How a Chat‑App’s Font Became the World’s Most Hated Typeface

You have probably seen Comic Sans on birthday cards, kindergarten notices, and PowerPoint slides; it is widely regarded as the most universally disliked font.

Its origin traces back to 1994’s Microsoft Bob, a novice‑friendly Windows program that featured a cartoon dog named Rover. The dialog bubbles used Times New Roman, which font designer Vincent Connare found inappropriate for a playful dog. After browsing the hand‑drawn lettering in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen , Connare sketched a new typeface that mimicked comic‑style handwriting – the prototype of Comic Sans.

Comic Sans missed the initial Microsoft Bob release because the font was not finished in time. In 1996, Microsoft Research researcher David Kurlander built a C++/MFC application called Comic Chat that turned IRC text into comic‑strip panels, automatically assigning characters, expressions, and poses. The software needed a font that looked like comic bubbles, so Connare’s Comic Sans finally received a home.

Comic Chat was bundled with Internet Explorer 3.0, installing Comic Sans as a system font on every Windows machine. Users began inserting it into Word resumes, PowerPoint reports, hallway signs, and even academic papers; CERN’s 2012 Higgs‑boson announcement slides used Comic Sans. Designers reacted strongly, creating sites such as Comic Sans Criminal to catalogue its “crimes.”

Connare never apologized, remarking that critics may not understand design context and that every typeface has appropriate use cases. He admits to using Comic Sans once for a complaint letter, believing the odd font would draw attention. He also designed the floating‑suit figure in Webdings, which later became the 🕴️ emoji.

On July 16 2026, Microsoft open‑sourced the entire Comic Chat codebase on GitHub (repository microsoft/comic-chat, MIT license), making the 30‑year‑old C++/MFC source publicly available. The author concludes that Comic Sans is hated not because it is a bad design, but because it became so successful that it escaped the niche it was meant for.