the formality slider (play with it at the google fonts page linked in the article[0]) is genuinely one of the coolest uses of a variable font axis i've seen in recent memory. it feels like we're witnessing the slow and steady vindication of metafont.

[0] https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Shantell+Sans

Wait, does more informality mean that individual glyphs for the same character can be different even within the same sentence?

Metafont is exactly the right reference — Knuth's whole vision was that a typeface is a program parameterized over stylistic axes, not a fixed set of curves. Variable fonts are basically that, finally shipping.

I'm not familiar with Metafont -- is this what you're referencing? https://ctan.org/pkg/metafont?lang=en

Somewhere in the middle of the article, I stumbled upon a multilanguage sample and noticed that this font has wonderful Cyrillic glyphs. In my previous experience with new fonts Cyrillic usually is not as great as the latin part of the font. The exception being fonts done by foundries based in cyrillic speaking countries, like ParaType fonts [1]. Well, the last third of the article goes into the details on how they achieved it.

[1] https://www.paratype.com/fonts/pt/yefimov-sans?tab=gallery

Wow somehow I've never come across this font, and I've done a lot with comic-sans-adjacent fonts.

This font, however, is by far the most beautiful one I've encountered yet.

The font is great. What I miss is a step forward in technology: variable glyphs. The feeling of reading a handwritten text is lost when the letters have always the same shape. If it were possible to add 5-6 little variations for each letter and alternate them randomly, it would be awesome.

It’s a monospace font not a handwriting font, but TT2020 uses an interesting technique to do this. https://copypaste.wtf/TT2020/docs/moreinfo.html https://copypaste.wtf/TT2020/docs/moreinfo2.html

You could sample the informality variable for this font, it might work out.

Or even sample from a distribution of variations for infinite possibilities ?

The parallels to comic sans are so obvious that first thing I did in the article is Ctrl-F "comic", because my first thought was: how much further has this taken the concept.

The distribution of mentions of Comic Sans in the article is revealing: there are a bunch of mentions at around the 30% mark (in which they acknowledge the obvious heritage), and then barely after that. This font really does go further. Beautiful!

Amazing work! I am using this for a project immediately, it has so much joyful charm while still being readable. I reworked my personal website to use it too :) The bounce and informal options are just what I was looking for for years. https://www.lukaskrepel.nl

Dyslexic daughter gave a big thumbs up, she definitely prefers this to Roboto in the example.

Anecdotal but consistent — hand-made letterforms seem to reduce the visual similarity between b/d/p/q that trips up dyslexic readers more than any engineered "dyslexia font" I've seen.

I am not dyslexic, but the roboto example also highlighted a very stark difference in readability for me! Especially after having gotten used to shantell sans reading up to that point, the roboto felt nigh-unreadable.

Is it weird that I want a mono version if this? Looks really great, really well designed.

I'm a (currently, at least) big fan of Recursive Mono Casual[0] which I believe I downloaded from Google Fonts[1].

[0] https://www.recursive.design

[1] https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Recursive?preview.script=L...

I use and love this. Not quite the same, and not free, but I think it's beautifully made.

https://tosche.net/fonts/codelia

So we've gone from "free handwriting font" to "paid comic fonts" pretty fast.

Tosche also has a very well made "Comic Code" font with ligatures

I recently came across Annotation Mono which has less of the informality of Shantell Sans, but still has a handwritten feel.

https://qwerasd205.github.io/AnnotationMono/

I was also really hoping for a mino version. I have used comic-sans-inspired monospaced fonts for some time for coding, because I think they are extremely readable. This font is so beautiful, I’d really love to see it in my terminal

Comic Code is pretty much exactly this. We tried it on our team -- the people who took to it swore by it for readability. Worth trying while we wait for a Shantell mono.

whoops “mono” obviously, but past the edit window now

First time seeing it and this is already my favourite hand-written font. Great work!

gorgeous piece of human-computer engineering art.

superb.

totally usable in contexts where comic sans might be seen as kind of mocking.

I like it! Somehow balances playfulness and readability. Thanks for sharing.

Do you think a corporate brand would get away with using this font site-wide?

In an increasingly sterile and AI world, is a human centric approach a good thing albeit possibly unprofessional by current standards?

A website could offer accessibility features, such as dark mode or dyslexia font. These could be subtle, or very obvious, depending on your target group. Large amounts of texts (e.g. a testimonial) could be a valid example. If you go for site-wide, you got consistency. If you'd apply it on h1-3 you'd put emphasis on the titles.

It'd be great if say Mozilla Firefox included this font natively (for the app itself). Then again, the default is currently Times New Roman...

The local grocery store chain to me, Giant Foods uses a handwriting oriented sans serif font, Robert Slimbach's Cronos Pro (which was a favourite of mine until that rebranding....)

Wow, this is so ugly that it's hard to even describe how ugly it is.

A beautiful font, and a beautiful gift from the creators. Very nice!

wow just what i was looking for

tldraw uses this font. It’s a great fit for emulating hand-written notes on a whiteboard; feels human.

The handwritten-feel argument cuts both ways. Shantell Sans reads as performed quirkiness, not actual handwriting. Comic Sans, despite its reputation, feels more genuinely naive.