What the Font?! - A Manga Guide to Western Typeface

by Kuniichi Ashiya, Masayuki Yamamoto (Contributor)

A unique and engaging tool for learning about design using anthropomorphized Western fonts!

When the designer in a small production company disappears, Marusu is forced to take over the job of creating logos. Unfortunately, Marusu is a sales rep who doesn’t know the first thing about fonts. Luckily, Helvetica, the personification of that font, appears to guide Marusu into the world of typeface and design. Learn about typography in this fun manga story with anthropomorphic fonts as your guide!

Genres: Manga, Nonfiction, Comics, Graphic Novels, History, Design, Art

222 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 17, 2020

Reviews

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes you see a book on the library shelf so weird you just have to check it out immediately. Like a manga guide to fonts that gives each font a personification so they can talk about their origins and generally act corny. Between each cartoon chapter is a page of text summing up the history of the font. Silly and poorly drawn but educational all the same.

Mostly, I hadn't realized how many fonts were first literally written in stone, with typeface designers studying and copying letter styles from the engravings on ancient monuments and grave markers.

[Matthew Ward · Rating 1 out of 5]

I get what this book was going for, but just not my kind of book to read and enjoy. More informative than story driven.

[Annika Ballestro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love me a silly little book about fonts. A nice refresher.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who knows me knows that I do not read hardly anything outside nonfiction, history, politics, etc... This was recommended to me by a friend, and now that I work part-time as a bookseller, I thought I might need to expand my resources just a bit. That being said, I was actually really surprised by how much I enjoyed this easy read. It felt like the perfect choice to introduce me to manga, as it was both something I could learn from and easily understand/follow along. This is why some other reviews have me a bit puzzled; I think for its simplicity yet creative ideas and historical exploring that it deserves a full five stars. Who knew personifying fonts/typefaces would make learning about them so interesting? And though I do not think manga is my style, I am more than happy to place this on my bookshelf.

[Vanya Prodanova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Обикновено не пиша ревюта на манги, но не мога да не спомена, че тази манга е уникална ако някой се интересува от шрифтове, типография и т.н. Споменават се най-популярните. Отделно са представени като личности, чиито характеристики напълно отговарят на самите шрифтове. Много полезна и интересна информация, събрана компактно и разказана визуално. Разкошна е мангата.

[Jacqueline · Rating 3 out of 5]

cute layperson's introduction to some commonly used typefaces by way of personification. what might have been dry and mundane is lightened by concise presentation and a smidge of hit-or-miss humor. some characters, like the typefaces they represent, start to blend together after a few chapters, but i like how the creator chose to incorporate perceived and historical aspects of each in their respective personages and styles of dress.

primarily descriptive nonfiction, there isn't much of a story here, and mc Murusu is pretty forgettable. the recognizable brand/usage examples and full alphanumeric fonts add comprehensive appeal. overall, i appreciated being enlightened on this eclectic, omnipresent subject.

[LG (A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Note: I realize that I use "typeface" and "font" pretty much interchangeably in this review, even though they're not really the same thing. But trying to figure out when to use one vs. the other was too confusing, so I left it as is.

Marusu works in the Sales department of a small company. The company's designer has gone AWOL, so Marusu is roped into laying out a proposal, the reasoning being that she can draw a little and is therefore best suited to fill in for the designer. However, she's definitely out of her depth and knows nothing about typefaces. That's when Helvetica, the personification of the Helvetica typeface, suddenly appears. He offers to introduce her to other typefaces, who can then each tell her a little about themselves, their specialties, and ways in which they've been used.

The book begins with sans serif types (Helvetica, Futura, Gill Sans, Arial, Franklin Gothic, Impact, Frutiger, DIN, Optima, Gotham), then moves on to the Roman (serif) types (Caslon, Garamond, Times New Roman, Bodoni, Didot, Clarendon, Rockwell, Centaur, Jenson). After that, it covers a few examples of script (Zapfino, Mistral, Comic Sans), display (Trajan, Peignot), and blackletter (Fette Fraktur) fonts.

