Handwriting vs. Fonts

[Bustertheclown]

I officially sat on the fence for this one, but I still prefer hand lettering. It does have a better feel to it.

[Nervous Spy]

Hand lettering is definitely preferable, but it takes a lof of skill and a lot of time and effort. And using fonts is definitely better than bad hand lettering.

[Joel Fagin]

Hand lettering is definitely preferable

Why, though?

Sorry, it just occurred to me to play devil's advocate when struck me that, really, the only difference is that each letter always looks the same with a font whereas hand lettering is a bit more random. No one's going to notice that anyway.

- Joel Fagin

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I notice things like that.

[Nervous Spy]

Well, the difference is that hand lettering gives you full control over the shape and position of each letter and, perhaps more importantly, the spaces between them. If you have the skill and ability for it (and that's a big if), you can thus arrive at a result that is more compact and evenly-spaced, altogether looking more pleasant, and also more organic and livelier.

For comparison, here's a bit of text I snatched from Zebra Girl, and the same text in the font I use for my comic:



Note how the hand lettered text in it's entirety is more compact and rounded, more evenly distributed over a round speech bubble. The fourth and fifth lines of the right-hand text appear broken up by too much space between the words, the hand lettered version can easily adjust those spaces individually (which would be possible with the font, but would take a lot of effort). The little 'o's add visual interest to the hand lettered version, but they only work because their positions are adapted to the letters next to them - something a font won't allow you to do.

In my opinion, at least, the hand lettered text is vastly superior here - much more visually interesting and much more organic looking (after all, text in a comic is mostly used to depict a human voice).

Admittedly, in the context of a full comic page, it might only make for a very minor difference, but it's still there. If I had the skill to hand letter like that, I would definitely do it, but it's not like that font is an eyesore, so I'm quite happy to stick with it.

[Bustertheclown]

I notice things like that, too. I'm not too into digital uniformity. Plus, there's a tendency for people to go overboard with fancy-pants digital fonts when it's unnecessary. Hand lettering is just tedious enough an act to prevent people getting too crazy with their letterform designs, which could ultimately get in the way of the overall impact of a given comic.

[Dunbaratu]

What about using fonts for different "voices"?
First - why I used fonts:
I recognize that hand lettering looks better. But I can't use it for two reasons - one is that my handwriting is terrible, and the other is that it makes things harder to re-do. I can delete one word, add one word, etc, much simpler if it's not pictures of letters, but rather is actualy stored in the computer as a string of characters. I often change my mind about what I want in the word baloon after I look at the final result and hand-lettering would make that kind of editing harder to do.

Now, given that I want to use fonts, what do people think of the idea of using a different font for a different character? Does it make things better or just make them cluttered? For example, a robot might talk in a squared-off blocky font, while a cute little girl might talk in a cursive font with little circles dotting the eyes, and so on. Does doing this communicate things better, or does it just make them complex and ugly?

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

That may be going overboard. If it's a character that doesn't occur too often, or if it's a rare instance in which someone is speaking to machine, then it's fine. But if it's your main characters, then it becomes a distraction.

I know one comic that uses different-shaped speech bubbles for the evil characters. It's distinctive, but isn't really a distraction since the lettering is consistent for the regular speech.

[Joel Fagin]

Different fonts can be really distracting and is unnecessary for the bulk of your cast. I mean, why bother? We know they all sound different.

People with an inhuman or unusual voice, however, work well with a different font or speech bubble. The problem then becomes finding one with is readable, unobtrusive and yet representative.

*is doing so for a character now*

- Joel Fagin

[Dunbaratu]

I tested a page of differing fonts for different voices, and I have to agree that it does look fairly awful. Part of the problem is that interesting handwriting fonts that look distinctive often only work well at high resolution, and when shrunk down they look terrible - the font engine isn't smart enough to realize that it needs to cut down on the curls and loops at low resolutions. It still tries to draw them all, and I end up with a black overstruck scribbly mess.

