I was never interested in lettering.
…until I learned that good comic lettering is one of the most important ingredients for casting a story-spell on my readers.
I just have to make sure the words don’t cover any important element in the art and I’m done, right?
Early in the making of my webcomic, I received a comment from a reader who politely pointed out how awkwardly I had spaced the words in a balloon.
Wait, there are rules to comic lettering?
The commenter gave me a helpful suggestion which seemed embarrassingly obvious after I read it.
Mortified, I thanked him and began re-lettering large portions of my comic. If this reader had noticed, I was sure others had. If people were getting tripped-up by awkward lettering, I was breaking my own spell.
In this post, I’ll share four tips for good comic lettering which will help you to cast your story’s spell instead of breaking it.
These four examples are from a recent page of my historical fiction comic, The Dreamer.
All I’s Are On You.
(You really have to look out for incorrect “I’s” when copying and pasting text from a Word document straight into your word balloons. All of those “I’s” will have crossbars.)
Look at the example to the right.
There are three “I”s in each set of panels and each “I” is a different color.
The top two panels are wrong, the lower two are correct.
- The red “I” here is that proper pronoun mentioned above. So it should have the crossbars on it. Always.
- The blue “I” is in the middle of a word. There is no excuse for having crossbars on an “I” anywhere in the middle of a word. Ever.
- The green “I” is at the beginning of a sentence. This also applies to proper nouns like names and places—”Irene” or “Iceland.” In comics, avoid using crossbars on your “I”s, even where a capitol “I” should be used. In comics, even proper nouns start with crossbar-less “I”s.
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The Flawless Diamond.
The reader suggestion that I mentioned in my opening was this:
Fit the text into your word balloons like a football… …or a diamond.
Most word balloons are ovals so the most natural way to fill up that space is to break up the lines of your text in an oblong.
The longest line of text in any word bubble should be at the center, which also happens to be the widest part of the balloon.
As you work away from that center toward the top and bottom of your balloon, each line should get shorter than the previous one.
This maximizes the area of a word balloon, and will help your lettering take up less space on a page.
A square block of text in a round balloon leaves large chunks of white space which covers your art for no good reason.
(We discussed balloon layout in our previous post on comic balloons.)
Here are some general rules to keep in mind when creating your letter-diamonds.
- In graphic design, it is not a good idea to have a single word floating on a line. However, in comic lettering, this is often necessary—especially when there are only a few words in a given balloon. Personally, I don’t like to leave an “A,” “I” or any other two-letter word floating at the top of a balloon unless the text is extremely short.
- Try to keep words such as “a,” “the,” “Mr./Mrs./Miss/Dr.” and “of” attached to whatever follows, rather than leaving an orphaned “a” at the end of a line break.
- Avoid hyphenating whenever possible.
- Names and other similar phrases joined together should be kept on the same line whenever possible. For instance, in the following panel, the taunt “Royal Family” is put in bold. On the left the term is broken up. But on the right, those two words to stay next to one another. This has more impact than when they are broken apart.
Not only is the term “Royal Family” kept together in the right panel, it also successfully implements the diamond formation. It keeps the “I” from being orphaned on the first line and the “the” is kept with the noun it modifies (“Warrens”).
Find A Space To Talk.
Padding is the space between your text and the edge of your word balloon.
Make sure this space is uniform and consistent for every balloon within a panel, from panel to panel and from page to page.
- Avoid text too close to the edge of a balloon. Your text will look cramped. Let it breathe.
- Likewise avoid leaving too much padding which creates an excessive amount of deadspace.
- (The exception to this is one of the ways to suggest a whisper: small text in an oversized balloon.)
Don’t Talk With Your Hands.
Word balloon tails should always, always, always point to a character’s mouth. Not their head, not their belly, not their shoulder.
Make tail lengths cover half the distance between the character’s mouth and the edge of the balloon.
Don’t Break The Spell.
These are simple tips but once you begin using them, they will really add polish and professionalism to your comic pages.
“I honestly think that good lettering can make an amateurish effort look less so, similar to the way good visual FX in an otherwise low-budget movie can make that movie feel bigger and better.” -Comic Letterer Troy Peteri in a CBR Interview.
Nate Piekos also has a fantastic article about the different types of balloons and fonts you should bookmark to reference.
Good lettering, like good writing, good anatomy, good layouts and good colors will help to immerse your reader in the story.
Anything that does not look effortless will snap the reader out of that experience and break the spell.
Comment and Share:
What other simple tips have helped you with comic balloons and lettering?
Hey, these are good tips. Since in the previous lettering post you mentioned that you use Comic Life, I wanted to ask a few questions regarding that, and mention something that is missing.
First the missing bit. Sometimes the program of choice used to render the letters does awkward letter spacing WITHIN a word. An example, embarrassingly, from my very own creation: http://www.captainscotland.com/2012/07/03/superpowers2-20e8ddac/
If you look at the word ‘developed’ in the first bubble of the first panel, there is a weird space in between ‘develo’ and ‘ped’. On the other hand, in the same word the letters ‘dev’ seem to jump over one another. I believe this is a common mistake of some programs and not some fonts.
I believe this is one of the worst things that can happen.
My colourist pointed it out to me but I didn’t know how to fix it. He said it was probably an issue of the programme, but this does not happen in Lora’s comic which also uses Comic Life. Any suggestions? (Maybe it is the Windows version of Comic Life, I wouldn’t be that surprised). Any ideas on why is this happening? I tried with several fonts, all of them for comics.
Cheers.
Hi, Jesus!
Comic Life is a very basic program.