Each font is introduced with a few pages of four-panel comics in which Marusu gets to know their personalities, work, and history a bit better. The margins contain a little extra information. Then at the end of their section there's a page of notes about the font (or fonts - some are covered in pairs): their category, classification, year of creation, designer(s), foundry, more detailed information about their history and creation, and a usage example or two. After that, there's a page with the font's upper and lower case letters, as well as numbers.

Each larger section (sans serif, Roman, other styles) ends with additional notes and images of logos or other things that use those fonts. The book ends with an attempt to give a more chronological perspective of all the typefaces covered. And of course Marusu finishes laying out the proposal. A list of references is included at the very end of the book.

I'll start by saying that I am definitely not a designer, and I know very little about fonts beyond how to recognize serif vs. sans serif ones. I am, however, drawn to edutainment-type manga. This wasn't too expensive and I knew it'd be an easy donation to the library I work at after I finished it, so I figured "hey, why not?"

The overall story was pretty weak - this definitely leaned more towards education than entertainment, with only one story element that was at all surprising and intriguing, although nothing was done with it (what was up with Helvetica calling Marusu "Ars"? was Marusu a typeface all along?). Theoretically, the personified typefaces could have worked as a way to remember each of their specialties, but their introductions were usually pretty brief, and their personalities were a little underwhelming.

Overall, I'm not sure this book is the best way to learn about typefaces. Even I realized, after a while, that the organization was kind of strange, almost reverse chronological. It made for some annoying moments, like when the text mentioned blackletter before it had even been explained what blackletter was. Also, it still bugs me that the author took the time to explain why Trajan has no lowercase letters but didn't even bring up the oddities in Didot's numbers. I did actually read the whole book, though, which probably wouldn't have happened if I'd attempted to read a textbook about typefaces, and I did learn a few things, so there's that.

The artwork got the job done but wasn't spectacular. The various characters' faces were cute, but Ashiya clearly had trouble with hands.

Additional Comments:

While writing this review, I noticed a typo in the table of contents. Didot is incorrectly called "Didoni." Oops.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

[Beau Manglass · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[nova]

you expect me, a graphic designer, to not pick up a manga with typeface gijinkas?? this was a delight and i actually learned a lot about the history! i'm turning off my designer brain to let zapfino slide but it's genuinely a great primer for like, typography vocab. and i actually appreciated it mentioning that comic sans is one of the most readable typefaces for folks with dyslexia! a fun little resource for beginners with some darling campy character design :')

[Hikarichan096 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una amiga me hizo elegir entre este y otros mangas más para regalarmelo y termine escogiendo este como regalo porque... Como no hacerlo?! Tipografias como personas! Era tengo que leerlo si o si, y eso termine haciendo.

No me arrepiento de haberlo escogido, fue super genial ver las tipografias que suelo usar o conozco como personas, de hecho, me gustaría otro volumen más con más tipografias, siento que necesito más de esto.

Fue muy detallado y entretenido, excelente manera de introducir a cualquier persona al uso de las tipografias de manera adecuada.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was very odd. Not terrible, but I'm not sure that anthropromorphizing fonts was really the best way to explain them.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 2020 “No Commitment Necessary” Manga Gift Guide

