Machine Lettering; or, Whatever Happened to Hand Lettering?

Comments ²¹

1. Frank Mariani

   I spent years as an old-school hand-lettering sign painter. No doubt, the personality of hand-painted signs took a back seat to computerized productivity, but it was a business first and an art second. Speed, baby, speed. The very best work I see now is on custom race car lettering; a hybrid effort that uses the speed and precision of computer-cut stencils or vinyl along with the unique script of a particular artist.
   In cartooning and comics, I find it helpful to use a digital font to get the letter height, line spacing, and line breaks down pat and then (time permitting) ghost that layer and hand-letter over it on another layer.

2. Atanwat

   Although I generally prefer hand-lettered dialog to computer lettering, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the latter, as long as it is well-written and properly composed. In many cases, the primary defect in computer lettering is not the computer, but rather the idiotic fonts that some authors force their readers to deal with.

   1. Atanwat

      Update: Today’s “Humpday” article included an example of one of the worst computer fonts ever used for cartoon dialog: see Scott Hilburn’s “The Argyle Sweater“.

3. Ted Dawson

   Interesting stuff. Todd Klein is awesome. Lettering has been one of my favorite parts of cartooning since I was a kid. Good hand letterers always bring so much extra to comics.

   Certainly traffic management has changed for comic book production, but in other areas of comics and illustration, I think the big drive toward typesetting has been simply that a great number of cartoonists simply hate it.

   I don’t find personally that digital is faster, but I guess it depends on the person. I did make a font from my hand Lettering when it first became possible, just in case.

   My favorite letterers were Schulz, Klein, Orzechowski, Grace Kremer, Carl Barks, Watterson, Patrick McDonnell… probably others, but they often weren’t credited.

4. Darryl Heine

   Were the 1990”s to circa early 2000’s Tumbleweeds comic strips with typewritten word balloons?

   1. D. D. Degg  (admin)

      Tom K. Ryan switched to machine lettering on June 24, 1991 for the dailies, August 4, 1991 for the Sundays.

   2. Ted Dawson

      I remember that. Ryan’s hand lettering was so precise it often looked too good to be hand lettered. I recall the first iteration of non-hand lettering was kind of an awful monotype font. I thought he was using a typewriter at the time.
      … Finally found something from R.C. Harvey with examples that says he used a Selectric at first, and then probably a computer. He was getting older, and I can relate. Lettering is a lot harder on the hands now. http://rcharvey.com/hindsight/tkryan.html

5. Eric

   I guess this might be a good spot to see if anyone remembers one of the great artistic magazines of all time U&lc,(https://typography.guru/directory/magazine/ulc-r199/), which went out of business at the same time as the old century did.

   Typography and calligraphy are art forms in their own right, and sometimes a well-crafted letterform will outdo the figure drawing.

   Look at Walt Kelly’s POGO and how he used it. Several of his characters spoke in fonts: Deacan Mushrat spoke in Fraktur (often characterized as “the German typeface”, now mostly limited to the masthead of Newspapers), Sarcaphogus McAuber in copperplate, and, of Course, P.T. Bridgeport in whatever the heck it was that font was called.

   During the time he worked in the comics for Dell, he did most of his own lettering, but when Pogo went syndicated, George Ward inked the lettering on the newspaper strip, and later on, Henry Shikuma took over the duties.

   Ward and Shikuma were among the very best, as they helped translate Kelly’s typographic vision into the strip. I’m surprised they weren’t mentioned.

   Back when I was a kid, there was a panel named PIXies (by a guy named Jack Wohl), which was nothing but typography. Someone should revive it.

   1. Ted Dawson

      I remember that magazine, which was invaluable, and I’m embarrassed to say that I just now figured out what the name means… I guess my mind just processed it as a design.

   2. Jackgibs

      Did I miss it?? What DOES it mean??

      1. Paul Berge

         UPPER & lower case, I’d say

6. Jonathan Lemon

   When I took over the art on Alley Oop seven years ago, it was my intention to hand letter the strips, but the syndicate insisted on using a font “for ease of translation” because the files needed to be converted into several languages. Apparently, the process on porting hundreds of strips for foreign markets is much more efficient if you can just open and type directly into digital files.