I don’t think a professional letterer would like it. And I wouldn’t recommend it to one. But to an independent creator like me, who doesn’t have too much use for fancy SFX or need access to many different lettering options and styles (I just need the one, since I only have my title to letter), this program lets you drop in bubbles and text very, very quickly, and adjust everything with extreme ease.
Once I get my bubbles/text/tails in the right place, I export a JPEG of just the balloons. Before I put those balloons into Photoshop, however, I take my lasso tool and do a quick once-over on the page. Sometimes the text isn’t centered right on a balloon. Sometimes the kerning is off, though, I haven’t had too many problems with that when using the font Digital Strip.
You can go into “Format > Font > Kern” however to adjust it.
If you guys are really interested in my process, I can put together a tutorial at some point.
Uhu! The kern option does not appear at all (not even shaded) in the shareware (free for a month) version for windows, which is the one I was using so far. I am going to check it in my missus’ mac. If it doesn’t have it I guess it is a pay thing or maybe you use a version which is not available anymore. This is driving me crazy.
There are some shaded bits in the ‘Inspector->Lettering’ tab, which seem to be for something else, according to the help files but, funnily enough, they are only available for mac!! (I know this is because of the screenshots). This is not cool. If I will have to switch to a mac just to do the lettering the process becomes highly unefficient.
I would love to see that tutorial
Man that is so weird. I always download the updates so I should have the most current version.
I’ll get to work on the tut. 😉
Wow! I just installed the demo version in the mac and my mind is blew up with all the options! And it seems to do the kerning automatically too.
Issue solved, I guess.
Wonderful! So strange that there is such a difference between the programs.
Actually, default kerning between letterform pairs is done (or not done) in the font files themselves. Certain letterforms pairs, when placed together, take up very different areas of white space, which is what causes those awkward spaces. A good type designer looks at each pair, or at least frequent pairs, of letters and manually sets the kerning on those pairs. If they do not do this, the program rendering the font simply tracks the letterforms the same amount of space apart. So a possible partial explanation for your troubles could be that the font that you have chosen for your comic has not been properly set up in this way, whereas Lora’s has. Although it also sounds like Lora does some of her own kerning (?) (which still needs to be done on a good typeface because there’s no way to perfect kerning for every size, style, and situation). So you could maybe try experimenting with a couple of different faces you like to see if someone else has set theirs up better (because ideally a lot of the kerning *should* be done for you if it’s a good font, with maybe a handful of manual adjustments that you have to make).
Thanks, Chad. We love having you here!!
Lora, Chas, these are killing pieces of advice. I didn’t know about kerning before you wrote but now I do. Thank you very much. I haven’t seen that option in Comic Life but I probably just ran over it (literally). I look forward to go back home and try it.
I think Comic Life is actually quite a good program and I follow your method because I do not have much time and I find it cost-effective. I wouldn’t follow it if I could spend 1 hour per strip writing balloons now or if I had a very good tablet like Chris’s, but given by working conditions I love it. I am surprised there aren’t more programs like it.
Jesus, does Comic Life not let you manually vary the space between letters? That would be especially unfortunate for words like FLICK (run the capital L and I too close together and you can change the rating of your book) and contractions where the apostrophe can disappear into one of the letters like CAN’T in many fonts, upper case or lower. I know Manga Studio (the top version at least) allows for additional control over the letter spacing between each individual letter, if necessary.
I don’t use Comic Life, but maybe google “kerning” which is the term for adjustsing the spacing between letters. Hope that helps as I also hate bad typography!
You can. Look under “Format > Font > Kern.”
Good luck!
Hey Tegan. Mine was meant to be a reply to Jesus Marger’s post below (must’ve hit the wrong button). I don’t use Comic Life either.
Nor do I spell people’s names right. Sorry about that.
I don’t know what’s wrong, but I can’t get Manga Studio to letter for the life of me. For starters, at least in my EX4 copy running on my Mac, the default kerning looks horrible with any font. This wouldn’t be so bad if the settings to adjust the type weren’t so broken (again, this could just be an isolated problem with me). Even altering the font family and font size are cumbersome and time-wasting if I’m using Manga Studio. To top it off, I’ve even seen Manga Studio shave away at the first and last letters of a block of text, in some weird misread of the character widths or something.
Needless to say, I don’t use Manga Studio for lettering unless I’m completely cornered. Everything else about the program is great! I just find it odd that a program honed for making comics has such a wonky text editing system.
Yeah, it’s not you. The defaults IIRC are sometimes puzzlingly bad with many high quality fonts (I use mostly Comicraft). And I think I’ve always added a 1pt to the linespacing of every dialogue balloon I’ve ever done. I, too, get some cutoff sometimes (nothing an extra space at the end or beginning of a word doesn’t fix, but still; can’t remember whether I ever have to do the same thing in other programs like Photoshop).
I imagine it’s frustratingly limiting to someone who’s used to more control and understanding over more things, and I’m sure I’d be at least as dissatisfied as you are, if I had a prose-word-processing tool that made me base all sentence structures on one of its templates, much less required me to follow its workflow instead of my own.
It sounds like I use Manga Studio (EX4.2 on a Mac, looks like) the same way Jesus and a few others here use Comic Life… to letter fast and at least adequately.
Over time, I feel like I’ve been able to do good work, but–as a writer who depends on collaborators anyway–if I’m going to spend time and/or money here (beyond fonts), I’d choose to find and/or pay good letterers who can actually add their excellence to projects rather than purchase and learn Adobe Illustrator with the assumption that my tools are the bottleneck rather than my own lettering potential.
So, do you find Manga Studio better than Comic Life? Or did you just try MS and were happy with it? I should try it. I also have the feeling the kerner may change for Comic Life from Windows to Mac. I’ll try to convince my wife to install it in her mac and I’ll report here what I find.
