A man walked into a bar with an alligator on a leash. As he sat down at the bar he asked the barkeep, “Do you serve lawyers here?”
“Of course we do, Sir. What can I get for you?”
With a satisfied smile the man replied, “I’ll have a beer for myself, and a lawyer for my gator.”
The Comic’s Font
If you’ve been watching the sidebar this past week, you might have noticed that the speech bubble font has changed. I thought I’d write a brief article about it and share it with you here today.
One of the things I pride myself on is the fact that I created my own font for the comic. Back in 2004 I tossed a serif font into the comic, and it was impossible to read. I really didn’t pay any attention to the idea of fonts at all, but quickly realized something just didn’t look right.
It didn’t take long for me to stumble into Comic Sans. Shortly after, I starting to notice how much the internet seemed to hate this font, which is a shame, because it really is a good font. Not in the mood to champion a lost cause, I set out to forge my own font with FontForge.
Of course the first version was absolutely abhorrent. I didn’t know what I was doing. It was monospaced. The characters where supposed to appear handwritten, but these looked downright arthritic. It was just very, very bad. That font was revamped and overwritten several times while I used it for the daily panel. Eventually I felt it was “tolerable”. Overtaxed on my creative output, I called this font aaa.ttf. That way it would be easy to locate at the top of the font list.
That font lasted until about 2009 when I revamped it again. This time I named it the aab.ttf. Even though the only real difference was a heavier and more consistent line weight, it was a lot easier to read. There were still some aspects of it that bothered me back then. Why were other comic fonts able to me more legible in smaller spaces? This is kind of an important thing since the comic has to surrender an unfortunate amount of space to the speech bubble.
And that brings us to the present. I finally took the time to sit down and give the Flush Twice font a complete overhaul. Many of the typefaces were redrawn from scratch, and I finally figured out how to standardize the spacing. The size of the characters has not changed, but I can fit more text in a smaller area. If I’m to be totally honest though, I still don’t know what I’m actually doing. I don’t know how to properly design a font, so it’s glitchy. On a positive note, I feel the look of the font has significantly improved.
The image above is a before and after of the font. As you can see, the bottom one is bolder and takes up slightly less space. IMHO it’s easier to read because more of the word stays inside your foveal vision. I really like my font. It’s no Comic Sans, but that’s probably a good thing. While I probably spent way too much time making this font, I’d do it again in a heartbeat. There’s just no way I’d feel as good about my work if I used a font that someone else designed.
Pax,
f2x
[Comments]
Jerry was a non-believer. One fateful day, he died and was sent to hell.
To his surprise, the sky was blue, the grass was lush and green, the trees were filled with delicious fruit, and the other condemned souls were running around laughing and playing.
A human-like figure wearing a white tuxedo and a magnificent set of horns came up to Jerry and said, “Welcome to hell, Jerry. I am Satan, and I’m so pleased to meet you! If there’s anything I can do to make your stay more comfortable, be sure to let me know.”
As Jerry explored his unexpected afterlife, he found a large chasm in the ground. It reeked of sulfur and when he looked down inside he saw a humongous chamber filled with flames and screaming souls.
Just then Satan came up and shooed Jerry away from the pit.
“What’s all that going on down there?” asked Jerry.
“Oh, just ignore them,” Satan replied while rolling his eyes. “They’re Christians; they wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The manager noticed his blonde secretary at her desk in tears.
Deeply concerned, he asked, “What’s wrong?”
The blonde replied, “My mother passed away this morning.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” replied the manager. “Why don’t you go home and take the day off?”
“No thank you,” replied the blonde. “It’s best that I keep myself busy.” And with that the blonde dried her eyes and got back to typing.
Later that day, her manager finds her crying again, so he said, “I know you’re upset about your mother passing away, and I know you said you’d rather keep busy, but the company does provide paid bereavement when you lose a parent.”
Drying her tears again she said, “It’s not that. My sister just called, and her mom passed away this morning too!”
An American went into a Swiss bank carrying a large duffel bag.
He walked up to a teller and in a hushed voice said, “I have a million dollars in cash that I need to deposit into a Swiss bank account as quickly as possible.”
The teller replied, “There’s no need to whisper, Sir. Poverty is nothing to be ashamed of in Switzerland.”
A man walked into a pharmacy and asked for some Viagra.
The pharmacist said, “Sure, do you have a prescription?”
“No,” answered the man, “but here’s a picture of my wife.”
I’ll eventually get back to the abandoned story arc, but for now I need to get the rust out of the pipes. Oh, and I really am changing the name of the comic. I chose “Pathos in the Plumbing” because of the word play. It has some alliteration that I’m famously fond of, my ramblings are full of pathos, and of course you need plumbing to “Flush Twice”. So there it is. It’s done. No take backs.
-f2x
An old woman died and went to heaven. She was chatting it up with Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates when all of a sudden, she heard the most awful bloodcurdling scream.
“Don’t worry about that,” says St. Peter. “It’s only someone having the holes put into their shoulder blades for wings.”
The old woman felt a little uncomfortable about this, but carried on with the conversation.
A moment later, there were more blood curdling screams.
“Oh my God!” exclaimed the old woman. “Now what is happening?”
“Not to worry,” said Saint Peter. “They’re just having their head drilled to fit the halo.”
“I can’t do this,” said the old woman, “I think I’d rather just go to hell.”
“Oh, you don’t want to go there,” said Saint Peter. “If you go down there, you’ll be raped and sodomized.”
“Maybe so,” said the old woman, “but I’ve already got the holes for that.”
