Hey everyone! I put this here because this looked like the best place for it... Got a question for all you wise folks out there. Which is.. In my Girls From T.N.A. comic / graphic novel I have been using a particular font for the speech bubbles until just recently. The font is (gasp) Comic Sans. In perusing many of the graphics forums I've discovered that using this font places me somewhere between pond scum and brain-eating amoebas on the food chain. Silly me.. I thought it was a nice, flowing, easy-to-read font, but it seems to have a horrid reputation in graphic arts circles. Soooo..... Before I get Chapter 7 off and running, does anyone have any suggestions for a good "speech" font that won't condemn me to the depths of the 7 hells for using it? Thanks in advance!

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Take a look at . . . https://blambot.com/

A lot of their fonts are NOT free, depending on how serious your are about your comic, that may or may not be an issue, they're not terribly expensive. It looks like there are some that have a free license for non-profit/indie use as well, so poke around.

The knock on comic sans isn't so much that its particularly a bad font, ifs just that, much like papyrus or any of the other native MS fonts, its the first stop for any one looking for anything more interesting than MS Sans, as such its used constantly, often times in places where it wasn't a good choice, unlike using for it, gasp, an actual comic. Basically, its the "lazy" choice, and when you're talking art and design, that's going to frowned upon. There's no real harm in soldiering on with it for comic work, but it certainly doesn't hurt to see if you can't find something you like more.

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I have always liked Comic Sans because it looks like my handwriting.

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Jeff

Renderosity Senior Moderator

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I believe Comic Sans was one of the first fonts that didn't look like type, or calligraphy that was widely spread so people used it too often and for too many of the wrong documents. The first complaints I saw about it were for professional documents. Later I saw more general complaints. I don't know why it should be an issue for comics. It's Sans' font in Undertale so it is used still. If you want a different handwriting-looking font, a few are Bradley Hand ITC, CAC Crazy Legs, Catchup, Duncan, Funky, Graphite Light ATT, Handy Candy, Ink Free, Kid Print, Kristen ITC, Litterbox icg, MV Boli, Note this, and Polo. These have varying degrees of neatness and I can't promise they won't get you condemned. I downloaded most of my fonts for free, but some were installed with software. I couldn't tell you which were which.

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A while back I had a font called "First Grade" that looked like kid's handwriting, like it was written by a first grader. I forget where I got it from tho.

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Jeff

Renderosity Senior Moderator

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I've had a look around Blambot - actually found a couple free fonts that look decent. A couple friends on another site sent some links as well.. One can never have to many fonts, after all... ?

I've settled on Bauhaus Rounded for my T.N.A. comic (at least for now..), as it seems to flow nicely and is easy to read as CS is. But the general consensus I've been seeing is pretty much in line with Warlock279's posting as far as CS being overused for stuff other than comics. Quite a fascinating little side-journey..

In the meantime:

???

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

You should ignore bad comments about your use of font, really! If it works for you then use it! ;)

RodS posted at 5:23PM Tue, 14 January 2020 - #4376518

I've had a look around Blambot - actually found a couple free fonts that look decent. A couple friends on another site sent some links as well.. One can never have to many fonts, after all... ?

Oh, believe me, one CAN have too many fonts!

Way back when, I had a student license for the Corel Graphics suite, and it came with a disc of fonts. A full CD worth of nothing but fonts! Fonts as you know are tiny in file size, imagine how many will fit on a CD! I installed . . . every . . . single . . . one . . . along with a couple hundred I'd collected from the net. At which point, loading any software that used fonts, became a gamble as it had to read thru and load a folder of several thousand fonts. Assuming the program made it thru that process, actually finding even a useful font, or that one font, that you really like, but can't quite remember the name of ... becomes a daunting task to say the least.

Eventually I learned to use the nifty "font manager" software that came with the suite, and only kept about a hundred or so fonts around at any given time. I still have a bit of a habit of "collecting" fonts when I run across them, but its balanced out these days with the bad habit of saving them, and never getting around to installing it, now I only really add fonts if its for a specific use, and I try to get rid of the ones I don't use shortly after.

The amount of fussing over the tiniest of differences in fonts for design work, can be mind boggling. Its a rabbit hole for sure, and a very deep one at that, if you're not careful!

These days, on the rare occasion I'd need a font for a design of some sort, that I can't just "free hand" a few letters for, I think, I'd find the native MS font that I like the most, then I'd find a font that looks as much like that as possible, if anybody calls me on it, I can just "ah-hah! but its actually [xxxxx]!" them.

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