I’ve never used Comic Life. I don’t remember hearing about it before I purchased Manga Studio (3 originally IIRC) 5 or so years ago.
If you opt to get emails from Smith Micro (and they do send them frequently, alas), they’ll run fairly deep discounts of each one of their software titles from time to time, including Manga Studio.
Great stuff Lora! So many people don’t appreciate good lettering, they always notice the bad, but all the little rules you mentioned are fantastic. It’s the same as an image having a bad composition, so can paragraphs! Just treat type with the same respect you treat your art, the right amount of breathing space, keeping important elements together and it will read beautifully! Typography can look pretty too!
“Just treat type with the same respect you treat your art.”
Yup! That’s the whole point! My husband is a graphic designer so he’s constantly pointing out and tweaking my typography on things. It’s great to have his eye because he’s so trained to notice things I don’t even know I’m supposed to look out for.
“Just treat type with the same respect you treat your art.”
I recently had a conversation with the writer on the webcomics I illustrate based around almost that exact phrase. Basically I just vied for him to keep my letters in the final strips. He used to just use mine as a basis, relettering things himself to account for last-minute rewrites, consistency with his older font style and size. But we’d wind up with crossbar Is, imbalanced line breaks & often no padding (trying to fit his new text into my balloons for the original text), etc.
Just as a reader, it was actually driving me a little batty. haha! He’d actually lightened up on it on recent strips anyway, but just to maintain a constant from here on out I thought I’d bring it up to him.
Once you begin to train your eye to look out for bad typography you will never look at a restaurant menu the same! They are notoriously bad! Haha
http://www.explainxkcd.com/2012/02/10/kerning/
So, first I have to say that the first section on “I’s” kind of blew my mind. I don’t think I ever really knew that there was a rhyme and reason to how that’s done, but could definitely feel the difference in the example.
I have a quick question: Is there a default Font size that should be used in comics and do you base that on the resolution of the file or how big the page you are working on is?
Hmm. I’m sure a professional letterer who works on standard sized pages has an answer for this.
For someone like me whose work needs to look good on screen and in print, I’d just say play around with it. Look at onscreen resolution versions and then print out an accurate page size and see how it works. Tweak it till it looks right!
I know there’s a difference between screen and print legibility, just as point sizes between each font may vary, but I try to keep my lettering at 6.5 to 9 point fonts. 6.5 is the absolute smallest I’m comfortable with as far as legibility, and I’ll likely use it for whispers or distant chatter. I think 8-point usually does about right; readable in print and onscreen, but doesn’t demand too much of the page/panel real estate.
I’ll bump things up to 9 if I’m feeling frisky. =D
To note, I use the font and CC Astro City (bought from ComicBookFonts.com), so those sizes work for that. I used to use Manga Temple (a font with a free, more limiting version) and I think the font sizes were pretty much the same.
Awesome. I’ll definitely keep that in mind. Thanks to you and Laura for your replies.
And EXTREMELY sorry for misspelling Lora’s name.
forgiven.
A friend told me that for webcomics it would be better to use the same size on screen (careful with the resizes) as the rest of the reading letters (post text, etc) in the website. Once you figure out which one it is you are all set
Thanks!
Great stuff, Lora. I really wouldn’t have thought about most of your points on my own. I’m now interesting in your top picture … the word “Smack” … I have been thinking about making more text in my story graphically integrated like that (especially because it might not be a comic, but a picture book that uses comic-like panels). Any tips or warnings?
One warning I’ve seen is to avoid exclamation marks at the end of SFX. Also, consider just an outline to let your art shine through in the center. AND… be careful all together. Unless you’re going for campy, it can go that way quickly.
Good luck!
Be judicious – make sure the audience has room to process. I believe this is also a practice in painting, but you can squint and look at the spaces that the letterforms create and make sure that the piece is working compositionally. To be honest, you can draw a lot on the same abilities to judge composition that you use in the rest of creating comics and animation to create typographic layouts as well. We (designers) are taught the exact same rules as you guys are in regards to things like the rule of thirds, flow, etc. so it all applies.
Hit me up if you have any questions or need anything looked at. As a designer typographic composition is the most exciting aspect of comics creation for me.
Great thoughts, Lora and Chad : I also used to work in graphic design, so I totally think your eye would be valuable. Thanks for volunteering. What’s your email? I’ll be sure to contact you when the time comes.
Hit me up at chad + @ + chadbehnke.com!
Thanks Chad…it will be a little while as I spend most of my time animating, but I have your address when I’m ready for feedback. Thanks!
Huh…the “I” thing is news to me. Is that a comics thing, or was I just not paying attention that day back in my Graphic Design 1 class in college?
Comics!!!
I love these lettering posts, Lora!
Thanks for the link to Nate’s guide too; that really helps!
I’m still using Photoshop to letter things.
I know, it gets jeers because I’m not actually outputting the font in a vector format, but I’ve never run into any problems with it.
Photoshop makes it SO easy to adjust any practical font attribute from character to character, while being able to hop right back to working on the artwork underneath if I feel like it.
I also like the bounding box for type—I can set a maximum width and height and fit the text to a diamond shape (or acceptable equivalent) therein. If I need to, I can just keep pushing and pulling the borders of the bouncing box until I’ve got something that works with the composition.
Also with Photoshop, I can have the word balloons interact with the underlying art and panel borders without too much hassle.
Anybody have any suggestions on why I should feel inclined to do my lettering in, say, Illustrator (yuck) even though I’m currently of that mind that the Photoshop method ain’t broke therefore I shouldn’t fix it? I’ve always wondered if I’m short-changing myself by rasterizing my type with the artwork, but no technical hiccups thus far have kept me complacent.
