Comic Sans on Vimeo

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2. Anita Brown - Video Production Reel, 2012

by Anita Brown

5 months ago

1. Comic Sans

by Anita Brown

3 years ago

A short documentary about the font Comic Sans. Created for a video production course and inspired by the film "Helvetica" by Gary Hustwit.

Credits

Anita Brown
Co-Writer, Producer, Editor
Samantha Pagan
Co-Writer, Producer

697 Likes

Miquel Lloret
6 days ago
sennah
6 days ago
Anita Horn
1 week ago
Adina Curt
3 weeks ago
sub man
3 weeks ago
Jonathan Rose
3 weeks ago
Kristjan Dekleva
1 month ago
Jena Davis
1 month ago
Elisa Sosa
1 month ago
Anna Lipman
1 month ago

Tags

Brian Van Peski 3 years ago

Awesome work! Interesting piece and well done.
lauter 3 years ago

this is great! helvetica was such a serious documentary about a very serious typeface. comic sans is just silly, and i think your documentary expresses its contentious nature in a fun way.
Gilberto Prujansky 3 years ago

...and Vincent is damn right ;-)
lanux 3 years ago

CS deserves its place in typography - comics. Beautiful!
Pedro Oliveira 2 years ago

awesome job!
Mellina Passi 2 years ago

great!
Plastictaxicab 2 years ago

He totally ripped off Beatrice Warde without giving her credit.
Scott Beamer 2 years ago

Perhaps (just like me) he never heard of her...
Anita Brown 2 years ago

He actually did give her credit! Unfortunately his answer was a bit long-winded and we made the decision to cut out his explanation of where the analogy came from. We never thought this video would be so popular with design buffs--we probably should have left it in! Thanks for pointing it out.
Dave Lanphear 2 years ago

Serendipitously, dove-tailed perfectly into a conversation about type going on right now at LinkedIn; I've embedded this documentary, and the LinkedIn discussion at artmonkeys.tumblr.com/
Adam Leung 2 years ago

Congrats on feature on Life Hacker!
Adam Leung 2 years ago

Still though, i use Myriad pro. :)
Jeff & Britt Scott 2 years ago

Ahhhh, Myriad Pro. It is indeed the best!
MeSuAx 2 years ago

great clip.
Rick Pawela 2 years ago

Like a clear crystal goblet that holds wine?? that's hilarious. When's the doc on Apple Chancery coming out?
The Design Office 2 years ago

Nice little piece. Quite journalistic. What do you think of Hobo? A group of us in Providence has been soliciting and collecting photographs of Hobo for an upcoming publication marking its 100th anniversary. Folks here may enjoy the images and may want to contribute... hobo2010.com
brian mcdermott 2 years ago

all that needs to happen now is a documentary on "Mistral" and i'm golden!
Christopher Veach 2 years ago

People use comic sans because it looks informal and not as serious as other fonts. Hating a font is kind of stupid. Although that Hobo font is really ugly.
Isaac Viel 2 years ago

Now do a video on Papyrus.
jacob rendell chamomile vj 1 year ago

oh gawd
LifeInABox Productions 2 years ago

Awesome! You got "Sugar Heaven" shut down from all the bad press, now where will I buy comically huge lollipops in Boston. Ha.
Sean Berger 2 years ago

The content & dialogue for this was really well done.
Alejandro Serrano Duran 2 years ago

Hi!

I don't know if someone think or said this before, but actually the logos of famous brands with the Comic Sans typho, could be a great idea for a group on Flickr or a Web site of user posting his Comic Sans version.

Here is when i said "why this doesn't occur to me"!

Great video!
Victoria Reyes 2 years ago

I really like this documentary!
I want to share it with my study companions but, I'm from Argentina and not all of them understand english.
I'm new in Vimeo, is there some way to download the video to add some spanish subtitles?
Congratulations!
Vic.
Dietmar Thal 2 years ago

On the bottom right is a direct dowload link.

