7/3/15 - Notes on Method - Comics / Typography

"...I think you should try thinking about clarity[...]A crucial place to focus is on your lettering. In your sketchbooks, copy typography that appeals to you, and approach your cartooning the way good typography is designed, balancing positive and negative spaces so that your panels "read" quickly and clearly. Cartooning can be thought of as graphic design, and as a typography of icons, or maybe just as having good handwriting, if your handwriting also includes a system of complicated emojis. In your sketchbooks try developing your own fonts—nothing fancy, just letterforms you like—and then play around with using them in non-sequiturs and to say offensive things, whatever gives them energy and keeps it interesting. Create your own "fonts" of  imagery too–instead of drawing a character from scratch each time, create a system in which you limit poses and character sizes to a only a few standard sizes and views, then trace those into panels before customizing the figure to whatever the needs are of that particular moment in the story (e.g., Bushmiller, Neil Jam, Segar, etc.). Another recommendation is to use graph paper (e.g., G. Bell), or (I prefer this–>) paper with dots in a grid pattern (link). This will keep you on track with at least the horizontal and vertical lines. Grids are very important for clarity..." 

"...the greatest cartoonists often have their own individual "feel" for typography, their own "font suitcases." When we think of the great cartoonist X we can also usually think of what is [X]-ian, their style or aesthetic that includes more than just the comics—there's also the "types" of typography they tend to use, a sense of design ..."

"...a general rule to remember is that if your hand-writing is difficult to read, your cartooning is probably difficult to read. Experiment with shrinking and enlarging your panels to get a sense of what size is ideal for legibility in different contexts..."

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