Interview with Patrick Brosseau

Patrick Brosseau is a comic book letterer, he’s best known for his work one Birthright, Manifest Destiny, Wonder Woman, Hellboy, T-shirts and working on tons of other books for every major comic book publisher, but let’s be real he’s probably lettered at least one of your favorite comics.

Patrick, let’s take it back to how you got into comics and what led you to lettering comics?

I loved comics and originally wanted to be a comic book artist and attended The Kubert School for two years with that goal in mind. By the end of the second year, it’s a three year school which of course you know but others may not, I kind of realized I’d probably never make it as a professional artist so I started thinking of other ways to get in the biz. I’d always liked the lettering class at the Kubert School taught by the great cartoonist Hy Eisman so I figured I’d try my hand at lettering. So the summer after my second year at the school I sent out samples to various publishers and got a few bites here and there. I was freelance for a few months but then my work started slowing down. At that point I had become friends with another ex-Kubie by the name of Bill Oakley who also my roommate for a while. He was a great artist who at one time inked backgrounds for Bill Sienkiewicz and he was also a fantastic letterer. He had started working in the Marvel Bullpen doing lettering corrections and told me there was an opening there as a letterer and I should come in and try out for it. I got the job on a try out basis and was later hired for the position and worked at Marvel for roughly two and a half years and then went freelance from there. Was freelance for a long time after that, took a job on staff at DC Comics in the mid 2000s, met you there, left DC in 2012 and then went freelance again…whew!

So, you didn’t always want to become a letterer, but you’ve managed to make one hell of a career doing it. Simply put, you are one of the best, and someone who made the transition from hand lettering to digital. What’s kept you interested in doing it?

Thanks, Steve, that’s really nice of you!  When I originally made the transition from hand lettering to digital it was mainly about my survival as a letterer. If I didn’t do it I would have been left by the wayside like some older hand letterers were at the time when digital lettering became more prevalent. When I first taught myself digital lettering it was a chore, but when I started working in DC’s lettering department it was at first sink or swim situation but the more I did it the faster I became and the more I liked it. Also, what keeps me interested in it is looking at current work by you, Rob Leigh, Todd Klein, Aditya Bidikar, Nate Piekos and many others for inspiration and ideas. And if I see something I like done by other letterers I like to figure out how it’s done and try and apply that to some of my work.

You started out your career as a hand letter and then switched to digital lettering later on. What do you feel are the differences between pen and ink hand lettering to digital lettering?

While I still love hand lettering with a pen and ink, having the art right there in front of you and lettering on it, there are a lot of differences with that approach and digital lettering. Traditional pen and ink lettering brings out a lot of patience within you and there’s a zen like quality to it when the pen is working fantastically on the page. When everything’s working it’s great but sometimes when your pen is catching the page and things aren’t flowing it’s a bit tedious which drove me crazy sometimes. Since switching over to digital lettering in the early 2000s I did apply a lot of what I learned hand lettering to digital lettering. Of course digital lettering is so much quicker compared to hand lettering. I no longer have to rule out the lettering guides on a page, ink in all the borders, whiteout mistakes and other prep things, etc. When I hand lettered it usually took me a week or so to letter a 22 page story, now with digital lettering I can letter the same thing in a day or so. So of course I love that aspect of digital lettering. Also, with hand lettering as far as titles, display lettering and sound effects you’re sometimes limited to just your imagination coming up with different type styles. With digital lettering the possibilities are endless if you have a lot of different fonts to choose from. I still do some of my sound effects by hand though, drawing them out digitally in Illustrator or Manga Studio with a variety of brushes and pens within them. So I have tried to carry over some aspects of hand lettering which I really loved to digital lettering.

Any chance you’d consider hand lettering a book again?

I’ve thought about that a few times and my current answer is…maybe? I don’t know if I’d be up to lettering a  whole book though, maybe a short story instead. Takes a while to build up all that stamina and muscle memory lettering a page but once it gets going it’s usually good.

Let’s go back to the in house lettering department at the DC Offices. When I started you were one of the senior guys and you got to do the lion’s share of cover copy.  It’s a lettering element that I’ve always loved and I consider myself lucky that I was able to learn directly from you and Rob Leigh. Many publishers don’t even use cover copy anymore. Can you talk a bit about what cover copy is and what’s your process for creating it. Are you still doing any of it?

