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FONT SHOWDOWN RESULTS!
🕑 Added 2023-12-22 00:20:43 +0000 UTCI asked you for your font opnions! You provided them! And the results right now are as such:
Option B edged out A and C by a slight margin!
Initially, this surprised me — option B feels so different from what I'm used to. But we'll get into that in a second. Let's first discard fonts D and E.
OPTION E
This is Comicraft's "Clean Cut Kid." I tried it because I liked the letterforms, and it has some nice Opentype features. It looks brushy, and I was inking with a brush, so I thought maybe there would be some synchronicity there. But as soon as put it in the balloons, I suspected it would be a long shot. You proved me right.
OPTION D
This is Comicraft's "J Scott Campbell Lower." I wouldn't have chosen this font on my own, except… I lettered the English version of BUBBLE in my usual font, and the book's French publisher elected to change it to this font, presumably because it has better support for all those accented characters. At least, I think it's that font. I liked how it looked in BUBBLE, so figured I'd give it a try.
It must have been a good choice, because a few commenters said it looked most like the usual font.
As far as the poll results go, though, I agree. It doesn't work for me. I'm not sure what is different between FRENCH BUBBLE and the examples I put together, but I just don't like this font as much on DD.
OPTION A
This is Blambot's "Mighty Zeo 2.0," and it's what I've been using for my own stuff forever. Looking at the specimen above, you can see how janky the big bold all-caps letters look. And it still has all the limitations I mentioned in the previous posts. But I really like the way the sentences look. And I like the slight right lean that the Regular face has.
OPTION B
This font — the poll winner — is Blambot's "Ready for More." A few comments noted that it was very easy to read, and I agree. And it does so while still feeling pretty natural; I really like those letterforms, enlarged in the specimen above.
I don't love how rigidly vertical it is, though. I like a little lean (as we will see later). And once Kaitou in the comments pointed out that the Capital I has such wide bars (see below), I couldn't stop focusing on that.
On the other hand, I like the alternate glyphs for double letters (circled above). It's a subtle effect, but it helps keep things feeling natural.
[ ^ Ready for More's wide-barred I-shapes. ]
OPTION C
This is Comicraft's "Wildwords Lower." I think it might be my own favourite alternate choice. It's got a very slight lean, which I like, except that sometimes when I look at it, the lean seems to be to the left, despite technically being to the right. The lowercase Os have a definite right lean, but the whole of "Wildwords Lower" above feels left-leaning. It also doesn't have alternate glyphs for lowercase doubles, which is a shame. But the alternating Capital Is are nice.
The more I look at this one, the more I start to think the reason I like it is that it's very similar to Mighty Zeo.
The lowercase As and Es have the same form. So do the Ss. Wildwords is a little wonkier, though - see how the x-height of the lowercase D is lower than the Os and Ns, and the baseline of the Y is so much higher (as illustrated above). It makes the sentences feel a little less regular, I think. In comparison, I like how Mighty Zeo's lowercase O floats off the baseline a little, and in general it feels less boxy. The Ns have more of an internal slant to them, which satisfies my desire for a right lean.
- - - - -
MY OWN OBSERVATIONS
I printed each sample page out at what is essentially the First Second print size. That's how most people will likely experience the type, so that's how we should be judging, right?
In this form, Ready for More held strong as the most legible, and the weight of the letters was well-suited to the artwork. Wildwords looked nice, but felt a little on the thin side, and the wonkiness felt much more apparent on paper — it may not seem like much, but I continue to be distracted by the low x-height on the D. Mighty Zeo felt familiar, and while it seemed lighter / thinner than Ready for More, it still looked at home among the artwork.
I did not like J Scott Campbell Lower on paper.
The legibility of Clean Cut Kid was good, and I liked the weight against the artwork, but the flavour was not right.
- - - - -
OTHER EXPERIMENTS IN TYPE
Thinking I might get some sort of pleasing alchemical results, I took a look at my own hand-lettering. I have not attempted this in a long time. I tried to make my own typeface once upon a time, but the results were all-around disheartening. Time to open this box of trouble once more.
^ Believe it or not, this is what I get when I sit down and try to make regular, disciplined letterforms.