(Also, I’m the kind of guy who never saw what the big fuss was over the jump from standard definition to high definition television. If I take my glasses off and sit a few extra feet away, it all looks the same to me. Not really a stickler for technical clarity.)
I use Photoshop for lettering and although I think I have violated every single one of Lora’s rules many times over (Lora, where were you on that one, Circle Of Trust Friend?!) There is no more efficient way to letter a comic page.
The rasterized type is completely appropriate for the style of my comic. Maybe that’s not the case for everyone but it totally works for me.
This craziness of exporting the art and importing it into other programs just to do the lettering seems like WAY too much work and disruptive to the flow of crafting each page.
I’ll do a tutorial on my method eventually… Who knows, maybe next week?
I am defiantly not comic layout savvy, but Chris have you ever tried Adobe In-design? It’s a layout program, and works like a gem with Photoshop files! Once you place them in your document, you can “click alt” them and it will open your psd in photoshop, and after adjustments it updates the psd in the InDesign program. Also it doesn’t matter what size your images are placed in, when you choose to export later you can choose your output resolutions. It’s a fantastic program for graphic designing and has sooooo many type settings and options. Hey but everyone has there methods that work!
It’s all raster in the end. I output design comps in both Illy and PS, so I don’t think it’s an issue. Illustrator is *better* at type, BUT this is a case where the interruption it causes in your process and having to master a new program and add many extra steps is not worth the end result of marginally improved rasterization. Here’s what I would suggest: letter one panel both in PS and Illy and export them as though you were going to publish them. At that point you can weigh the distinction against the time and energy of altering your process and see if it’s something you feel that you have to change.
The only thing I would specifically *advise* that you do in Illy would be integrated type (eg sfx), because Illustrator is better at expanding type and working with vector outlines, which are tools that you would need to combine letters together or make new shapes and such to customize for your comic.
Let begin by saying I letter in Illustrator and I have to disagree with Chris that it disrupts the process. In fact, I think it speeds along my process because I can letter a page before its even out of the pencils stage, as Lora showed us in her last article. And, updating the letter file to show the latest artwork is easy. You just have to use the “Place” command to insert the artwork and Illustrator will always look for the latest version.
My reason for using Illustrator (“Booyah!”) over Photoshop (“Snort.”) is clarity. If you rasterize your text, you make it harder to maintain clarity on an export. When you’re selling comics as PDFs like I do, this is HUGE. My comics exist in three forms: web, print, and digital. On the web, the file is small for ease of download. The text doesn’t have to be razor sharp. However in print, the output size is completely different. The text must be re-rendered at print size to avoid blurriness or pixellation. That’s easy enough but the real bug bear is the PDF. You want vector text on a PDF. Different readers are going to access your comic on different screens and you can’t predict what resolution they’re going to use. To make your text as readable and clear as possible on all devices (especially the dreaded iPad3 with its retina screen) it has to be vector. I promise you there will be some level of fuzziness otherwise and you don’t want to give your readers eye strain.
Now you might say that digital comics are a small market now, but 2 years from now? 5 years from now? That’s going to be a different story. Your approach to technology needs to be forward facing. Not reactive. You don’t want to have to go over a big back log of pages to put out PDFs when you can refine your process now.
I’m not saying that vector is the only way to go, but if you wanted a reason to use vector lettering, there you go.
Ah, you’re correct, Jules, I hadn’t considered the other formats, sorry, that was my ignorance. I would still contend that learning a new domain in order to achieve clearer lettering is a ‘cross that bridge when you get there’ type of proposition, especially if you’re just starting out, but that’s definitely something to keep in mind or go back and change when one gets to the point of considering professional publication.
Speaking from personal experience and long hours of rework, I can tell you that “crossing the bridge when you get there” is going to cause you a lot of heart ache. If you make a change to your comic-making process, especially one that affects your final product, the sooner you implement it, the better. You don’t want to have to rework pages 1 through 120 because of a problem you knew about but chose not to fix starting on page 2. Rework is not your friend.
Whenever you create a comic, most of the time it’s not a matter of “if” you’re going to print (or PDF) but “when.” This means the time to think of your printed product is now. Not later. Now. This way, going to print is an easy process that takes maybe a day as opposed to weeks, and destroying your productivity pipeline in the process.
Your thoughts of “waiting till its time” to plan to print concern me. Are you thinking of print sizes, live areas, and trimming when you make your pages? These are also VERY important things you need to consider when you’re creating pages you plan to print. I can recommend articles to help you consider that if you need them.
I think there’s a lot of ‘it depends’ here. The reason I said what I did is that I think sometimes it’s a question of weighing finishing the project vs. delivering an optimal product. I can’t speak for Michael’s motives or at what point in his personal journey of comic making he is, but if Michael is creating a comic that he wants to put out and have people read, and *then* decide if he wants to publish, or if Photoshop gets him 95% of the way there, or it’s some other comic creator and it’s his or her first comic, then having to learn new software can be prohibitively time-consuming. And I totally agree with Chris that that kind of disruption can also completely remove the energy of the creation process as well as stall production. It’s simply taking an iterative approach to learning comic-making. Once you have the basics of your process down, then you can say ‘next time I’m learning illustrator.’
The ‘it depends’ comes in when you are considering the goals of the project. Is it to get a published book out in front of people? Then yes, type fidelity is an extremely important aspect, an aspect that then becomes a requirement for delivering the comic. But there are a myriad of aspects of the artistic process that you can completely rabbit hole yourself into and never be satisfied, and you have to mitigate that somehow. If you want to create output and move forward, some things have to fall off the boat. Could we argue that vector type is a dealbreaker? It’s possible, but that might also be something for the individual project owner to decide. Michael seems to say in the comment below that he’s fine with the level of clarity in which Photoshop renders his type, so that is an acceptable outcome for him.
