Known across the internet and in designer handbooks everywhere as a terrible font (there’s even a semi-joking movement to ban it), Comic Sans has long been left to amateur little league fliers and church bake sales and out of the professional’s toolkit… UNTIL NOW.

Released on April 8, 2014 (seven days after April Fools, must have ran behind), we’re now gifted with the Comic Neue family by Craig Rozynski. Allegedly, his reasoning behind the change is:

“Comic Sans wasn’t designed to be the world’s most ubiquitous casual typeface1. Comic Neue aspires to be the casual script choice for everyone including the typographically savvy.

The squashed, wonky, and weird glyphs of Comic Sans have been beaten into shape while maintaining the honesty that made Comic Sans so popular.

It’s perfect as a display face, for marking up comments, and writing passive aggressive office memos.”

A bit of a joke? Probably, but good! Typists could use a bit of humor, it gets dark in those computer rooms.

At first, I had trouble seeing what exactly was different between the new and the old, and with the “Angular” set thrown into the mix it can get messy… But of course, there’s always Photoshop to the rescue:

Click for a larger version.

You could also see a comparison between like sizes:

Click for a larger version.

Better, but still probably best left on the cutting room floor 🙂 At least it brought to light the internet’s attraction towards ultra-thin typefaces, which is an annoyance for another day.

Want to try it for yourself? Get it for free at the official site here: http://comicneue.com/