Fast Company:
Steve Matteson has designed some of the most ubiquitous typefaces in the world, and engineered the original core fonts for Microsoft, adapting Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier, which you’ve probably used for term papers or resumes or anything else you wrote in Word. He has also created some less-classic designs that he’s not too proud of, such as “Curlz,” which falls in the Comic Sans camp of typefaces reserved for high school yearbooks, princess-themed birthday party invitations, and mockery.
But that is the plight of a professional font designer: One day you get to make lasting letter sets, the next you have to pay the bills. “Sometimes you have to do work that you’re not really proud of,” Matteson told Fast Company. “That’s why we call it work instead of play.”
I know literally nothing about fonts – I couldn’t point out Geneva if you put a gun to my head – but the process is endlessly fascinating to me.
Looking forward to reading this. A possible companion piece: https://www.commarts.com/Columns.aspx?pub=10080&pageid=2226
Curlz is nothing to be ashamed of – nor is Comic Sans.
The shame is in misusing them, not in creating them.
Comic Sans is great for what it was intended for, and Curlz has its place, too.
Curlz is a whimsical display face with limited applications. I have no problem with it because I’m rarely subjected to inappropriate use of it.
Comic Sans was done relatively quickly for a specific task. It’s an amateurish effort that was poorly drawn, poorly letterspaced, and given widespread use by an unfortunate management decision to include it in popular software packages. The jobs it might be intended for are much better accomplished with typefaces that have had more skill and care put into them, like the ones Comicraft sells.