I definitely didn’t mean to give the impression that you shouldn’t consider potential final outputs when building your files, especially dealing with pre-press, so I apologize if that’s how it came off. It was more that, in this situation, the alternative just so happened to be acceptable, though perhaps not as optimal as it could be, and so the decision *could* be made on Michael’s part to continue with his methodologies, though perhaps keeping in mind that he should strongly consider diving in to Illustrator at some point soon in order to improve his comic even more.
While learning a new program can initially throw a monkey wrench in your productivity, if it really works for you, then you can go further than you ever did before. Illustrator is pretty helpful as well as Google Sketchup, InDesign, or ZBrush. Sometimes, you can’t be afraid to learn a new program just because you’re worried about what it’ll do to your process. You never know, it could help you more.
If you guys are interested in learning Illustrator, I could put together an Illustrator tutorial. It’s really not that hard. Then one of you dudes can pay it forward and teach me InDesign, something I’ve wanted to learn, but didn’t really know where to start.
Hands helping hands!
Wow! Thanks, all!
That’s been my only real concern—how my method might affect the final output in multiple formats.
Right now I just focus on print and standard, desktop web resolution. I’d never really thought about the differences in outputting to PDF for multiple resolutions.
Things come out fine in print (I do all my work AT print size, so I’m not having to think ahead on font scaling or anything like that, and when I do output for web display, things look fine too) and I never got a note back from Red 5 or their printer regarding not having my text typeset over the imagery. And things haven’t been a problem on Comixology or iVerse, at least not to a point where I’ve heard anything about it.
I’ll need to take the plunge on some new hardware I think, if I want to practically integrate an interplay between Photoshop and Illustrator. I’m lucky if I can close out one application after an extended work session and still have enough viable memory to followup work in another before having to reboot. Two image editors at a time on my Mac is rather nightmarish these days.
When exporting PDFs for universal display, is there a standard resolution for that? I can’t remember what I sent to the digital vendors (if they wanted 72-96dpi or 300), but now I’m just wondering for future reference.
Both of my IDW books I lettered myself, and they have rasterized text in there. I think they look fine. The problems with the lettering in that book are due to my lack of experience, not the format, lol!
I can’t resist and throw my half cup of oil into the fire… Personally I use Fireworks for most of my process. It just works for me as, in my opinion it blends many advantages of both Photoshop and Illustrator. The only downside is that it’s pretty processor heavy. So far it has served me well as I’ve been juggling quite a bit between various publishing formats for my first volume: print, ios app, e-book, webcomic, etc..
But to say that I couldn’t have achieved any of the above in other programmes would be a lie. It’s always hard to adjust to change. I don’t think that in our line of work it has to do with the capacity of learning new software but it has more to do with time management issues. Is it worth your time to find out how to integrate a new workflow that might ultimately be better?
It’s fascinating to see how everyone has their slightly different approach to solving a similar problem but finding your own means to produce what you’re aiming for in the time that you have or have given yourself is the key here.
Thanks for another post full of insight. I’m off fixing all my texts before all eyes are on me!
Every time you manage to point us in the right direction because you always seem to be able to step back and go back to the basics. It’s all always good to re-evaluate and not be afraid to go back to the drawing board!
Wouter bud you are on the ball!!! Great job!! This is one of the most important lessons any artist and designer must learn; go back to the basics!!! This is ctually one of the reasons i was hired as a desiger, i am at my least an illilustrator and when my boss discovered this in the interview process, she was pleased. This ment that i could sketch out/layout the designs we would discuss very quickly on paper without wasting prescious time on the computer untill the foundation of the design was sound. This has made me far more efficient. Always remember that you are a creator, if you run into a problem, pull out a blank sheet and doodle your solution! Then yell in the voice of He-Man, “I HAVE THE POWER!!!”…..
Sorry, got a little geek-cited!!
Thanks my man! No worries about getting geek-cited, we all do it from time to time. I do have to say though that the more I dwell into the world of making comics the more I realize it has less to do with graphic design than one might think. Being a graphic designer as well I can see where you’re coming from, though and how illustration can bring you back to a very basic and quick way of pre-visualizing concepts which is definitely an advantage!
But the basics are the basics and as much as I find that rules are meant to be broken it’s good to go back to something a little simpler and structure before going all mad mental! That said, you most certainly have the POWER!!!
Thanks Wouter! Sorry for the late response!
Absolutely agree, you dont need to be a graphic desiger to successfully do comics, but almost any additional design-type training and skillset help. i have been floored by how much can be improved with proper “design” used in its layouts and mentality.
great stuff!!!
Wow I love the tips that I probably didn’t even think about but are still easy to look out for and to fix. Also Adobe InDesign could be good choice to do lettering since its main purpose is to deal with text for print. But it is vector as well and anything adobe is very expensive if you don’t already have it.
That “flawless diamond” idea is absolute gold–I will DEFINITELY remember it! (I know I’ve made the mistake of making my word bubbles too long numerous times).
Also, I didn’t know about the difference in the “I” thing. That’s fascinating.
I have to ask a question, though. What are your (Chris, Lora, anyone!) thoughts on not lettering in all caps? I personally do not letter Everdusk in an all-caps comic font because I personally think it looks better with Everdusk’s style. I was recently reading Scott McCloud’s “Making Comics” and he basically said that it’s still up for debate and personal preference in the comic world (particularly indie comics, I bet). Are there different tips/rules to be aware of when lettering in “normal” font as opposed to an all-caps comic font?