I loved doing cover copy and it was one of the funnest things to do while lettering on staff! Cover copy, for those who don’t know, is usually a short blurb on a cover that should entice a reader to pick up the comic. Cover copy has been around probably since the 40s in different forms but became very prevalent with DC and Marvel in the 60s and 70s and is still around nowadays but not as popular as it once was. My approach to designing cover copy was to pick a font which suggested what the copy was implying, like if a word was INFERNO then pick a font which suggests fire, figure out which words should be bolder and bigger for emphasis, and then try and pick colors for the cover copy which matched and blended well with the art. I haven’t done any in a long time now but I do use what I learned while doing it in designing titles and  logos.

Your work has always (in my opinion at least) had a strong sense of design. In our field there are a lot of graphic designers who letter and letterers who do graphic design. Sometimes—and my early work is probably true of this—you can tell when a designer is lettering. How do you find the balance between lettering and design? Any tips for designers trying their hand at lettering?

Oh, wow, thanks! I’ve always felt my design sense to be a bit limited because I’m basically self-taught as far as design goes but I think I’ve gotten better over time. I feel you can be a good letterer and equally a good designer and there’s a lot of overlap with the two. Great lettering doesn’t overpower and blends well with a page while great graphic design does the same, be it on a book cover, ad, movie poster, etc. I’m all for designers trying out lettering because the two go hand and hand at times. As far as tips go, I’d say look at a lot of comic books and pick out what you like about different lettering styles and then try and apply what appeals to you lettering a page while not forgetting what you know about design.

Speaking of design. You’ve been doing some great Comic Book inspired T-shirt designs over at soundfxstudio.com. Tell us the origin story and can you give us a tease of your next design?

Thanks again! My T-shirt idea originally started out as something else entirely different. At first I wanted to sell canvas prints of hand drawn sound effects I had done. Basically print out different designs on small canvases, staple the canvas onto small frames and then sell those. Once I had done a few I quickly realized it was a little too labor intensive plus it used a lot of printer ink! Also I had no idea how and where I would sell them. I had shown a few of the final products on Facebook and someone mentioned the images would also make great T-shirts. So I did a few mock-ups on my computer and liked what I saw. I did some research on print on demand printers, figured out to how to sell them online and went from there. People really seem to like them which is great and I sold around 400 shirts from March to December of last year! Also, here are a few new design ideas!

I ask everyone I interview…If you could only give one piece of advice, be it for lettering, or life, what would it be?      

Don’t sweat the small stuff. Be it something that happened in your regular life or work life. Letting a small thing get to you over time only causes unwanted stress on your mind and body. Life will go on afterwards and you’ll be ready for much more difficult situations in the future.
 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/droog811

Shirts: https://soundfxstudio.com/

Family Tree Logo Design

Logo design is something I've generally stayed away from in the past. There tends to be a lot of cooks in the kitchen and they all know how to make the dish. It's almost more about marketing than anything to do with the book and I'd rather stay away from that noise. But in the last few years, this year and last specifically, I've been getting back into them and really enjoying it all. I've done a number of logos for DC this year and they were an absolute pleasure and entirely in my wheelhouse.

Okay, that's great Steve-O, but what does that have to do with this Family Tree cover over here?! Well, I don't know, but I was already lettering Family Tree when Jeff and the gang asked if I wanted to handle the design and logo, too. Spoiler, I said yes. The first issue was done and I had a good idea on the tone of the book and what everyone might be into so I cracked my knuckles and came up with a few ideas.

I always show a few ideas. Anywhere from 3-6 is usually good. Sometimes I show 1 and that ends up being a mistake. Never show 1 idea. It's probably not as good as you think it is. So, I showed a few and most of them sucked, but everyone dug the one we ended up using. I found a font I liked, made some adjustments, staggered the letters in a pleasing way and then I stared drawing little branches--or roots, whatever--coming up from the bottom of the letterforms. Side note: I dig logo's that have a story element in them. Like how I made the Frogcatchers logo look like frog toes. Or the tentacle in Plunge. So--branches! Freaking brilliant!

Then we lay it out and try a few different options. The creative team and Will, our fearless editor, keep throwing notes at it. Jeff keeps saying make it bigger. Bigger. BIGGER! So, I do. Then, I think it was Phil says he wants the branches, or roots, or whatever coming through the cuts I made and really gelling with the logo. Then I'm thinking to myself great idea, but it's more work, and there's cold beer in the fridge I'd like to get to. But before I even have to try, Ryan says he can handle it. He colors the book so it makes more sense anyway. Teamwork makes the dreamwork, I say. He knocks it out of the park and makes it look easy.

And that's it! I hope you were paying attention cause that's how you make a logo. At least this one. Mileage may vary.