{"id":422,"date":"2012-02-07T20:05:56","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T20:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thisbloglife.com\/?p=422"},"modified":"2026-01-08T20:33:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T20:33:28","slug":"comic-book-and-showcard-fonts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thatkeith.com\/articles\/comic-book-and-showcard-fonts\/","title":{"rendered":"Comic book and showcard fonts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the first projects I used to give my Magazine Publishing students involved creating an eight-page graphic novel, done in teams of two.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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They could use any story they like, anything from a re-imagining of the Jonathan Livingston Seagull story to their bus journey to college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main focus of the assignment was production and project management, but it involved a load of different creative and practical decisions too. One of which was, if type was to be used, how it needed to be handled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going for fonts that are comic-friendly isn\u2019t a requirement, but if a classic comic or graphic novel feel is wanted then that’s a good idea. A number of candidates come as standard with Mac OS X, and there are a few additions with iLife and iWork too. But are they actually any use?<\/p>\n\n\n

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Starting from the top and ignoring anything that\u2019s not hand-drawn or casual enough, we get Bradley Hand<\/strong>, installed with iWork and iDVD. This is based on the handwriting of its designer, typographer Richard Bradley, who created a number of other handwriting-based designs. It\u2019s useful, but it is a little rough-edged, as if drawn on rough, scratchy paper. More importantly, the character widths of the capitals are really too wide for the task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brush Script<\/strong> is too, well, \u2018scripty\u2019; it doesn\u2019t have the hand-lettered personality feel that\u2019s needed. Chalkboard<\/strong> is an Apple-supplied design that\u2019s disturbingly close to the widely-vilified Comic Sans. Put side-by-side there are differences, but you\u2019d be forgiven for struggling to name them correctly otherwise. Given the looks you\u2019d get you should steer clear of this for almost everything, let alone a graphic novel. (Another reason for avoiding both of these is the capital \u2018I\u2019, which has a crossbar. That\u2019s a no-no in comics other than when used on its own.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The slightly ragged Chalkduster<\/strong> arrived with Mac OS X 10.6. It is too rough for general dialog and body text, although it could do well for certain emotion-laden headlines. And then we come to the b\u00eate noire of the typeface world: Comic Sans<\/strong> itself. (No, not La B\u00eate Noire, which is a 2002 Croatian\/Serbian comics publication, or the 2005 B\u00eate Noire comics anthology.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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