[Laura Santiago · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una comercial, Marusu, se encuentra en un aprieto. le han pedido que diseñe el logotipo de su nueva campaña, aunque ella no sabe apenas de diseño. Así es como conoce a Helvética una tipografía que le llevará al ‘Club de Investigación Tipográfica'.
Junto a Marusu descubriremos el carácter y los caracteres de cada una de las tipografías occidentales. Con una representación humana, abordaremos su historia, su trazo, su uso y sus éxitos más famosos. Y la verdad es que la guía es muy curiosa, de manera muy amena, vamos descubriendo no solo los diferentes tipos de letra, sino también las necesidades que hemos ido teniendo en comunicación, publicidad y en diferentes públicos.
No es un manga al uso, ya que no vamos a encontrar más historia que la del punto de partida (Marusu y su logo), pero sí que es verdad que como guía cumple las funciones al cien por cien. Por un lado, tendremos una parte de viñetas, donde la propia tipografía se presenta y explica, pero a su vez tendremos un texto final donde se resume de manera más técnica, así como el ejemplo del alfabeto y lugares de uso.
Más allá de la guía, a nivel de dibujo tendremos una interesante representación de las letras, que facilitarán la comprensión de algunos conceptos como el parecido entre letras o que sea más artística. Además, la expresión de los personajes y su movimiento hacen que algo que podría ser arduo, una guía de consulta, se convierta en algo divertido y amable al revisitarlo.
Aunque sea como curiosidad, os recomiendo mucho este tomo, en manga, sobre las tipografías. Si sois frikis de la edición os encantará y si solo os pica la curiosidad también. Espero que lo disfrutéis.

[Jurij Fedorov · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not bad as such it's just rather pointless. It's a book about explaining fonts yet I could have gotten the same information in a more clear and direct way way faster. So what's the point? It makes fonts into humans. Yet it's without color so it's hard to fully see and understand everything in the panels and all characters look similar. That overuse zoom and try to stay cute instead of informative. Using an outdated and ugly manga style that frankly needs to go away by now there are so many other ways to draw comics. The dialogue is confusing and reads like something written by a schizophrenic person yet I just think it's all badly written or badly translated. It's a mess.

So the font characters just confuse you. And initially I figured I needed to read right to left on the pages as there was no instruction and figured that the descriptions would use the font they talked about. Yet that's not the case. The fonts are presented post the chapter hence you read about something you have not seen yet. If they had used the font they talked about on the pages the book would have been considerably better. Overall I feel like a 1 hour Youtube video could easily have presented this in greater detail. So why spend many hours reading a confusing book with ugly manga style drawings with no color? I get the idea and I like the concept. But it just doesn't work here.

[Courtney · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this. I like manga and I like font/typeface, printmaking, elements of design, tidbits of history, aesthetic, etc.

However, it was boring & repetitive and I kept asking why they didn't use more of the very font they were talking about. Not using the fonts often felt rather counter of trying to establish what the font was. There were additional missing elements such as bold and punctuation elements; italics were sometimes discussed. Perhaps beyond the scope of the book, but I was also curious about accent marks because while not very common in English, I assume that they are somewhat common in French and German and I'm curious as to how did those typefaces handle them such as ç, é, ü.

I also disliked the style of the word balloons.

Maybe I'll pick up Just My Type: A Book About Fonts soon

[bunnies and books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Successful typography is informative and visually pleasing. This manga also fits that description.

I am a middle school computer graphics teacher. I find that one of my biggest challenges is getting students to understand typography. Most non-designers take it for granted and It’s difficult to convey the importance of thoughtful type selection.

I was so excited to find this book and even more to read it. My partner is also a designer and I stopped and had something to show him almost every page. It’s language was accessible to the middle school crowd but also packed in a lot of great info. I especially appreciated the summary pages and infographics.

I really recommend this book for anyone teaching graphic design, design students of any age, anyone looking to brush up on their typography or wanting to learn something new in a fun format.

[Debbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't read a lot of manga, but I know the rules, so I picked this one up. I've never been much of a font snob, not in comparison to friends and even some of my high school students, so I thought this might be a good introduction for me to typeface theory and history.

I got through the first four (I finished Arial) and really still didn't care. For someone who loves fonts, this is an awesome history book, with lots of info about where fonts came from, what famous companies use them, and how they're related to other fonts. The concept of having each font be a different character is clever, but I didn't feel like that part was as developed as it could be.

2 stars for clever idea with lots of awesome info in one place, but I am certainly not the target audience.

