I totally understand that it seems expensive especially if you haven't bought fonts before. Designers are more willing to pay for fonts since fonts are their tools and money maker, but most people do not make a money's worth out of font purchase. If you are in an environment where you think font choices can improve your productivity, I do recommend you consider buying one. To talk about our side, serious typeface design requires years of experience, and people who buy fonts are much smaller in number, compared to film and music, which is also why fonts seem pricy. Look at MyFonts and you will see Comic Code is actually on the cheaper side. There are sometimes good fonts made open source, but the principle that we need to get paid still applies; for those projects, it's just that they were paid by other companies like Mozilla and Google, not users.
Here is an open source option of monospaced Comic Sans, which seems to be a passion project rather than a paid one. It's a single weight with very small character count. I mean no harm to her project, but it does make a case for what you get for free vs money.
https://github.com/shannpersand/comic-shanns
Thanks! I have taken the idea very seriously and made sure it works as a workhorse coding font so that your purchase will not end up as a joke (it still may, that's up to your taste of course). There is Coding Essentials pack that gives you the usual four weights (Reg, Ita, Bol, BolIta) plus bonus weights.
Thanks, in my humble opinion, the Cyrillic and Greek are actually better in Comic Code despite being monospaced. Unfortunately I am not allowed to sell the fonts elsewhere, so you may want to send a feedback to the website. I am sorry for the inconvenience.
I know the typeface looks childish, but that does not mean it was made poorly; I spent a lot of time making this typeface actually capable of serious business. Also you can easily find coding typefaces with higher price but with fewer characters and sometimes no italics. Besides, there is a smaller pack called Coding Essentials, so you do not need to buy the whole family (that wouldn't be so useful for coding anyway).
Hi, I'm the designer of Comic Code. I just wanted to join the discussion here, just because it looked fun. I know I released a Comic Sans variant, and I'm totally okay with the negative reaction; in fact it puts a big smile on my face. A world where everyone loves Comic Sans sounds wrong, doesn't it?.
I used to hate Comic Sans but it's still an interesting typeface that teaches you a lot about typography. Comic Sans can be a great choice depending on the context, and I want to share my personal favourite. When I went to a restaurant in Istanbul, they gave me menus in Turkish and English. The former was set in Comic Sans and the latter in Frutiger. The English menu looked so much like an office document and the Turkish one looked much more appetising (and I wished I could read Turkish). That was a genuine time when Comic Sans beat Frutiger.
Despite its quirky letterforms, it performs surprisingly well on screen. And I have seen people trying to use Comic Sans for coding too, most notably Simon Peyton Jones. Programming/coding is also a corner of typography where writing aspect plays a lot compared to others (e.g. user interface), so I found handwriting fonts quite fitting too. I think Comic Code also helps coding beginners who may be intimidated by the cold and mechanical visual of codes. I for one am easily bored while writing codes in regular sans serif. Coding environment is a very personal space and there is no need to look professional. I didn't need maximum clarity or efficiency in my coding typeface, but I wanted to have fun coding.
I think Comic Sans, for some people anyway, is something the internet told you to hate. I do see flaws in the typeface and I tried to improve it in my design, but I don't think you should be ashamed of liking Comic Sans. It's not even a bad typeface, and I have seen worse, many times. There is no bad typeface, only bad typography.
(That's not strictly true but generally the case for Comic Sans)
Sorry for the long post. If you have suggestions (e.g. what glyphs and ligatures added), I'm all ears.
I originally had the so-called single-storey a by default, but it looked too confusing at coding text sizes. I even considered offering a "purist" version with that simpler a, but decided against it (too many options would confuse buyers). In my opinion, the simpler structure of a is better described as "writability" rather than legibility, and just because the new design does not follow the original does not mean it's bad. Whether it actually improved is a matter of opinion, but I believe in my decision in the context of coding.
Hi, the designer here. As for the font name, Microsoft owns "Comic Sans" but not "Comic" or "Sans" alone. And as already explained, fonts are copyrighted as software codes and a new one has to be made from scratch (except of course when you are the owner or permitted in license agreement). In terms of visual similarity, Comic Neue is much closer to Comic Sans but MS hasn't done anything with it. If that's fine, Comic Code surely would be too. In any case, I did speak with the MS guys prior to release, and they saw no issues with either trademark or copyright.
Hi, the designer of the font here. This version has ligatures but OFF by default (it's called dlig feature, discretionary ligatures). A version of the same font that has ligatures ON by default will be released soon. I don't know ho many code editors support manual activation of OpenType features, so I advise you get that later version if you really want to use it. Sorry for the confusion from not releasing them at the same time.
To share my view on ligatures, there is a danger of making it hard to count letters and I see a lot of designs feeling too creative with the possibility. In my design, I wanted to have ligatures that are more easily countable (not all cases though), and try to find balance between the two camps.
Here is an open source option of monospaced Comic Sans, which seems to be a passion project rather than a paid one. It's a single weight with very small character count. I mean no harm to her project, but it does make a case for what you get for free vs money. https://github.com/shannpersand/comic-shanns