I wrote an article some time ago with Richard Starkings, it was an interview about himself and the coming of age of digital lettering in comics. Here is the unedited version of the article that appeared in the Australian Cartoonists’ Association magazine Inkspot #52. Here goes …
Lettering is a fine art form, one that can enhance the look of finished art. Some people didn’t find my lettering very appealing and I made the decision to use digital lettering and was criticized for it. I interviewed a well known industry letterer and founder of ComicBookFonts.com, Richard Starkings to find out more about fonts and lettering.
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LEE: Why should someone use digital lettering?
RICH: There are so many comic books being published today (by which I mean so many individual titles, not millions of copies) in so many countries throughout the world, that publishers in America, Japan and Europe are foolish not to be thinking of the global market rather than just their local market. I moved from Pen lettering to Digital lettering not just because it allowed me to maintain a high standard and work faster, but also in reaction to my experiences in regard to the demands of the international market.
When I worked at Marvel UK in London, I would often find myself working with strip material purchased from French or Italian publishers. In those days we would be sent color comic strips as four sheets of film (CMYK) and the lettering on the black sheet would need to be stripped or masked out.
Unfortunately, this often meant that the balloons and captions that remained were either too small or not big enough for the English translation which we needed to drop in. On one occasion, I lettered an Italian adaptation of Disney’s PINNOCHIO, in ink, on the black sheet of the film itself at reproduction size. As I did so, I cursed the production process which forced me to cut and trim copy (or expand it) in order to make best use of the space available. It also frustrated me no end that the Italian letterer had placed balloons and captions over figures and other important story elements and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it!
As the pioneers of digital lettering, JG Roshell and I liberated the production process and dragged the business of comics kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. My intent was to provide international publishers with the tools to modify lettering, balloons, captions, sfx and titles for their market, without necessarily changing the graphic style of the book.
Consequently, our international customers have become some of our most eager and helpful customers. Jon Lovstad in Denmark often contacts us in order to ensure that certain fonts we have created and used are available for the translation of comics he has licensed from Marvel in New York. We create International characters specifically to meet the needs of licensees like Jon.
LEE: Who should use computer fonts for their lettering?
RICH: Well, aside from publishers with an eye on the global market, anyone who has terrible penmanship! Bad lettering can ruin a great comic strip and, conversely, good lettering can make a bad comic strip look much better, even if it can’t save it entirely!
LEE: Is there a difference between your fonts in True type and Postscript formats? Is one format better?
RICH: Postscript fonts provide more accurate screen representation. Truetype fonts are easier to install, since a separate program, called ATMLite, isn’t required for Windows and Mac OS9. Generally, graphic designers use PostScript and more casual users will go with Truetype. They are both generated from the same source files, and provide the same final output.
We are currently working to convert our library to the newer Opentype format, which provides the benefits of both older formats, and is also both Mac and Windows compatible.
LEE: Which font would you use to help carry or reflect the mood of the artwork or Are there some general terms of identifying a mood in a font?
RICH: Well, I’d choose the font that best reflects or complements the mood of the artwork! I usually do so in collaboration with the artist and/or writer. Artists generally have a better idea of what suits the art best, for obvious reasons, as they’re concerned with lineweight and the softness, or harshness of the lettering style, but writers like Kurt Busiek and Jeph Loeb often have strong ideas as well.
For example; Ladronn wanted a very sharp and dangerous look to the lettering for HIP FLASK, whereas J Scott Campbell wanted something softer and more curvaceous for DANGER GIRL.
LEE: What made you decide to sell your secrets to the trade by making and selling fonts and publishing a book on lettering? Didn’t that upset some of the pro’s?
RICH: The letterers and creators who encouraged me when I was starting out in England were as eager to teach as I was to learn. The goal was always to make comics look good, not to corner the market.
When I moved to the States and pushed the industry to work digitally, I was widely regarded by pen letterers as The Anti-Christ! Looking back I see that I was just a convenient outsider hand letterers could use as a target for their anxiety and fears. I wonder if anyone of them considered how xenophobic this appeared to me at first. I was lucky to have JG as an American voice of reason and understanding. Nevertheless, it’s always been a source of disappointment and regret that Tom Orzechowski — whose work was an inspiration — voiced bitterness toward me and made the issue of progress a personal matter. John Costanza, another pen lettering giant, was gruff with me on the one occasion I spoke to him, and Jim Novak was clearly suspicious but quite complementary.
The younger guys, like Chris Eliopoulos and Ken Lopez, who have perhaps benefited the most by following the trail we cut through the forest, also made some personal remarks about me in the early days of digital lettering but now Kenny works with Comicraft fonts on a daily basis and Chris has created an Orzechowski font for the X-Men. Had JG and I been so brazen ten years ago Tom would have had my head on a spike. Ah, well, it’s easier to follow than to lead…
More than ten years ago, Walt Simonson’s THOR lettering artist, John Workman, sent me a very depressing letter predicting only doom and gloom for comic letterers in particular and comics in general. But hey, comics are still here in 2004 — and thriving. Not the fuddy-duddy Marvel and DC Comics we grew up on of course, I’m talking about Manga!
Still, it saddens me that so many talented letterers shied away from digital lettering and allowed younger artists to pick up the torch.
We finally decided to publish COMIC BOOK LETTERING, THE COMICRAFT WAY to assist our online course DIGITAL LETTERING FOR COMIC BOOKS which we teach every fall under the auspices of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). And, of course, now Todd Klein, who guarded his own lettering secrets for many years, has his own book in stores, THE DC GUIDE TO COLORING AND LETTERING.
Selling the fonts made so much sense to me from Day One. It freed us from service and allowed us to make quality comic book fonts available to amateur comic book creators and publishers overseas.
LEE: You’ve converted the handwriting/lettering of some of the big names in the industry, how do they feel about the selling of their signature letters as a font on your site for anyone to use? Weren’t they wary that they didn’t want someone else using their lettering?
RICH: The first artist we created a font for was Paul Smith, and, Yes, he has been wary about allowing people to use his signature font — he paid for its creation and has not allowed us to sell it. Jim Lee, Jeff Campbell, Joe Mad and Tim Sale were very happy for us to sell their styles commercially, particularly as it meant that we did not charge them for the fonts’ creation. We’re planning on creating a new style for Campbell’s WILDSIDERZ book.
LEE: What do you find are the most common errors made by new and upcoming letterers? (I’d even suggest the errors some cartoonists make in their comic strip lettering as well)
RICH: Caps lock “I” in the middle of a word or at the beginning of a sentence. Too much air in a balloon. Too little air in a balloon. Timid sfx. Over confident sfx. Titles that don’t suit the story being lettered. Fonts that don’t suit the art. Fat balloon tails. Thin balloon tails. You name it!
For more information visit :
http://www.balloontales.com
http://www.comicbookfonts.com
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Okay so I'm going to need your help on this one, I'm participating in the annual Animation Magazine Pitch Party 2008!