Annamarie –
I opted for Upper and Lower case for http://PrehistoricSideshow.com and I’m very happy I did.
I was never into the ALL-CAPS thing in comics (even as a kid – weirdly enough) because I felt like it compressed the range of emotion in which the characters could “speak.”
It’s like… When they’re always talking in ALL CAPS, it’s harder for the artist to convey subtle emotion. It’s like loud-talking is the baseline and if you want to convey something more subtle, your only option is to drop all the way down to a whisper. But that’s not how people talk. (Well, some people do – and if I were creating a character like that, I would TOTALLY opt for the CAPS LOCK!)
So, yeah, I think the more variety there is in the letters, the more variety there is in the characters’ performance.
Chris, you make me feel so much better saying this. Whenever I read comics in all caps (even as a kid, too), I feel like all the characters are shouting. A bunch of other comic creators raked me over the coals for choosing to use a simple serif instead of a hand-lettered all-caps font. I was told that instead of making the lines read more subtley, it made them read blandly, like they were all talking through computer screens, and when I explained the reason for my decision, other artists who felt the way I do but chose to go all-caps (probably after suffering similar bullying) because it was the “right” way to letter a comic told me I just had to man up and do it.
There are actually comic fonts that have lowercase built in. If you look around both comicbookfonts.com and blambot.com, they’re around. The font I use for my comic just happened to have built in lowercase. It was certainly a nice bonus, and comes in handy when I want to show characters whispering or muttering under their breaths.
For my own comics, I still use all caps fonts, but I don’t think they look wrong at all with incorporated lower case.
Well put Chis. We are in agreement. GIVE ME RANGE FOR EXPRESSION!
I can’t offer any tips or unique guidelines for lettering in a normal case font, but I personally do not have any adversity toward them. On the contrary, I think they look great as long as they fit the mood and style of the rest of the comic—same goes for all uppercase, of course!
I differ from Chris on this. I think, unless it is a really unique and distinct indy-style comic, having lowercase fonts is jarring.
Probably because that is what we’re used to seeing. It would be like reading a published novel… in a sans serif font.
Not that it can’t work, I just think that all caps lettering recedes in comics so to speak, and upper/lower case fonts come forward and are noticed. It’s okay to do it if you have good reasons for it. If it really is what fits the style of your story and art best, go for it. I’ve seen it done beautifully.
I wouldn’t do it arbitrarily though.
But the only people who are “used” to it are people who read a lot of mainstream comics.
As an afterthought, I realized that I also don’t like all caps because it DOES emulate the comics I grew up reading which were superhero stories. It makes sense to have all caps if you’re trying to pull off that heightened, BAM-POW, superhero thing.
But
1.) I, most definitely am not.
and
2.) The future of American comics includes stories from voices as varied as those found in European comics, Japanese comics etc… Thus, there’s no reason to adhere to the ALL CAPS style because it might be “jarring” to the relatively small percentage of our audience who grew up on ALL CAPS comics.
I think that if you establish a consistent style for your comic, it won’t be jarring except MAYBE on the first couple pages and, only then, to the folks who only read ALL CAPS comics.
Does that make sense?
Hmmm, interesting. All caps (and small caps) is harder to process and scan because all of the letterforms terminate at the same height, so the eye isn’t able to distinguish them as quickly (enter those ‘tests’ where they mix up the order of the characters in the words and then go ‘OMG you can read these isn’t that crazy that’s crazy’).
However, comics being a medium of timing, all caps could in theory also slow the reader down enough *on purpose* such that reading comes closer to the pace of spoken dialogue.
I have no idea if this spaced-out theory has any merit at all whatsoever, but it’s an interesting thought experiment to ponder. My exhaustive Google research tells me that the *actual* reason they used caps was for space economy because no letterforms dropping below the baseline meant they could adjust the leading on the lines closer together.
Google also says that sentence case is coming back with the proliferation of digital comic publishing. I would personally err on the side of readability, so this seems like a good thing to me. That said, I’m also not in the audience who came from reading all caps.
I think you (or at least your google search) is dead on, Chad. If you have caps and tails, it’s a lot harder to line the text up without either lots of dead space, or weird tangents.
Even the padding that I talked about above is hard to get a nice uniform shape with capitols and tails– you have things jutting up and down into that space. What do you do? Either cut into your padding with capitols and tails OR start the padding at the edges of them, but then you’re going to have tons of dead space.
Same problems occur with the “flawless diamond” or the football shape of text.
All caps keeps your text tighter, which makes it fit into the balloon better. And minimizes how much space on the page you lose to lettering.
Again, some Indy comics that treat type like another character in their stories can get away with lowercase text. But I think there are reasons beyond “It’s always been done this way” why the all caps works best.
I think it HAS been done that way BECAUSE it works best. I think it’s the elegant solution and unless typography is really a strong suit for you, stick to the rules. If not, you’ll wind up looking amateurish.
I prefer comics in a “normal” font. Nothing is more jarring than a character sitting alone in the dark with a downcast face HAVING A TENDER RECOLLECTION AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS.
Wow, all these awesome comments! This has become a really interesting discussion. 😀
I don’t know if I have a particular aversion or preference for either one. The Dreamer is one of my favorite webcomics, along with others–The Phoenix Requiem, The Meek, Everblue–that use all caps, not to mention newspaper comics that I love. But there are others–Chris’s Prehistoric Sideshow, Red Moon Rising, Gunnerkrigg Court–that use “normal” font, and I love those comics as well.
I guess for me it really boils down to what feels right to the comic’s style. When you read something long enough, you sort of get a feel for “how” to read it as long as the person doing the art and typography does their job well. I think Lora gets great emotion across in The Dreamer with an all-caps font–a mixture of good lettering, writing, and art. Rose Loughran’s Red Moon Rising captures the same effects with a “normal” font, but once again, good lettering, writing, and art make the difference.
