The font Speech Bubbles offers a convenient way to integrate text and image. 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 visually the sound of the message. The font includes a total of seventy outlines and seventy bubble backgrounds selected from a survey of historic forms. What follows is a discussion of my process researching and developing the font, as well as a few user suggestions. My work on the Speech Bubbles font began with historic 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 the need to use another font, like 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 & Hobes), Hergé (TinTin), Franquin, as well as Walt Disney. The most inspiring was the early Krazy Kat and Ignatz (around 1915) from George Herriman. I also studied 1980’s classics Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen, Frank Miller’s Ronin and Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vandetta. Contemporary work was also a part of my research—like Liniers from Macanudo and 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. In the end I limited my work down 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, as it is typical to early comic strips, in which there are often print misalignments. Also, rather than work in the classic white background with black outline, one can work with colors. 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 that is useful for both pure comic purposes or more complex typographic projects. Use Speech Bubbles to give your message the right impact in your poster, ad or composition.

Add a little sparkle to your designs with Crystal Sky! A clean & modern signature-style font set, perfect for creating authentic hand-lettered text quickly & easily. With exaggerated strokes and an extra bouncy baseline, Crystal Sky has an unmistakable charm; perfect for logos, wedding stationery, cards, gift designs, product packaging and handwritten quotes. ★ New Update • Crystal Sky Hearts! Add some passion to your Crystal Sky text with Crystal Sky Hearts, a new font included in your download! These bonus designs add a beautiful, flowing decorative heart at the beginning, middle & end of your Crystal Sky Script text at the click of a button. Crystal Sky is packed full of great features to give you plenty of customisation options; Crystal Sky Alt • This font includes an entire alternate lowercase glyph set. If you wanted to avoid letters looking the same each time to recreate a custom-made style, or try a different word shape, simply switch to this font for an additional layout option. Crystal Sky Caps • Have you ever noticed that script fonts tend to be a bit tricky when it comes to typing in all-caps? 'Crystal Sky Caps' includes a totally separate set of A-Z letters - designed to work in harmony with each other during those moments when you need to hit your caps-lock button and go a bit wild! ★ New! Crystal Sky Hearts • Simply install this as its own separate font, and type any a-z or A-I character in this font to generate 1 of 35 heart decorations, designed to pair beautifully with the Crystal Sky Script font. (Please see the image above for a use guide).