   1. Joseph Nebus

      I am curious if you know what non-English markets _Alley Oop_ is in! Or if the syndicate just wants a standard for everyone regardless of distribution.

7. Charles Brubaker

   I used a font made from my handwriting for “The Fuzzy Princess”, but when I started “Lauren Ipsum” in 2022 I went with hand-lettering. It was actually faster for me to letter by hand than using a font. I rarely use a font for my cartoons these days.

8. Francis Bonnet

   Hand lettering can look beautiful, and I really appreciate cartoonists who are skilled at it. But for my own strip, it just takes more time than it’s worth. I often go back and change or rewrite dialogue after the art is finished, and the computer makes that process clean and easy (especially after multiple rounds of changes). I used to hand letter my strip, but after I created my own font I knew I would never go back.

   1. Geo Gant

      I’m in a pretty similar boat. I’m a computer guy (I built the computer I create my comics with) so doing everything digitally was always my go-to method. I do create my own brushes and fonts in order to make things feel as natural as I can, though.

9. Paul Berge

   Traveling in Italy several years ago, I bought a Peanuts book in Italian to read on the bus. I was struck by how well the dialogue writer mimicked Schulz’s handwriting.

10. Mike Tiefenbacher

    Computer lettering is design, but it’s not drawing.

    The reality in today’s comic books is that so many of today’s artists are working 100% digitally, so there is literally no original artboard to hand letter ON. The compositing of the balloons can only be done on the computer, so even if you do the lettering by hand, it must be supered over a digital image, so you’ve really wasted a step in both practical and the time it takes to print out a digital page, do a plastic or paper layover, letter it, then photograph you work. No way would that ever pay you back for your labor.

    I’ve actually got no quarrel with computer lettering if the font looks good. Many are hideous or unreadable to me, but that’s purely a matter of taste. What I do object to is crediting someone with lettering when all they did was do the layout, using a font they did not design themselves. It is (apparently) easy to create your own font if you’ve got the incredible patience to perfect one. Making that font workable is another story. And I am not a fan of using a different font for each character; it’s tempting as a novelty, but awful design-wise.

    I’d bring back thought balloons if I had the power, but I don’t. Narration with color or emblem identification of who’s speaking can be incredibly confusing.

    What I hate is the total lack of variety in the choice of display lettering, especially story titles and sound effects. Unique story titles may take a bit more effort and time, but that small sacrifice would pay off so much. Think about even the most common stories of the ’60s, and how much your memory of those stories was due to the exquisite story titles by Sam Rosen or Gaspar Saladino. Don’t get me started on cover logos where too many are based on simple customizing of existent commercial fonts. If everything were as bland as they are today, I’m certain that lettering wouldn’t have even registered on my “skills to learn” when I went to art school. (Sadly, the school I attended didn’t have a lettering course, per se (it was part of my design class), so I got no instruction in it and my subsequent lettering jobs were gotten using self-taught skills, if they could even be so described.)

    At least I’ve seen some recent efforts to ditch the perfect oval balloons of the past thirty years, which, having read comics for most of my seventy years (including the ugly Leroy lettering of E.C. Comics and WONDER WOMAN, Charlton’s two different unattractive typewriter faces and Marvels commercial type experiments in the ’90s and ’00s), gives me some hope that less mechanical lettering design may be the trend of however many more years comic books have in the future.

11. Frank Frazee

    What are some good apps to turn one’s handlettering into a font?

    1. Francis Bonnet

       The easiest app that I’ve found is called iFontMaker. The app is around $8 and it allow you to hand draw your own font using either an Apple Pencil or your finger directly in your iPad. After you draw the entire alphabet, numbers, and other characters, you can adjust them as needed until it looks the way you like.

12. Ted Dawson

    I’m currently reading Patrick McDonnell’s “The Super Hero’s Journey,” and it’s a treat to see Todd Klein’s lettering. So much love went into this.