Cheers
Navarro Parker 2 years ago

Great stuff! Watch your plosives, tho'

What's all these "CAS '10" supers?
Anita Brown 2 years ago

Since the video was made for a class project, we provided the students' specific school within the University (College of Arts & Sciences) as well as their year of graduation.
Hak en Haai 2 years ago

A very very good documentary on a type face!
Now Verdana?
or Wingdings ? which is written in Wn

Kurt Lorenz 2 years ago

I hate TNR way more than CS, and I never actually use either one. Well, almost never. I think...

Nice job on the video.
Martijn van Dueren den Hollander 2 years ago

I like this vid :-p but i dont hate the font, I more laugh about it every time I see it used by an inappropiate company, and shake my head over their ignorance :-p
Matt P. 2 years ago

Great documentary! Not too "anti-comic sans" while making a good point about typography.
Marcelo Noah 2 years ago

Hahahahauahsau, make 'em roar, make 'em scream... make 'em laugh w/ comic sans!
UltraNormal 2 years ago

Bravo.
Tom Fauls 2 years ago

Regarding the "crystal goblet" reference, when I saw the final edit, I knew some well-informed folks would feel I ripped Beatrice Warde off. Thanks to Sam and Anita for setting the record straight: that I did, indeed, credit her, though perhaps in a too long-winded way, which caused it to be edited out.
Skinny B 2 years ago

About a month ago I had an idea to recreate logos using Comic Sans as a bit of fun. A bit of prior research led me to this movie - so my idea is far from original.

So for interest and in reply to Alejandro you can start to see what our branded world would look like if we only had comic sans.

comicbrands.blogspot.com
Gaschka 2 years ago

cool idea, well done, this was fun to watch. makes me wanna design somethung where comic sans IS appropriate!
Bruno Tozzini 2 years ago

congrats! well done!!
Bill Dowell 2 years ago

This is a genuinely brilliant film and a great example of graphic criticism. Bravo, and I'll look forward to seeing what you produce next.
Álvaro Cantero 2 years ago

Good job, I laughed out loud when I saw FedEx with Comic Sans. BTW, I'm sorry for your porfessor, but Comic Sans is not good even for comics :P
Nikio 2 years ago

Loved it! Also a big fan of Helvetica.
Vincent Beers 2 years ago

I don't remember this font being called "Comic Sense"...
Seb Herrera Urrutia 1 year ago

Nice Work!
I just loved it!!!
The music used go perfect with the action. I don't know if I hate comics sans 'cause it's just a typeface, but I really don't like it.
By the way, Sammy and Anita I really enjoy your work, Congrats!!!
Marissa Thompson 1 year ago

I like this. My mom and I were totally talking about Comic Sans the other day, and I agree. I don't hate it particularly, but it does annoy me sometimes the way people just use everywhere. The other one I see a lot is Papyrus.
Og2t 1 year ago

How about making a documentary about IKEA adopting Verdana and abandoning Futura? Verdana to me seems not far from Comic Sans :)
Ástrós 1 year ago

Love this. It really makes you think. Especially when you're one of those people who once loved that font and than started to hate it.
I think it can be good to use sometimes, but it kinda ruined the font when people started overusing it..
Trevors_Horns 1 year ago

As a passionate Comic Sans hater ;) , I found this documentary amusing. But with all due respect: Don't you think that when you create a presentation about typography, your final slide (8:02) should use proper quotation marks? (And I know you weren't ironic, because that was set in Times New Roman.) Hint: "These" are just inch characters. Admittedly, real quotation marks are harder to find/create in most applications - but when you talk about misused fonts, proper micro-typography would underline your own professionalism ...
Anita Brown 1 year ago

This was most likely a copy/paste error. Comic Sans does not have proper quotation marks, only inch marks. Because the text didn't change, I simply copied the entire quote and changed the font to Times New Roman. This caused Comic Sans' inch marks to change to TNR inch marks. Sorry I overlooked it!
jacob rendell chamomile vj 1 year ago

right on right on
Perry-David van Dillen 1 year ago

Interesting and informative. Thanks!
Peter Charuza 1 year ago

Great video! really interesting
Ravin Chand 1 year ago

Tom Fauls, "Germaine", WIN.
alx164 9 months ago

Interesting work, thanks!
kenny smith 9 months ago

Time for a Jokerman documentary.