Shantell Sans (2023)

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

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 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!

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?

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

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

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

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.

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