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The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering
Ringo and Eagle award winning letterer and founder of Blambot.com--Nate Piekos--shares his insight into the world of comic book lettering in the upcoming The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering.
Piekos provides readers with the most in-depth tips and techniques ever published on the subject of digital comic book lettering in this exhaustive guide. He covers everything from creating lettering templates, emotive dialogue, and dynamic sound effects to developing design skills and building a lettering career in the comic industry.
Piekos provides readers with the most in-depth tips and techniques ever published on the subject of digital comic book lettering in this exhaustive guide. He covers everything from creating lettering templates, emotive dialogue, and dynamic sound effects to developing design skills and building a lettering career in the comic industry.
257 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 19, 2021
26 people are currently reading
111 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 23, 2022
The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering belongs in your studio if you make comics or zines. If you don't have a studio yet and aspire to make comics, you still need this book. I have been an illustrator for decades and taught a college level class on making zines. I learned a LOT in the first hour I spent with this book. For example, I did not know the "pucker and bloat " technique for making consistent thought balloons.
BA-BOOM! A great guide for pro or novice.
Nate Piekos, a master letterer, demonstrates the fine art of crafting individual letters and words. He goes far beyond these basics. His guidance on the art of placement of balloons and the lettering within the balloons is clear and well-illustrated.
Don't draw your own lettering? Use fonts downloaded from DaFont or Piekos's own excellent Blambot site? You still need this book. It will help you use those pro fonts effectively. There will always come a time where you need to draw a unique sound effect, or maybe a distressed variation of that font for a road sign. This book will be your guide.
5 stars. Recommended without reservation. There is so much gold in this guide I could go on all day, but I need to get to my drawing board!
BA-BOOM! A great guide for pro or novice.
Nate Piekos, a master letterer, demonstrates the fine art of crafting individual letters and words. He goes far beyond these basics. His guidance on the art of placement of balloons and the lettering within the balloons is clear and well-illustrated.
Don't draw your own lettering? Use fonts downloaded from DaFont or Piekos's own excellent Blambot site? You still need this book. It will help you use those pro fonts effectively. There will always come a time where you need to draw a unique sound effect, or maybe a distressed variation of that font for a road sign. This book will be your guide.
5 stars. Recommended without reservation. There is so much gold in this guide I could go on all day, but I need to get to my drawing board!
December 14, 2023
This books is absolutely essential if you are looking to get into lettering, hell even if you're a pro I'm sure you'll get something out of this too. What's so great about this book is how detailed it is with the technical aspects. Things like making sure your black text and strokes are set to overprint and 100k is driven home hard and that's real important when making comics. This book sets you up for success and is a breeze to read. This book has given me the confidence to letter my own book, let's see how that goes!
April 30, 2024
More information than I will ever need on how to do lettering on computers. I was more interested in the history and examples from other comics. If I remember right, the examples in this book were mostly from the authors own work, which is fine, but not really what I was hoping for.
January 14, 2022
This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 4.5 of 5
I have no desire to become a comic book letterer but I've been reading comic books (and graphic novels) for a long time and lettering was one of the few art forms in the comic book business that I didn't know much about. Until now.
As professed by the title, this is indeed The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering. Author Nate Piekos notes that there isn't a real guide book for comic lettering and his hope was to provide a useful resource with this books. He succeeds magnificently.
This is a very detailed 'how-to' book with step-by-step instructions for creating and placing the letting in comic books. From the best software to use, how to best fit words in a word balloon, to how to choose or create the looks of the word balloons.
I was surprised at how much work is involved on the letterer's end. There is a lot to bear in mind - though it undoubtedly becomes second nature as the letterer gets more experience. 'Little' things, like where to place the tail in the word balloon, or what shape it should be and even where on the panel the word balloons should be placed so the reader can follow the story but that the balloons don't negatively impact the art if possible.
