensed font file and almost none of these may be redistributed, so the descriptions name the letters to look at instead.

## Common questions

### Who designed Comic Sans?

Vincent Connare, in 1994.

### What is Comic Sans used for?

A hospital notice, a village hall poster, or a joke about typography. You will have seen it on Microsoft Bob, which it was drawn for and never shipped in, Every school newsletter, The 2012 announcement of the Higgs boson discovery.

## Related pages

- [Typefaces from the 1990s](https://atoneplace.net/font/decade/1990s/)
- [Cooper Black](https://atoneplace.net/font/cooper-black/)
- [Impact](https://atoneplace.net/font/impact/)
- [Papyrus](https://atoneplace.net/font/papyrus/)

## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]