Benoda is a series of modern comic book typefaces inspired by the great Ben Oda, whose exquisite hand-lettering appears in comic books, comic strips, and more, published from the 1940's to the 1980's! These typefaces were all inspired by Oda's work at EC Comics during the early 1950’s, specifically in Two-Fisted Tales, and I hope you'll enjoy creating with them as much as I enjoyed creating them!
Our first offerings from the Benoda family are Benoda Text [for standard comics dialogue], Benoda Narrative [for caption boxes and thought balloons], and Benoda Emphatic [for emphasizing key words.] These three faces encompass the comic book lettering trinity of text, italic, and bold-italic, necessary for standard dialogue. For those of you looking for the "total package," all three are available in the Benoda Dialogue Bundle!
There’s often a lack of fluidity in a “hand lettering” font; each letter looking the same regardless of how many times you type it and screaming “mechanical reproduction,” so Benoda is packed with contextual alternates. If you don’t already know, contextual alternates cycle through multiple glyphs in most graphics programs, breaking up the repetition and imbuing the text with an even feel. The differences in Benoda are minor, but add just enough "randomness" to make the text flow as if it came directly from the tip of a Speedball. And the best part is, you don’t really have to do much to make the magic happen, just make sure your program works with contextual alternates and make sure they’re turned on!
Within each Benoda typeface are three alternate glyphs of A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and a few common punctuation marks. Additionally, there are a whole mess of international diacritics so you can create in almost any language using latin roman glyphs! And while Benoda is geared toward comics lettering, it works wherever you need a bit of hand-lettering!
So what is Benoda Narrative? It's a typeface made to order for caption boxes, thought bubbles, narrative bits, or any other situation that calls for disembodied text. It can also be used in a pinch for minor emphasis on key words that need a little emotional oomph within a block of Benoda Text!
So what's in the Benoda Narrative package? You get the Benoda Narrative typeface in both TTF and OTF font formats plus the FREE 32-page Benoda specimen book PDF! Not certain if Benoda is the right typeface family for you? Head on over to www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1483421 and you can browse or download the FREE PDF spec book which has hints, tips, history, and full glyph maps of all the Benoda typefaces, plus release dates, and a few fun surprises thrown in. Once you've decided to love Benoda, you can even order a ridiculously overpriced hardcopy of the spec book, sure to become a collector's item someday!
Well, I guess that covers all the bases for now! We'll see you in a month for the release of our next two Benoda typefaces! Until then, have fun, be nice, and remember: At Category4, things could be worse!
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