The book is primarily filled with all the technical detail (the digital software to use, and how to set up and maintain time-saving steps within the program) any budding letterer would want. For me this information was much more than I needed since I wasn't looking to set up my own lettering business. But the portions that weren't technical detail were generally tips and tidbits that were fascinating.
What looked like the most fun was the creating of fonts and styles for the classic sound effect words ("Pow" "Blam" "Zzzzt" etc). It was also quite eye-opening to get a reference as to how much a letterer should be paid (per page) and what the entails.
I was glad to see a section, albeit brief, on hand lettering. Of course everything is done digitally today, but some of us grew up with the old-style, hand-lettered comics and it was nice to see the extra steps those people had to go through to finish the work.
There is no doubt that this will be the 'Bible' for comic book lettering for years to come, and it deserves to be. This is extremely well written and packed full of information from someone who's done the work and knows whereof he speaks.
Looking for a good book? The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering by Nate Piekos is not only a fantastic guide for anyone looking to work in the comic book industry, it is also a great peek at an often overlooked facet of the artistic look to a comic, giving the reader a new appreciation for what it takes to produce a graphic work.
I received a temporary digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.
I have no desire to become a comic book letterer but I've been reading comic books (and graphic novels) for a long time and lettering was one of the few art forms in the comic book business that I didn't know much about. Until now.
As professed by the title, this is indeed The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering. Author Nate Piekos notes that there isn't a real guide book for comic lettering and his hope was to provide a useful resource with this books. He succeeds magnificently.
This is a very detailed 'how-to' book with step-by-step instructions for creating and placing the letting in comic books. From the best software to use, how to best fit words in a word balloon, to how to choose or create the looks of the word balloons.
I was surprised at how much work is involved on the letterer's end. There is a lot to bear in mind - though it undoubtedly becomes second nature as the letterer gets more experience. 'Little' things, like where to place the tail in the word balloon, or what shape it should be and even where on the panel the word balloons should be placed so the reader can follow the story but that the balloons don't negatively impact the art if possible.
The book is primarily filled with all the technical detail (the digital software to use, and how to set up and maintain time-saving steps within the program) any budding letterer would want. For me this information was much more than I needed since I wasn't looking to set up my own lettering business. But the portions that weren't technical detail were generally tips and tidbits that were fascinating.
What looked like the most fun was the creating of fonts and styles for the classic sound effect words ("Pow" "Blam" "Zzzzt" etc). It was also quite eye-opening to get a reference as to how much a letterer should be paid (per page) and what the entails.
I was glad to see a section, albeit brief, on hand lettering. Of course everything is done digitally today, but some of us grew up with the old-style, hand-lettered comics and it was nice to see the extra steps those people had to go through to finish the work.
There is no doubt that this will be the 'Bible' for comic book lettering for years to come, and it deserves to be. This is extremely well written and packed full of information from someone who's done the work and knows whereof he speaks.
Looking for a good book? The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering by Nate Piekos is not only a fantastic guide for anyone looking to work in the comic book industry, it is also a great peek at an often overlooked facet of the artistic look to a comic, giving the reader a new appreciation for what it takes to produce a graphic work.
I received a temporary digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.
October 24, 2021
I certainly didn't expect the definitive guide to lettering comics, and word design craft used in logos, title panels and so on, but this must be it. No, with it coming from this publisher I thought we'd get a comic book that was all about comic book lettering, perhaps – panel after panel showing how it's done and what the effects and changes are. This is much more technical, efficient and complete – copious screen-grabs and in-process design steps give us the ultimate low-down on pretty much everything. The relevant templates for the relevant software, the short-cuts and programming of ourselves we must do to keep a high page-rate, the house grammar, not crossing the streams (sorry, tails)... there is so much here that is an eye-opener for someone who probably did dismiss lettering as one of the less essential parts of the comic craft. I did manage to think of one thing the book failed to cover (how to position floating boxed captions the exact same space away from the borders, as all books I see seem to do) but that doesn't mean this is not a superlative effort. For pros, novices, the interested and the never-gonnas alike, this must be a five star volume.