I like the idea of using the same font, but changing the word baloons to match mood or voice - that's not bad.

[Biev]

I'd say whichever is more coherent with the art style. Since I draw my comic by hand, the font I used in the beginning looked very out of place. To match the organic feel of the page, I had to pick fonts that looked scribbled, but they were hard to read. I'm a lot more comfortable fitting the text now that I hand write it. My readers seemed to approve of the change. I also like how easy it is to twist words and modify the lettering to convey different moods. A nervous or a calm handwriting makes a lot of difference in my opinion. I probably could exploit this a lot more than I do now, though.

Oh, I've also started to use different handwritings for different characters. I like the idea of the lettering being the character's voice, and everyone's voices are different.

[Geekblather]

I've handlettered things, and used very 'fonty' looking fonts, and right now I've settled on using a font that looks fairly similar to the lettering I use when hand lettering (while I try to make a decent font of my handwriting). I think that with an extra dash of anal-retentiveness, fonts can be made to work really well. Thankfully, Photoshop gives me the option of having bold, faux bold, italic, faux italic, and just about any font size I desire. So, sometimes I make text larger or smaller to convey what I want.

And, I'll go out here as saying that I really don't like it when different characters speak in different fonts. I find it to be very visually distracting. I mean, if the characters are distinct enough in what they're saying, that should be enough to distinguish one from the other.
Varying fonts also kind of disregards something that- well- I think gets overlooked a lot in comics, which is that it's a webcomic. It's framed inside a webpage. Most site designers try to keep the number of fonts in the whole site to about three. If you have two fonts that describe the stuff on the site, and then three more than show up within the comic, it makes everything look kind of cluttered and scattered. I definitely like it when things all kind of go together, so that the comic is a logical part of the space on the webpage.
Okay, rant over. I'm done now.

[Liddell]

I handletter exclusively, because I have no computer where I do my work, and I cannot imagine trying to draw my pictures anywhere else.

The early comics looked a little ugly because I wrote the first draft in pencil and then inked over it, but the more recent ones aren't so bad, especially now that I boughth a straight-edge and usually do the first draft in ink.

[Fabio Ciccone]

I use fonts for it's more practical, but I admire those who can handwrite well, like Tasuya Ishida and Bill Watterson.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

Stan Sakai is the best letterer I've seen. Jeff Smith is close second, but he's not as consistent.

[Rhenny]

At it's neatest, my handwriting is chicken scratch. At its worst, my handwriting could be mistaken for some archaic derivative of cuneiform.

Therefore, fonts are essential.

You get the gold star of the day!!! You have used Cuneiform in a sentence I never expected that!! (or the Spanish Inquisition for that matter..)

I say font's looks swanky and professional!

[Kirb]

I'm on the fence, but leaning towards handwriting.

Both have their advantages. Spy pretty much hit on the main points.

Handwriting has that special 'human' touch, as well as complete control
over every letter.

Fonts can pull off a lot of things that handwriting can't. (easily, at least.)
It has the consistency that hand lettering can lack. Especially useful when
you need to write extreeeeemely small.

I use fonts.

But most of all I'm spiteful because my handwriting sucks.

[Tenma]

Handwriting is time-consuming and I've never seen it look as nice as a good font. If you want control over the way every letter looks, just rasterize the type.

[YKA]

I totally agree with Nervous Spy when he writes:

"Hand lettering is definitely preferable, but it takes a lof of skill and a lot of time and effort. And using fonts is definitely better than bad hand lettering."

Not only is hand-lettering a highly specialized technique, it has become very difficult to find the right tools for it.
And if you don't do it everyday, you lose it.

[Jerseycajun]

Although I would say that it depends on the style of the strip, and the inclinations of the artists themselves...

I will say that it's very hard to beat the advantage you have in being able to make modifications to your dialog if you happen to suddenly have a brilliant turn of the words right before you upload. It's happened to me and I can't imagine how frustrated I would have been had I been faced with the decision to upload a less funny gag, or a superior one, but with a significant delay.