My typesetting on the first couple of chapters of HnFM is a little embarrassing because I was still learning the mechanics, but I went back and looked at the font choices and found little to complain about. That said, Hara's not the most creative mangaka where fonts are concerned, so I only needed about four fonts plus bold ital for the default speech font. There was a speech font, a handwritten sfx/keigo font, a loud sfx/shouting font, and a 'printed text on the cell phone' font. I was also in charge of editing on that one, so I had to figure out voices for the main characters as well.

Some of the hardcore shoujo scanlation groups put a lot of work into redraws and font choices, and with the exception of the occasional inappropriate curlicue font, they often do a good job at it. I've seen a lot of seinen scanlations that are either oblivious of the original fonts or are copying the mangaka's indifference to fonts (which is what I would see as the right thing to do in that case).


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Perhaps you're right, but I don't think it's totally unwarranted hate. It really is a terribly ugly font that makes everything look juvenile and screams MS Paint jobs. I would rather resort to Arial if I was forced to use a subpar font for typesetting, at least it's plain enough to be passable. But then I'm extremely biased because I'm an elitist typesetter, so I will actually not read scans that use ugly fonts. Irrational, but true. :3

Something tells me you haven't read the first couple of volumes of Black Lagoon scanlated by Akatsuki Manga. No one I've seen in scanlation has come close to matching Vorbis' work there. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he'd actually been a professional letterer at some point in time.

What a retarded poll. Sure I do care about fonts, but you at least could have provided examples in the OP. Or better use web fonts to write each option. Do you even think about voting scenario a second?

Thank you very much for changing the poll. The first one was like an insult to us typesetters, for me at least.

Something I've seen once or twice that I thought was really cool, but for some reason, no one EVER does it. Different fonts for different characters, specifically using fonts that reflect a character's manner of speech, or tone of voice, or even their personality. IE: use a fancy font for a high-class type character who speaks more formally, or a font that looks like some sort of childish scrawl for a character that isn't exactly very bright. I think where I saw it before was in the scanlation of Urusei Yatsura, at least in some of the early chapters. I know I've seen this technique used elsewhere before, but I don't remember where. Like using a font that gives that "crazy" feel to a character going through a psycho/yandere moment.

This is the day of machine lettering in comics and manga both. From what I have seen, the people typing the text into the bubbles are at the very bottom of the manga production food chain. I doubt there's either the time or the artistic force from the letterers to cause such a thing to become commonplace. Lastly, let's not forget that basically all manga are black and white. Font style, weight, and outlining are all the changes that are available.

Further, many, maybe most mangakas seem to think of themselves as artists rather than authors. The text comes second, and a lot of them don't seem to understand or don't care what narrative tools they're leaving on the shelf by not doing more elaborate typography.

And if the mangaka doesn't do it, scanlators won't, as a rule, think to do it either. In my case, even if I thought of it, I would not, as a scanlator, 'put words in the mangaka's mouth' that way. It's the mangaka's story - I'm just bringing it to people (like me) who don't read Japanese.



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The fact that Comic Sans and Webdings are even in the options makes this poll a total joke.
Was that supposed to be troll bait or did the OP really think that it was hilarious? ._.


Last edited by Scyfon at 11:40 am, Jan 23 2013

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Everyday I'm tumblin'

Isn't that the same thing?, Either way, even if he did it as a joke, and he might, because i had never seen, nor i wish to see, comics sans in a scan, it sadly still has most of the votes on an actual font, second only to Wild Words...

Well, some of these options (and opinions here) really are hilariously...bad. And some decent ones are still missing but I don't care anymore. Voted for Wild Words since that's what I used to prefer to work with and most of the other options are awful. It's annoying when there is one or two fonts for everything in the chapter though. With white cut-out rectangles in MS Paint-
I don't think different font for each character as someone mentioned here is a good idea though, it's not easy to come over a lot comfortably readable fonts. It's a good idea to use different fonts for stuff like talking in foreign language of if there is someone special though. Or if the original uses different fonts for the characters, I guess. Generally if the original also uses different fonts for those situations. If it doesn't...well, why do it in translation. Just...nvm. Some of the "psycho" or otherwise special fonts some scanlators use are beyond painful on eyes and extremely hard to decipher. If it's being translated for the readers...they should be able to read it. Not stare at some childishly deformed horror-ish or curly beyond readable font.

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If for some reason you check my public lists, please be aware that is only a fraction of my lists. Not like it matters.

Legible and of readable size should be an option .