Choosing Fonts for Your Manga or Webcomic (Part 1)
Fonts are one of those funny things. A lot of people never even notice them- unless they’re bad. They’re one of those silent glues holding a work of fiction together, noticeable only ever by their failings.
The world of fonts is really confusing, and it took me ages to get my bearings and figure out how I wanted to go forward with typesetting my manga. So I wanted to give other artists a bit of a leg up by sharing some of what I’ve learnt. I’m going to focus primarily on font choices for manga here, but this information should hopefully be applicable to any type of comic!
Starting with manga! At some point, when deciding what type of font to use in English translated manga, one type won out. I don’t know why, because I think it’s pretty ill-suited to most manga, but it’s basically the same type of font you see in a lot of Western comic books and newspaper comic strips. It looks like this:
I personally don’t think these fonts are that suited to a lot of manga. It works great for shounen- you want reading to be as easy and quick as possible so that you aren’t distracted from fast-paced fight scenes. But it’s not well-suited to shoujo, or to more introspective manga aimed at adult readers, either. It’s become a lazy choice for manga typsetting, the easy default regardless of whether it suits a series or not. They get the job done and they’re wonderful fonts, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t think they add anything to the manga they’re used in a lot of the time, and my personal opinion is that your font choices should do just that.
Back in the 90s Tokyopop did try a few different options. Cardcaptor Sakura and Magic Knight Rayearth both used Times New Roman (yes, seriously, they were that cheap) in its original run. Not the most exciting choice, perhaps, but on the other hand it does lend a nice novel-like feel to the typesetting.
The one where I really think they hit gold was Sailor Moon. (Yes, I know, what a shock, I love something about SM). The font they used for it probably ALSO came for free on their programmes back then (it’s called Formal 436 and can still be bought today), but its delicate curves were particularly well-suited to a shoujo manga with fantasy and magical girl themes.
The other main font they used was...wait, it has a ton of names. Cascade, Cassia, Formal 471... This leads into a different discussion about what a nightmare font licensing is, so let’s leave that alone for now! Anyway, it’s an absolutely beautiful font with elements of brush painting, woodcut, and calligraphy. It’s very, very uniquely suited to a shoujo series.
All in all, these font choices were great for a feminine series with fantasy and scifi elements. It seems like Tokyopop really pulled out all the stops for their flagship license, and it shows. These pages are really dynamic and fun to read, and I think the fonts definitely contribute to it.
In Japanese manga, switching between different Japanese scripts can lend a lot of flavour to the text.
At the top is a hand-drawn word with a bubbly appearance. Then Mina says ‘ii otoko’ in katakana just to make it stand out from the rest of the text. The ‘V’ in Sailor V is written in English, which stands out better than only spelling out the Japanese pronunciation of ‘bui’. Then ‘The End’ is written in English. So it all stands out!
English doesn’t have multiple alphabets (thank goodness!). So we can instead create this effect by mixing up our font choices. More on that later!
Lettering in Western Comics
This is not a subject which I’m particularly familiar with, I’ll admit right away. But I still thought it was important to touch on it. A lot of Western comics actually don’t use fonts- they’re hand lettered! In general a lot of Western comics published in the more traditional model are collaborative efforts. You’ll see separate credits for writers, pencils, inks, colours, lettering... A different person handles each task.
I’m only familiar with a couple of hand-lettered comics, including Bee and Puppycat and Fionna and Cake, which have really adorable lettering which combines elements of a cute girly handwritten appearance with a more script like appearance. And without the limitations of a digital font, all sorts of creative things can be done with them. The font can basically just go anywhere you want it to.
You can see that in some cases the speech bubble is curved, and the letters curve with it! Doing that sort of thing with a digital font is an absolute nightmare, and much easier with hand-lettering. And it looks so cute and dynamic on the page!
And of course, the standard font used in English translated manga today is based on the lettering styles used in both newspaper comic strips and superhero comics.
Its primary purpose is to be easy to read- very useful in particular for newspaper strips which were printed in small sizes and on cheap paper.
Creatively, hand-lettering offers you a lot of freedom and the ability to make some really artistic choices. But it’s also not very practical for single artists. It’s a totally different skill to drawing- I’m sure I’m not the only artist out there who has ‘doctor’s handwriting’ and couldn’t letter a comic to save her life! And not only do I not have the resources to hire someone to letter my manga for me- I don’t want to. I like making every page 100% by myself and having full creative control. So whether this approach works for you may depend both on your skills (if you’re already into, say, calligraphy, you might be able to letter your comic yourself!) and your preferences regarding collaborative work.
This is some of the stuff to keep in mind stylistically, but before we continue with adding fonts to comics, there’s a lot of fuss to go through when actually finding fonts which you can safely use! Font licensing is a total mess, to be frank. I’ll be going over that in part two, along with covering the main types of fonts out there and where to find fonts to use in your comics!
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