What did Comic Sans ever do to us? The font was one of the fonts preinstalled on Windows 95 – where it stood out like a sore thumb next to statelier options like Arial and Times New Roman – and as its thick preschool curves metastasized across the Internet, it was revered by the world as the arch-enemy of taste. No font in the history of the written word (except perhaps papyrus) has ever inspired such ire. Online gift shops carry anti-Comic Sans shirts and coffee mugs, a free Chrome extension called Comic Sans-Replacer automatically deletes the lettering from the internet, and as the New York Times reported in 2019, at least one couple in there is in love found their shared dislike of the font.

In the past, much of the hostility has focused on Comic Sans' tendency to appear in inconvenient places. When Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert upset LeBron James, that letter was written in Comic Sans. When was a World War II memorial unveiled in the Netherlands? This was also written in Comic Sans. Typography is an art form that aims to fade into the background of everyday life, and yet somehow there's one font we hate more than any other. Simon Garfield, author of Comic Sans: The Biography of a Font– the first in his series of books about fonts – wants to know why.

Garfield's new book traces the history of Comic Sans, from the cheesy beginnings of the speech bubble to the anathema of the design school, while also outlining the enormous influence the font has had on the cultural visibility of typography. Argue with its awkwardness all you want, but a large number of people have formed one Opinion about Comic Sans, just as someone might form an opinion about art. (There's also evidence that font helps with dyslexia? Who knew!) That alone is a victory for anyone who cares about the shape of letters. Garfield and I talked about this, the font community's fluctuating tastes, and how font is currently being reclaimed by post-ironic memes. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Slate: Who in heaven's name invented Comic Sans – and more importantly, why?

Simon Garfield: It was never intended to be a font. Vincent Connare worked as a typography engineer at Microsoft in 1994.Fun fact: If you Google Connare's name or the name of his infamous font, the search results will return in Comic Sans.) He was trying to get old fonts to work on a computer. If you wanted to digitize a conventional font that was still subject to copyright, you had to pay a lot of money because everything looks completely different on the screen than in printed form. And then you also had to pay the copyright holders and the font factory that owned it. So Microsoft thought: Well, wait a minute. We can try to make this as cost-effective as possible by inventing our own, so to speak. That's why they didn't pay Helvetica. Instead they made Arial.

The story with Comic Sans is that Connare saw this early version of Microsoft Bob, a software that acted like an on-ramp to computers for people who were new to it. It takes you through the old pointing and clicking with the mouse and shows you things you can do on a computer. But the font in Microsoft Bob was Times New Roman, which was very old and boring. And so he thought: I can improve this. So he hand-drew letters using an ancient calligraphic method that were somehow inspired by comic books and other things he loved. Microsoft thought We now have these new letters that look like a child invented themand they invited her in.

So Comic Sans was almost an afterthought.

Basically! There were very, very few other fonts you could have in your pull-down menu on Windows 95. Times New Roman was one; Arial was one; Courier New, I think it was called, was the other one. Those were really the key words. So they thought Well, let's throw in a wildcard. And then people thought: Hey, this is the font for me. That's kind of friendly. These are letters that I can understand. It brought people back to something they were comfortable with in school, and I don't think anyone could have expected that. It is now used in millions of digital communications, emails and websites.

Did people hate fonts before Comic Sans? Or does this dynamic only apply to this particular font?

I think it's certainly the one that caused the most uproar. The type community, like any small community, is a breeding ground for debates, arguments, pleasure and discontent. I can imagine that when Helvetica was introduced, people must have thought: Oh no. This doesn't work. It's too cold and too Swiss. But the reason Comic Sans caused such a stir was a perfect storm. It was bundled with Windows 95, which meant users could access it in a way they hadn't before. And then people could go online and get involved through email groups and listservs (and later social media and Facebook). If, for some reason, Comic Sans had appeared 20 years earlier, we wouldn't have had the digital means to express love or hate for it.

Is there an argument that Comic Sans opened the door to the large number of crazy or unique fonts we find in our word processors today? Did Comic Sans run so Papyrus could run?

It probably opened the door for them. If you go to one of the font foundries online and search for “Comic Sans,” you'll find a hundred variations of it – some you'll like much more, some less so, and some that were probably created in half an hour. However, it was discovered that all of these fonts had a purpose. So Papyrus should be a more old looking font that you might want to have in your Greek restaurant or something. What people realized early on, and this is the whole reason Comic Sans was so successful, is that a paragraph looks different depending on what font you write it in: serious or funny or whatever. You should be grateful to Comic Sans. The only great thing about it was that it introduced people to the font debate. In a twisted way, Comic Sans contributed to the overall growth of fonts.

Was there a critical moment when people started hating Comic Sans?

Originally I believe it was due to misuse of the font. If you were to read a book with the title The guide to colon cancer and it was all printed in Comic Sans, you'd say, “Well, that's not quite right.” When you get a lawyer's letter in Comic Sans, you think: Who do I employ here? There's also an oft-told story about Dave and Holly Combs, who started a website called bancomicsans.com. (Editor's Note: The site went live in 2002, complete with t-shirts and stickers for sale.) But they knew that it was all in good fun and not a political movement. I've seen it in hospital waiting rooms – not that it was necessarily bad, but it was definitely pretty far removed from its original intended use. There are photos of this shown on the sides of ambulances, I think in Spain, which I think is inappropriate. Personally, I would like to see the font on a famous clown's gravestone.

Did Connare ever receive any backlash or harassment for being the guy who invented Comic Sans?

I think he viewed it all with a certain amount of confusion. He certainly doesn't say he's upset about the commotion. People disapproved of Comic Sans' misuse, not its existence, so he could hardly be responsible for how people used a font when it was on the market.

It's funny how old-fashioned some of this sounds now. The hatred of Comic Sans was a real remnant of the early internet. And these days I almost think that Comic Sans has become kind of… cool? Or retro? Or at least made amends with irony.

I won't name who this person is, but I have a friend who now sits on the board of a large company and looks after many famous names in the entertainment industry. She writes in Comic Sans. This morning I was at the Rialto fish market and right on the Grand Canal, and there was a sign there that basically said that Venice isn't just gondolas and transportation for people. This was written in Comic Sans. On the other side of the shield was this magnificent palazzo. I think that's interesting. Comic Sans has become normalized. I argue in the book that it is perhaps the coolest font that you can use without shame, despite its reputation. Face magazine – which, when I was 20, was the coolest thing you could buy in print – published an entire issue last year in what they called Comic Face, which was basically just Comic Sans with a few changes . I think we've come full circle.

In a way, this makes Comic Sans a survivor.

In the book I remember a story that Vincent Connare told me. He was at a dinner party in France and sat next to a person who asked him what he did for a living. He mentions that he used to work at Microsoft and the conversation dies down. It's a bit boring. But when he says he designed Comic Sans, everyone says, “That's great!” Comic Sans is now 30 years old and will continue to be around. You can ban it as many times as you want. It's not going anywhere. And that's interesting because most fonts don't last. They really don't. As we speak, thousands of graphic design students are working on a potentially great new font that we'll never, ever see. And so you have to ask, Why do some survive? It's the old idea that if you live long enough, everything becomes cool, be it records or comics Without.