May 9, 2025
4.5 rounded up
Excellent resource, really is an essential guide - I truly think every comic creator needs to read this, whether they're rawdogging the entire comic process themselves or are just part of the pipeline. I'd put it up there with the McCloud books even though people don't give as much of a shit about lettering. I'll ride and die for Blambot.
That being said, I understand it being outside of what would be professionally useful for aspiring (or current) comic letterers, but I would've appreciated a bit of expansion on hand-lettering and font-making. Yes, it strays then to the scope of typography in general instead of what's specifically useful for comic lettering, but had it been there it would've really been an all-encompassing reference for the craft. Ah well. There's plenty here: good typography practices, comic history and standards, and practical software knowhow. (It exclusively covers Illustrator for its processes, which is a shame because Illustrator is the devil and I hate every moment I have to use the program, but the practices can be finnangled for basically any software with acceptable shape and typography functions.)
Excellent resource, really is an essential guide - I truly think every comic creator needs to read this, whether they're rawdogging the entire comic process themselves or are just part of the pipeline. I'd put it up there with the McCloud books even though people don't give as much of a shit about lettering. I'll ride and die for Blambot.
That being said, I understand it being outside of what would be professionally useful for aspiring (or current) comic letterers, but I would've appreciated a bit of expansion on hand-lettering and font-making. Yes, it strays then to the scope of typography in general instead of what's specifically useful for comic lettering, but had it been there it would've really been an all-encompassing reference for the craft. Ah well. There's plenty here: good typography practices, comic history and standards, and practical software knowhow. (It exclusively covers Illustrator for its processes, which is a shame because Illustrator is the devil and I hate every moment I have to use the program, but the practices can be finnangled for basically any software with acceptable shape and typography functions.)
August 2, 2024
Lots of folks to thank for getting my first graphic novel, Don't Tell My Wife I'm a Cult Leader, off the ground, and one of the unsung heroes is Nate Piekos.
My lettering was pointedly criticized and though I used his tips pages and fonts exclusively, it wasn't enough. The day I decided to do something about it (even hire a letterer), the search showed his BRAND NEW lettering book, which was released that very day.
Smashed the Buy Now button and within a week, I got the confidence and skills I needed to re-letter the 100 pages I did so far. The differences were night and day, like before and after photos of weight-loss ads.
The best part is that it required no "leveling up" of my macro-skills; I'm great at page layouts and Adobe Illustrator. All it took was someone showing the right way to do something and it was just a matter of fine-tuning what I already laid out.
Modern, easy to read, and useful to anyone in comics, it'll always have a place on my shelf.
My lettering was pointedly criticized and though I used his tips pages and fonts exclusively, it wasn't enough. The day I decided to do something about it (even hire a letterer), the search showed his BRAND NEW lettering book, which was released that very day.
Smashed the Buy Now button and within a week, I got the confidence and skills I needed to re-letter the 100 pages I did so far. The differences were night and day, like before and after photos of weight-loss ads.
The best part is that it required no "leveling up" of my macro-skills; I'm great at page layouts and Adobe Illustrator. All it took was someone showing the right way to do something and it was just a matter of fine-tuning what I already laid out.
Modern, easy to read, and useful to anyone in comics, it'll always have a place on my shelf.
January 27, 2023
Although this book is meant for those wanting to letter comics, it’s truly a great resource for anyone interested in graphic design. The tips and instructions are easily applicable to non-comics products. It’s very thorough and systematic in its steps.
November 16, 2021
Surely the best book on comic book lettering ever written. Detailed, informative, and passionate, it's a must for anyone trying to get into the business or even letter their own webcomic!
September 17, 2025
Desearía más carnita y menos tutoriales de illustrator (un software que yo no pienso usar para mis cómics) pero está bien porque a otros eso les puede ser más útil.
Aun así es muy buena referencia.
Aun así es muy buena referencia.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews