The Making of Kooky Pets book. Chapter 5

When people thinks of books they’re not usually aware about how fonts are as important as any other visual elements. Picking the right fonts and placing them correctly is a decisive step when it comes to make your book work. Fonts affect the harmony in the overall layout and can change the feeling of the whole book. And what is the most important: they can help the reader to feel comfortable in order to read fluently.

In the case of the Kooky Pets book, to keep the balance between aesthetic and practicality is a main goal. Publicity and packaging design from Victorian letterpress is really attractive. But, after all, reading a book is not the same as reading corn flake boxes and circus posters, right?

Here is a sample of the 5 different fonts that will be featured in the book and a little explanation about my choices.

1- Lightfoot. This font has been part of the whole Kooky Pets Workshop project from the very 1st day. It will be featured in the book cover and some chapter headers.

2- Phaeton. I looked at many decorative fonts with no luck and my wife Naomi pointed me in the direction of this beautiful font. It was designed by designer Andy Jones in collaboration with Kevin Cornell, an illustrator who I admire. The font will be featured in headers as well as inside the labels with the comments from the Kooky Pet team.

3- LTC Cloister Bold Swash. This is another wonderful sample of beautiful Letterpress design. The original font was designed circa 1913 by American typeface designer Morris Fuller Benton. It will be only featured in the text balloons of the characters texts.

4- Edwardian Script. This beautiful font was designed by Ed Benguiat inspired in the Victorian era. It will be only used to feature the page numbering but not in regular text.

5- Goudy Old Style. I’ve chosen this pretty common font for the main text of the book. It was created by Frederic W. Goundry for American Type Founders in 1916. Apart from being a very good exponent of this particular design period, it works really good in terms readability. It’s clean, easy to read, elegant, and classic at the same time. And it also looks right for the age range of the book readers and the type of texts that the book will feature. What else can you ask for?

Next day I will talk about color palettes. Yes, same as a painter in front of a white canvas but in this case… it’s a book!