And yeah, on one of Chris’s notes, I do think that I unconsciously associate all-caps font with mainstream superhero comics, which aren’t a style of comics I particularly care for, so that might be a reason I kind of lean towards “normal” lettering. I do think that “normal” lettering lends itself more to subtlety simply because so much more can be done with it.
Thanks for the useful information. I will be sure to apply it to my work.
You’re welcome!
Lora, thanks for this post. I’v been publishing a comic strip for ten years, and I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know some of these rules. Ashamed, even.
I guess I’ve been practicing the diamond rule for the most part, but the “I” rule and the tail of the word balloon halfway rules are new to me.
Thanks!
I don’t always do the half way rule for the tails, but I’ve heard it over and over so I thought I would pass it on.
The “I” rule, however, will make professional letters go absolutely insane. I can’t remember the first time I heard it, Possibly Scott McCloud?
This is a great article…it’s amazing how much difference a few simple layout choices makes. Awkward lettering will yank the reader out of the story faster than anything.
The tip I have to constantly remind myself of: Start doing your lettering (or at least a rough approximation of the text) as early in the art process as possible. It’s much easier to make adjustments at the layout stage, rather than waiting until you’ve already inked and colored the panel to find out that you didn’t leave enough room for that word balloon, and now you have to try and move the character’s head down half an inch. I’m in the process of re-lettering some of my old comics, and I’m constantly cussing out my younger self for not leaving me enough space!
Agreed!
We talked about that a lot in our last post: http://www.paperwingspodcast.com/2012/06/comic-balloons-comic-layout/
You’ll save so much time and heartache doing lettering earlier rather than later. In fact, more than just covering art, it’s important to consider how they’ll be read as one flows to the next–it should be logical. Which means they should be considered as important to your layouts as any other part of the art.
This article is fantastic. A few short, easy tips to really improve the look of a layout. After starting a webcomic layout is one of the things I consistently struggle with even after a year of doing it, and these little highlights are some tips I desperately needed to hear. Thanks much for this.
You’re welcome. Glad to hear it.
Thank you so much for this great article. I used to not really pay much attention to my lettering when I was making my comics but now it is a big part of my process. I think we like to hope readers will spend hours looking at each panel but I think most readers don’t and if the lettering is well done it helps tremendously with flow and storytelling and can even add to the experience if done subtlety. Maybe that old compliment holds true, you don’t notice lettering unless it is done poorly.
I feel that way about art and writing in general. If it is fantastic and effortless your message (“story”) gets to shine. Sure, you might not get a thousand comments about how amazing you drew an arm, but you might move people and connect with their hearts.
As a writer, I don’t want anything to get in the way of that. Especially something as easily avoidable as lettering!
You’re so right.
I know, even as an artist, I usually read through at a certain pace then I go BACK through to really soak in the visuals. Not that I DON’T soak in the visuals while I’m reading, but I log the hours staring and studying AFTER the initial read…
Interesting. I wonder what other people do.
I’m the same way, Chris. I follow the natural pace of the storytelling, letting the art guide me along at almost a glance, and savoring the depth of the visuals later.
I think as ARTISTS it’s totally natural that we notice things others don’t.
But I think the non-artist reader doesn’t notice this stuff as much as we want our hard work to be savored and relished. But if they’re not tripping up over anything glaringly wrong, we did our jobs right.
I am the same way, letting the story dictate how I read unless there is something just amazing with the art or storytelling do I slow down and really analyze it. Usually I like to take the story in and let it take me over and then I go back like you said and analyze what I liked about the story/art/lettering etc or if there was something I didn’t particularly enjoy I take not of why and try to figure it out.
I also find that as I talk through something (like the post-mortem in a car ride home from a movie with friends) my subconscious noticed things I simply absorbed initially. But when you begin to articulate why you think or felt something, you realize you noticed a lot more things that first time than you realized. And then on the rewatch or reread, you pick up even more. Because this time you’re looking for it.
So true!
Didn’t make a comment on this website until this post. Lettering is one of my favorite parts of making comics. I find it relaxing, almost. It makes me sad how many amateur comics are ruined for me due to bad lettering. I hope more people learn about how important it is!
The good news is I’ve found some great resources out there on the topic. Easy to find for those interested.
I think you’re right about that. I loved the quote from Nate Piekos I put above. He’s exactly right!
Wow, yep, I might get picked up but the Comix-ology police….I looked back on the first short story for Kodi and…nearly every rule on that list I broke with pride. “hi, my name is Captian Dutz and I need Letter-therapy”. Ha ha!!! Thank you for all of the tips Lora!!! Lots of stuff I have never never thought of1
One of the best lessons on lettering that I had before this post was that I need to look at it as part of the art when referring to FX. Add color and texture to help it emphasis the tone and “volume” of what is being said.
…now I must go and make sure the panels I am working on are not offensive to the letterer’s eyes!!!
Thanks again!!
Maybe you can be my letter-therapy accountability partner.
Yippie! Can do! That would be helpful on both parts!
…I wonder if there is a 12 Step Program though, I can seem to get past step 10..I run out of fingers! Ha ha !
That would be awesome! I will post a link to a couple of the pages here soon so you can see what they were like before I go fix them.
Thanks Team!
Hi guys,
I’ve been listening and reading for a little while now and get so much out of Paper Wings. This is my first time posting and just wanted to introduce myself.
My comic is called “Hominids” http://hominidscomic.com/
I have a nice small “Circle of Trust” and can’t express how helpful it has been. My comic and my site would be completely different if not for them. I’d love for it to expand and just love talking with people.
