April 1, 2011 – Today we are pleased to announce the introduction of the four-font Comic Sans® Pro typeface family.

Featuring elements such as speech bubbles and cartoon dingbats, Comic Sans Pro extends the versatility of the original Comic Sans, designed by Vincent Connare for Microsoft in 1994. “Hats off to Monotype Imaging for enlivening Comic Sans and getting it back to its roots as a comic book lettering face. Now everyone can write with more panache – and look even more like a pro using swashes, small caps and other typographic embellishments,” said Connare.

“Every day, millions of people rely on Comic Sans for countless applications ranging from scrapbooking to school projects,” said Allan Haley, director of words and letters at Monotype Imaging. “Comic Sans is also a favorite in professional environments, used in medical information, instructions, ambulance signage, college exams, corporate mission statements and executive reprimands – even public letters from sports team owners to their fans. Breaking up with your spouse? Why not write a letter in Comic Sans Pro, embellished with a typographic whack!, pow! or bam! Comic Sans is everywhere, and now it’s even better.”

The Comic Sans Pro family includes regular and bold fonts, in addition to two new italic and bold italic fonts drawn by Monotype Imaging’s Terrance Weinzierl. “Our aim is to put the ‘fun’ back in ‘functional.’ We can’t wait to see Comic Sans Pro used in everything from second wedding announcements to warning labels,” said Weinzierl. “Long live Comic Sans!”

Comic Sans Pro contains a versatile range of typographic features including swashes, small caps, ornaments, old style figures and stylistic alternates – all supported by the OpenType® font format. In addition, Comic Sans Pro includes a set of ornaments and symbols, including speech bubbles, onomatopoeia and dingbats, pre-sized to work well as bullets.

Based on the OpenType cross-platform format, Comic Sans Pro is available as individual fonts or as a complete four-font family pack. Each font contains more than 1,000 characters. In addition to the OpenType features, the fonts include the WGL Pan-European character set, which supports western and eastern European, Cyrillic, Greek, Turkish and Baltic languages. An OpenType-savvy application is required to access the OpenType advanced typographic features.

Comic Sans Pro fonts be viewed, purchased and downloaded here: http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/detail.htm?productid=824904

To see more details, and a bit more boom, pow, whack: