Index Content Placement Style Art Packaging

3. Style

3.1) Consistency
 Stylistic consistency for manga basically comes down to a few things. The first is font choice. Font choice can often indicate, more intuitively than bubble markings, what kind of text is seen (i.e. spoken, thought, narration, etc.). You shouldn't use the same font for everything, but using a separate font for everything becomes distracting. SFX are a bit of an exception, since it's generally obvious that they are sfx regardless of font choice, but other than that, try to pick a few fonts to represent certain types of text.

Consistency in font size is important as well. Try to stick to a few font sizes (again, sfx and shouting are exceptions), and be consistent throughout the chapter as well as the series. Don't be afraid to change font size when text is too big or small, but remember--not only is changing font sizes all the time tedious, but it's also distracting.

There's also stylistic consistency--what kind of text effects, layer effects, patterns, and so on. Again, just use your best judgement. If it looks tacky, get rid of it, even if it was in the raw. If it looks too plain, feel free to spice it up a bit, even if it was plain in the raw (but don't go overboard).

A few things to look out for though:
3.2) Legibility & Visibility
 Some fonts are so fancy and decorative that you can't read what's written anymore. Font size can be an issue here, since some fonts are legible at larger sizes, but start to degrade and jumble at smaller sizes. A lot of factors can play into this, but try and make sure that text is legible at fit image zoom.

Even for standard fonts without much flourish or decor, shrinking the font size excessively is bad too. Additionally, compressing the font in one dimension doesn't help much. You may be preserving one dimension, so techncially the text is bigger, but you're also skewing the proportions, making the text hard to read anyway.

Don't ever use smallcaps mode for main dialogue text. It looks ugly, especially with an already all-caps font, and screws up the line spacing. Also, never use manga temple (not even for isolated bubbles, and defnitely not as your main dialogue font). It's ugly and hard to read.

Index Content Placement Style Art Packaging