Thanks for the great episode Chris and Lora, as always.
PS. I was reading this post and the “Circle of Trust” podcast post at the same time. I meant to put that comment up at the podcast post. Sorry about that.
That’s all right. We’re glad you enjoyed the episode, and we’re even more glad you introduced yourself. Love the style in your comic! a lot of energy and beautiful colors.
Thanks Lora!
Great article on lettering too. I’ve really come to love the art of lettering. It’s one of the things I do first in my layouts. So any new tips and tricks I can learn are much appreciated.
I applaud you for putting lettering first. It makes all the difference in the world to your final layout and the readability of your page when you do this.
Glad you enjoyed the article!
The quote you credit to me in the article above is actually by Troy Peteri. And the interview you link to isn’t with me, it’s between Ron Marz and Troy Peteri.
Thx
~Nate
Thanks for the heads-up, Nate. We’ll change it right now.
So sorry about that! How did I make that mistake?
Apologies to you and Troy, and thank you Chris for the quick fix.
Great tips in this post, thanks for covering something that a lot of people(myself included) don’t think enough about. Great tip of using the diamond/football shape for your text, and the spacing was great to hear… I cannot hear enough reminders to leave breathing room in all areas of my art and design.
“In all areas of my art and design.” I hear you, Phil!
This took me a looooong time to learn. My work used to be SO busy. I used to design comic pages that had 20 panels on them. I think it was because I studied animation and storyboarding. My instincts were to make a new panel every time a character moved.
But learning to simplify, leave dead spaces, imply things and not show everything made my pages so much more *readable*. Great tip to keep in mind!
I hate the crossbar I problem. Drives me crazy – it always manages to sneak in there when I don’t want it to – and I’m completely aware of it. I’ve gone through the painful steps of scripting my next work with lower case Is for proper names, etc. Takes a bit of practice, but helps in the long run if you copy/paste dialogue like I do.
As for the ‘widows/orphans’ problem, it can be a matter of taste. Some folks swear by the rule, others break it for the sake of aesthetic. I tend to side with the aesthetic – UNLESS it is a small word that can be re-jigged in a text bubble.
Photoshop is probably one of the worst programs for rendering type (it might have improved in CS6 but I’m still skeptical. It’s the basic type engine used in their suite (for programs like Flash, Fireworks, etc) and although it allows you to add pretty post effects to the words, don’t expect them to be tack-sharp when you go to print. As a rule, you may want to consider using it ONLY for screen, and re-set your dialogue in InDesign or even Illustrator (which uses the more robust type engine) when you’re ready to format for books.
If you work with large format files (600dpi+) you’ll notice how much Photoshop will cause your machine to lag when you’re trying to edit text. Just a heads up!
Great post!
Thanks for the insights!
I agree with the widows/orphans point of view. Sometimes, aesthetically in a word balloon, it looks better to break the rule than follow it. MOST of the time I’d go by the rule if you can. But there are a few exceptions every now and again.
I just knew there had to be rules about lettering and comic balloons! …and I didn’t know any of them. Than you.
Any info about designing and placing SFX sounds: “WHAM!-THUD!-CCRASH!!!…???
A week late to the party, but let me say that I have been schooled. Wow, never really considered how much goes into the lettering of a page before. From reading the rest of the comments, I guess for most of the people like me who are artists or writers, the layout or graphic design aspects of comicking do not come very naturally. I did a short comic project in November and December and I found the lettering to be the most frustrating and unenjoyable part. From picking out a font that didn’t look totally dorky to getting dialogue to fit into bubbles, I was just in over my head. I also hated doing the borders and they turned out really ugly, but that’s a different post I guess!
I would love to see how you guys actually create speech bubbles/text boxes in Photoshop or whichever program you use.
Thanks Lora!
I’m working on a video tutorial right now actually!
Sweet! Can’t wait!!
I never even thought about the lettering…until today! It’s like a whole ‘nother visual vocabulary that we take for granted, but as with all art, you’ve gotta know these rules so you know when and how to break ’em. Great topic!
This site is amazing. The information is exactly what I need to know and Its delivered perfectly. Well done guys its helping me a ton!
I will need to add a capital (I) with no cross in my in my font.
But i don’t think this one is a big mistake like the unreadable speech bubbles we often see .
I used to have a xerox blow up of a quote from the Comics Buyer’s Guide on my office door where I lettered comics for Image comics. It said: “Nothing can ruin an otherwise good-looking comic faster than bad lettering.”
That was true when I started in the business almost 30 years ago, but it’s even more true with the advent of computers where anyone who thinks they can letter can.
Good lettering, like film editing [I also do film editing] is supposed to be invisible. If it’s jarring, or is noticeably badly done, you get yanked out of the story. Lettering aside, though, the comics that fail for me are those written by someone who gets their punctuation cues from Facebook where almost no one was paying attention in 8th-grade English class. This is a HUGE problem in small press books where there is no editor, or the editor hasn’t done his or her homework on editing of text.
For this reason I urge new letterers to bone up on proper punctuation so you can fix the copy on a book with your name on it. This is rare on mainstream DC and Marvel books, tho. They have real editors.
You want your work to look pro? Get a decent book on punctuation and read it. Writers, too!
khathawayart@gmail.com
This awesome tutorial has been featured on the Dynamite Candy Spotlight! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with the world! http://dynamitecandy.com/?p=155
Does anyone know if it’s appropriate to have the tail of a word balloon reach way across the panel if that’s where the speaking character is? Or would it probably be more prudent to rearrange to composition so that the balloon in closer to the character speaking? I have run into this problem a lot, especially when I have a panel containing two characters having a conversation.