Speech Bubbles


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The font Speech Bubbles offers a convenient way to integrate text and images. While the font can be used to design comics, it also gives the typographer a tool to make text speak – to give words conversational dynamics and to emphasize the sound of the message visually. The font includes a total of seventy outlines and seventy bubble backgrounds selected from a survey of historical forms. What follows is a discussion of my process of researching and developing the font and a few useful suggestions.

My work on the Speech Bubbles font began with historical research. My first resource was a close friend who is a successful German comic artist. I had previously worked with him to transform his lettering art into an OpenType font. This allowed his publishing house to easily translate cartoons from German to other languages without using another font, as Helvetica rounded.

My friend showed me the most exciting, outstanding, and graphically appealing speech bubbles from his library. I looked at early strips from Schulz (Peanuts), Bill Waterson (Calvin & Hobbes), Hergé (TinTin), Franquin, as well as Walt Disney. The early Krazy Kat and Ignatz (around 1915) from George Herriman was the most inspiring. I also studied 1980’s classics Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen, Frank Miller’s Ronin and Alan Moore, and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta. Contemporary work was also a part of my research—like Liniers from Macanudo and the work of Ralf König.

With this overview in mind, I began to work from scratch. I tried to distill the typical essence of each author’s or era’s speech bubbles style into my font. Ultimately, I limited my work to the seventy strongest images.

An important aspect of the design process was examining each artist’s speech bubble outlines. In some cases, they are carefully inked, as in most of the 80’s work. In others, such as with Herriman, they are fast drawn with a rough impetus. The form can be dynamic and round (Schultz) with a variable stroke width or straight inked with no form contrast (Hergé). Since most outlines also carry the character of the tool that they are made with, I chose to separate the outline from the speech bubble fill-in or background. This technical decision offers interesting creative possibilities. For example, the font user can apply a slight offset from fill-in to outline, typical to early comic strips, where there are often print misalignments. Also, one can work with colors rather than work on the classic white background with a black outline. Many tonal outcomes are possible by contrasting the fill-in and outline color.

The Speech Bubbles font offers a dynamic and quick way to flavor information while conveying a message. How is something said? Loudly? With a tint of shyness? Does a rather small message take up a lot of space? The font’s extensive survey of historic comic designs in an assembly is useful for both pure comic purposes and more complex typographic projects. Use Speech Bubbles to give your message the right impact in your poster, ad, or composition.


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If you are purchasing on behalf of a company, please select the size of your company (number of employees in total). For larger companies, please select multiples of 100 employees tier.

The Fonts work on all Windows, Mac, and Linux computers, as well as mobile devices like iPhones and iPads.

By purchasing this font you agree to Harald Geisler’s End User License Agreement (EULA), which can be viewed here.