[Chapters · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the idea of this - gijinka versions for fonts - but the execution just didn't work for me. I enjoyed the character designs, but I was disappointed in the way the actual information was conveyed. Rather than incorporating it into the "narrative", the vast majority of the information is in sidebars next to the panels or in the paragraph summary at the end of each chapter. This gave the comics themselves a more childish level of text that was accompanied by the heavier info tacked on. Not really how I wanted to get the info, as the reason I was reading a comic instead of a book was that I find it harder to retain information that way.

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this more than I did. I did learn quite a bit about the history of several Western fonts and how they differ from one another. But the personalities of each font-as-a-character just didn't shine through. The comic was also structured like a yonkoma four-panel gag strip but there were never any gags. Whether that was due to translation or just the content of the comic, the final panels almost always fell flat.

Interesting if you want to learn about font in a more entertaining format than a textbook, but kind of a mess as a comic itself.

[Tatiana Alejandra de Castro Pérez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me parece un libro redondo para introducirse en la tipografía occidental, de hecho hasta creo que es útil como libro para sacar muchísima información para las oposiciones que tocan estos temas, como las de bibliotecas.

El libro tiene dos partes, una pequeña historia con Marusu en su pequeño aprendizaje sobre la tipografía y cómo son cada una y por otro tenemos muchas anotaciones de carácter más teórico sobre las fuentes, origen, tipos, diferencias, etc. y ejemplos de uso en marcas. La historia es sencilla, pero lo justo para hilarte toda la información a la perfección.

[Karen Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never read manga before, so this was a new experience: typefaces as characters with personality, explaining their strengths and uses to a newbie. A bit on the cutesy side for me, but don't be fooled: there's good info here. And if you love manga, well, here you are.
FMI see my blog post at A Just Recompense.

[Dave Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amusing and ingenious tour of major Western typefaces including classifications and history, along with notes on what differentiates, say, Bodoni from Times or Arial. But it's all done in anime style with each typeface represented by a person who exhibits the traits of the 'face in question. A must read for designers and typographers, my Dad would have loved it (if he could figure out the last-page-to-first-page reading direction of the manga!)

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an interesting and engaging informative book! I'm an office supply nerd and have always loved the different fonts and typefaces on computers and typewriters. My dad owns a printing machine business too, so quality and uniqueness of font has always been pointed out to me. I learned so much in this manga but in a fun and interesting way unlike anything I've read before. Highly recommended.

[Tricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first manga book and I came to it by browsing the graphic novel section during a date with Brian. The right to left format threw me off, but there was a graphic explaining it but I didn't find it until I finished the book. I appreciate the creativity involved in anthropomorphizing typefaces and incorporating history and uses into the characters.

[Sofia Safran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun and informative! I learned some new things about fonts that I didn’t know before (which I wasn’t expecting, because I used to be a professional graphic designer and have seen the Helvetica documentary 3 times).

I was hoping for the story to be a little more interesting, but liked the information well enough to finish the book.

[Claire G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up since I love fonts and their history, seemed like a cute idea! My assumption was correct and it was a very nice educational look into the history of many typefaces while being personified in a story. The characterization was well done and did a good job at explaining the vibe of the typeface. Definitely enjoyable!

[H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can you tell what makes each font different from the others? In this manga guide, learn about the different types of fonts and typefaces. After reading this, you'll be on the lookout for different fonts in everyday life on stores and advertising. Fun and informative.

[Robert Hanselman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book it was a fun and quirky way to learn about the history of different typefaces. Also this book treats Comic Sans with respect as it should, because that font is valid and I'm sick of people making fun of it.

[Janessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an interesting concept!

Sometimes I got lost in all the technical jargon, but it was made easier to follow because of its medium.

Don't know if I'd ever purchase this for myself, but I'd imagine it'd make a great reference tool for those interested in fonts!

[marcia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fun in concept, but doesn't work very well as a comic or a guide to fonts. I wish the history behind each font is incorporated into the story in a more natural way. Too much infodumping for me to enjoy.