^ I was trying to be legible while also keeping the natural sort of flow and character that I get in my usual handwriting. I find my bog-standard handwriting to be perfectly legible… up to a few months after I've written it. Over time, I don't know, the ink must drift or something, because when I come back to really old notes it can be a challenge to decipher them.
^ I tried some more.
^ and some more.
^ aannndd some more.
But of course it's one thing to look at this lettering in isolation. What would it look like in a comic?
Oh. That's what it would look like.
Okay. I see. Why are my Bs and Rs such a mess?
So I will not be hand-lettering my comic any time soon. I just don't like it as much as I like the other fonts. But! I did want to give it a try, if only to discover if there is a path toward creating a custom font that feels like my own lettering but is legible and professional-looking.
- - - - -
WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US?
Well-informed, if nothing else. This is a long-term project, so I'm not hurrying to make any changes just yet.
I'm emailing with Friend Of The Show John Martz, who designed the typeface Vera Brosgol uses in her graphic novels. The font is called "Helverica," and if you don't think that pun alone was enough to make me want to contact John, you do not know me. I am curious to hear what he has to say about designing a custom font.
Meanwhile, I think I will letter Chapter Four using Mighty Zeo. Clearly it's not a big loser, and no one commented to tell me they actively dislike it. Just the opposite. I'll keep exploring my options, though, and at some point I will most likely re-letter the book with a more sophisticated typeface.
Maybe I can hire Nate Piekos (of Blambot) to make a custom version of Ready for More with a narrower barred-capital-I.
- - - - -
ON YOUR COMMENTS
Cat pointed out that some fonts looked better in certain examples / specimens than in others. Specifically, "in the top example I liked B very much the best, but it felt weird in the second example." I noticed this as well, and I do not understand why it happens. There were some font-size differences, and some leading differences — I did not present the specimens with as much scientific rigour as I might have — but I don't think that fully explains why some fonts seemed more at home in some pages but not others.
I think there was some suggestion of mixing up the fonts — say, one font for narration, another for dialogue. I am extremely wary about this, because Using Too Many Fonts can lead to disaster. It's an option I'll keep in mind, though.
Overall, thank you so much to everyone who left such thoughtful comments. I really do appreciate the care you put into all of them.
- - - - -
So! Look for Chapter Four set in Mighty Zeo. And then, further down the road, maybe Ready for More, maybe Wildwords. Maybe something custom! Time will tell.
On Monday, I spent the whole day at the Emily Carr University library, borrowing their creaky old large-format scanner to get Chapter Four digitized without having to stitch anything together.
Greetings from the library! I had the place basically to myself, on account of the impending holidays.
The scanner was so slow. Each page took 3 minutes, which made me think twice about my choice to put all the SFX lettering on separate sheets from the artwork. I've got 200mb scans of 11x17 sheets with nothing but a single small "SPLORCH" on them. But the scan quality is excellent and I won't have to stitch small scans together, so it might have been worth it.
- - - - -
In the weeks to come, expect to see the promised deep dive into older books! I still am not sure what the best way to do this will be, but am leaning toward simply doing a writeup with accompanying images.
If you're celebrating Christmas over the next few days, well, MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU! And holidays or not, I hope you are happy and healthy and that all the little pieces of a decent life are aligning in pleasant ways for you.
Readers! Friends! Thank you for joining me in this FONT SHOWDOWN!
I LOVE LOOKING AT TYPOGRAPHY!
Until next week,
I remain,
wonkier on paper,
TC
Comments
Hari draws
recently finished drawing a GN lettered in 'Ready for More', mostly for readability at small sizes, and very much agree with your positives and negatives! (Had to copy-paste the em-dash in the US version at publisher's insistence, though.)I think I associate Mighty Zeo strongly with Delilah Dirk, and the slight lean really suits your line style IMO
Abrian Curington
Having gone through my own typeface journey, I relate so hard to making samples and ultimately choosing the original! I have also failed to make a typeface of my lettering, multiple times (though I'm closer with the latest attempt!). It's strange, the looseness of the linework would lend to loose script BUT the color on the characters is much tighter. So those two aspects together seem to require a tighter typeface than brush lettering? I suppose. Again, I'm trying to sort through it myself!
