Lettering

As Lettering (of English. Letter : Letter) the label is of speech bubbles in comics called. The person who creates the lettering is called a letterer , their activity is called verb lettering , which is also used in the book industry as a technical term for stamping letters on a book cover, which is usually leather.

The letterer writes both the text and additional onomatopoeic terms, for example "PENG!", In the comic and should a. also be able to design a comic book logo. For his area of work, the letterer should have knowledge of calligraphy and he must be able to adapt the font, size and style to the respective comic.

Letterers have an extended task who first have to convert a foreign language comic (such as a manga ) that has already been published in a language- neutral manner. B. to prepare for the German edition. This may lead to costly retouching work and interventions into the original graphics to also bildeinnehmend scale sound Words exchange (z. B. English. "EEEEK" against Germany. "QUIETSCH!"). It is important to recreate the effects originally shown (color gradients, hidden image elements, shadows, distortions, etc.) as true to the original as possible.

While sophisticated comics are still lifted by hand, large comic publishers use mostly digitized comic fonts and DTP programs to fill the speech bubbles with text for reasons of time and cost .

Letterer is not a teaching profession in Germany, but a specialized activity that is carried out manually by graphic artists or calligraphers, in DTP by media designers .

Both the Eisner Comic Prize and the Harvey Award have a category for the best letterer.