General Lettering Discussion

[Bolt-01]

Seeing as how there are now dedicated threads for some other topics, I'll start one for Lettering, as it holds a special place in my heart.

Folks interested in lettering can do worse than visit:

Blambot for a massive range of both FREE and PAY fonts and some nifty tutorials.

Comicraft fonts is also cool, as they have a fair few tutorials, though it does cost more for fonts.

Please feel free to add to this thread if you find something nifty.

[Emperor]

Thanks for starting this.

There is some earlier discussion here and this came up somewhere and Richard Starkings and Comicraft are some of the leading letterers in the field so there advice is always useful:

www.balloontales.com/articles/tutorial/index.html

[Kev Levell]

I have downloaded a few of those fonts from Blambot and every one has been a winner!

I'll just throw this out there as an aid to other amateurs looking for a relatively quick and cheap way of getting their own style of lettering as a usable font. The kerning is a bit off here and there - but I managed to make what I think is a passable hand-lettered style font.
http://www.yourfonts.com/
It's really simple - download the template - fill it in - upload it - test it and then pay the $9.95 via paypal to download your font. The font is a truetype .ttf file useable on both mac and pc.

What I did was to open up the template in illustrator and created my letters by dragging nodes around. That way you can play around a bit with the letter forms rather than having to be spot on with every letter by hand. I then exported a high-res file to use as my uploaded template. The test facility is your friend, I uploaded about four or five templates until I was happy enough and eventually paid for the download. You also get e-mailed the font-file as a back-up.
Here is the final font just to give some idea of what you get for your money:

I used both cases with variants for all the letters so I could substitute those all important san-serif i's and double o's where necessary.
Also, here's a link to "The Praying Mantis", a crappy one-panel gag I did as a quick test.

I also invested in a bold version a couple of weeks ago. A word of caution about this service though, this is by no means the best way to make a font. The major advantage however is the cost compared to a proper font generation package.
For quality's sake, it's probably safest to stick to one of the free fonts from Blambot, unless you specifically and desperately need your own lettering in the speech bubbles.

The only other thing I have to say about lettering is never, ever use Comic Sans (for anything).

[pauljholden]

Was shown a chapter from a new Insomnia book in the pub last night; writer is from Belfast. First thing I noticed is how professional the lettering was. Then today I find out the lettering is by Jim Campbell. I have since revised my opinion.

-pj
ps the story was really interesting too - some great ideas.

[uncle fester]

Took me a while but I found http://www.dafont.com/ again. Similar set-up to Blambot but with various fonts sorted by category. Admittedly, not much in the way of dialogue fonts, but for other uses - on titles, newsapapers, buildings etc that you may need in sequential work, it's a bit more varied.

[Jim_Campbell]

First thing I noticed is how professional the lettering was. Then today I find out the lettering is by Jim Campbell. I have since revised my opinion.

Not enough to insult me on the ECBT2000AD podcast, eh, Holden? I'll have you know I'm still waiting on Part 3 of Live Bait, which officially makes you the ... SLOWEST ... ARTIST ... EVAH.[/i]

ps the story was really interesting too - some great ideas.

This is true -- I'm assuming that's Kronos City. I've only seen Chapter One myself thus far, but it certainly does open up with some ideas I haven't seen used before, and has a nice air of faded whimsy that I rather liked.

It actually took quite a long time to come up with a lettering style that suited, so I'm chuffed that you noticed.

Cheers

Jim

[Jim_Campbell]

Not specifically recommended for practical advice, but thoroughly recommended to anyone with an interest in lettering, or graphic design in general:

Todd Klein's Blog.

Todd writes a very readable blog in which deals with the erudition you'd expect on subjects like typography and logo design, interspersed with book reviews, recipes, and discourses about things growing in his back yard, all discussed with great wisdom and charm.

Cheers

Jim

[Bolt-01]

Seconded- His Logo dissections are amazing.

At the moment I'm all lettering mad- had to do quite a few strips lately and I've really enjoyed the last few I've done.

[Dog Deever]

Yes, but does it explain why Comic Sans is so crap?

[Emperor]

Yes, but does it explain why Comic Sans is so crap?

Well that is clearly Dave Gibbons' fault

[Dog Deever]

Just to throw a bit of a curve ball into the discussion-
We use Comic Sans a lot at college for student handouts- we teach kids with a huge range of learning difficulties. One of the big problems with a lot of standard 'easy to read' fonts such as Arial, is the lower case 'a'. A lot of kids with learning difficulties simply don't recognise 'a' for what it is- and there aren't that many fonts with a 'baby a' like Comic Sans.
Sad, but true. Given the likelihood that many of these kids will thus experience difficulties in reading comics, is Comic Sans really such a big deal?

I'm nae trying tae be a cock- it's a genuine question.
The only people who seem to give a toss about it are lettering folks, so to what extent is it merely
* the lettering equivalent of 'using yer pudding spoon tae eat yer soup'?
* random balloonist-generated etiquette to separate those 'in-the-know' from the 'ignorant-unwashed' which has become like a mantra?
* because it's free and anyone with a computer has it?

[Bouwel]

is Comic Sans really such a big deal?

You are of course right; it's not a big deal. The only thing I have against it is when it's used out of context. By it's very nature it looks a 'jaunty' or 'fun' font, yet I've seen it used in letters firing people.

But in the big scheme of things, no, it's not a big deal.

-Bouwel-

[Jim_Campbell]

is Comic Sans really such a big deal?

No ... I'm sorry, it is a big deal. What this is about is the fact that Comic Sans is a poorly proportioned, amateurishly kerned typeface, that manages to look crap at body, headline and poster sizes.

I've already pointed out that you can get a properly designed comic-book font that fills the same requirements in the shape of Tim Sale:



If you're looking for a sans-serif font with a simpler 'a' than Arial (another lazy MS knock off, BTW, of Helvetica, this time) then use Futura.

Now, I appreciate that there are people who might suggest that looking down your nose at Comic Sans is the mark of a design snob, but at the end of the day, it's a fucking ugly font that's been designed with a palpable ignorance of the basic rules of font design.

Does it matter? If the answer is "No", then why did we even bother moving on from monospaced fonts to proportional ones? Why make any effort at all to replicate printed typography on the screen, or indeed, in the printed output from home computers?

It's a font that embodies Microsoft's lazy, ugly approach to font design and display, and it deserves to be rejected for that reason.

Cheers

Jim

[Odd_Bloke]

I've already pointed out that you can get a properly designed comic-book font that fills the same requirements in the shape of Tim Sale:

What font are you using here that isn't Comic Sans or Tim Sale?  And where can I find Tim Sale?

[Emperor]

I've already pointed out that you can get a properly designed comic-book font that fills the same requirements in the shape of Tim Sale:

What font are you using here that isn't Comic Sans or Tim Sale?  And where can I find Tim Sale?

www.timsale1.com/store.html#fonts
www.comicrazy.com/masters/catalog.html?item=comicrazy:ts1

This might help:
http://askville.amazon.com/Tim-Sale-font-Heroes-free--Windows-XP/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=6374612