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The digital font supplied by Casterman for use in the new editions of Tintin worldwide can be utterly lifeless if used wrongly (it has a remarkably bad kerning, for example). The samples in "Tintin - The Complete Companion" bear witness to this.

You really need to work with the font to give it life. The recent Swedish re-translation and new edition is a successful attempt in that regard.

The previous Swedish editions were lettered by many different hands - most of them horrificly bad. The new digital version in Swedish is way better.

However, I concur with our English tintinologists in their sadness: the lettering by Mr. Hyslop was truly a labour of love and artisticly very well done, almost up to par with the original Belgian lettering.

It will be very interesting to see whether Casterman decides to finally digitally re-letter the original French versions as well!

the lettering by Mr. Hyslop was truly a labour of love and artisticly very well done, almost up to par with the original Belgian lettering.

Well said Tournesol. Michael Turner called him an "unsung hero". Comparing his draughtmanship with the new "standard" font, I appreciate him even more now! I almost can't bear to look at the new edition it's so bad (sorry Casterman, but it is!).

It will be very interesting to see whether Casterman decides to finally digitally re-letter the original French versions as well!

Indeed, if they complete the colour facsimile editions they may have more reason to.

Something I'm not too sure about which maybe somebody else can answer; did Hergé letter some of the French language colour books? (I know he did for the b/w editions). I think he might have done some and others were by the studio but I'm not sure which, the editions I own have slightly different lettering.

I also have to correct my earlier assumption that Hyslop lettered the S.O.S! HELP! note; he didn't as it's the same in the French edition. I did spot another though - Tintin's address on the letter from Chang. So it isn't completely de-Hysloped!

Tournesol
The digital font supplied by Casterman for use in the new editions of Tintin worldwide can be utterly lifeless if used wrongly (it has a remarkably bad kerning, for example). The samples in "Tintin - The Complete Companion" bear witness to this.

I agree with this, it looked terrible at places in the Companion. However since then an update has been released, with improved font kerning (I recall there was a major problem with the letter 'k'). It didn't look too bad in Congo, although it wasn't a patch on Mr Hyslop's labours.

almost up to par with the original Belgian lettering.

I'd say in the case of Destination Moon it surpassed the original; for some reason the French edition uses, in that book only, a very italicised and formal font.

I'll add my voice to the crowd and say that I'll miss the original lettering. Well, I won't personally - my books are going nowhere - but it's a shame for future readers who won't see it. It's not as bad as the new Asterix books, though ... at least it's easy on the eye.

Edit:
Harrock n roll
did Hergé letter some of the French language colour books? (I know he did for the b/w editions). I think he might have done some and others were by the studio but I'm not sure which, the editions I own have slightly different lettering.

I thought that Hergé used a chap called Arsène Lemey for the colour books; I don't know if he did all of the series but he definitely did some of the 1950s books - Cigars of the Pharaoh, for example.

One problem could be that the artwork in the earlier stories is aesthetically more free-flowing. Years later Hergé's technique became more painstakingly thorough and I think this style lends itself better to having a printed typeface. In Picaros, for instance, the speech-bubbles are uniformly square and Hyslop's hand fits neatly inside them - while it might be a loss to have the text typed it probably wouldn't detract from the overall feel too much. Contrast this with page 2 of The Broken Ear (to take a random example), in which the speech has had to be crammed tightly into more irregular-shaped bubbles, weaving its way around the tops of the characters' heads. A rigid typeface wouldn't deal with this very well.

And (official!) hats off to ed from Casterman for being the first to notice!

Kudos to you too jock, for seeking out the official explanation!

A specific Tintin font was designed and it is the same font that is now used for most of the foreign languages

So this would suggest that all the books in languages using the Western alphabet are to be re-lettered. I remember seeing a German edition where the font used was a rather boring typeface, similar to Arial. In this case I would consider the new font to be an improvement.

As a further thought, perhaps it was the desire to standardise the series that provoked the recent republication of Alph-Art and Congo in English, so as to have a uniform 24 books to every language? There's also been more of a widespread translation of the black-and-white facsimiles lately (notably in China where they were released all at once).

Ed

Just noticed this ... terrible news. :o( The character of the English editions will now certainly be lost. I'm just glad that I own all the books already !

I'll try and find a copy, I think, to compare it with the old edition.

I suppose this is just proof that progress isn't always an entirely good thing ...

I remember seeing a German edition where the font used was a rather boring typeface, similar to Arial.

That might have been an older edition. I believe Carlsen updated them quite recently, the ones I have are hand lettered by Dirk Rehm. Although all in capitals it doesn't look too bad, to my eye.
If Casterman are asking for a universal font, then these will evidently require yet another update.

I also agree that the new main typeface isn't that bad. Annoyingly I don't have an original English Tibet to compare to, but it's the nice little details like the cracked lettering on "Crack!" as the ice-sheet breaks (page 43), and the "POOOAAA!" sound of the Tibetan horn with the last "A" breaking up (page 61); just two examples from the original (if I remember correctly), which are now sadly no more.
I would have thought Hergé and his team intended these kind of details to be included.

I thought the reason that panels were re-lettered in Companion, Tintin at Sea and tintin.com was for technical reasons - avoiding pixelation when blowing them up large, etc. However it looks as though they've been softening us up!

My guess is it's Egmont who are responsible for this. As publishers of the English edition they are ultimately in charge of the English text, subject to certain stipulations from Casterman, and would have employed the designers who have remade it.

I've probably been working too long as a designer but I feel could have made a much better job of it myself. Still, in my experience, when you're working for somebody else you're always at the mercy of publishing deadlines, editors and other (bad) desicion makers so I have some sympathy for them. I suppose it underlines how things have changed in the publishing industry over the last 50 years as much as anything else.

I agree - it's a decent enough font, but it looks, to my eyes at least, rather flat and lifeless compared to the Hyslop lettering. Oh well, such is the price of progress, I suppose...

Interesting note about the Swedish re-translation. I wonder, if, as we can probably assume, Egmont are eventually going to apply the new lettering to all the books, could they take the opportunity to tweak the text slightly to correct the continuity errors in Cigars and Seven Crystal Balls, or would that irk the purists even more?

Harrock n roll
My guess is it's Egmont who are responsible for this.

Interesting - from M. Fadeur's message, I'd taken it to be Casterman.
The reason is that things like the "Poo-aâ!" with the broken "A", tended, I thought, to be lettered onto the page by Hergé for the master art-work.
I gathered this from the places in which the English editions had over-printed something else because the word or sound-effect needed to be changed, and you could see the repair work. Here we have the word "Poo-a!" being rewritten and (re-spelt!) as "Pooo-a!" - an otherwise needless change, so my thought would be that the whole plate has been (hopefully digitally) reworked to remove all text from all editions.

This would make some sort of sense - perhaps not artistically - as it would allow any and all editions to be prepared from the same files, and might make it easier to make small runs of languages with requirements for word such as "Poo-a!" to be rendered into something else. That would put it outside the control of Egmont, I guess.

Having also worked in publishing and with printers, I agree that the deadlines which have to be met often stand on the toes of design sensibilities ("Perfect is the enemy of done", is the same sentiment, but from the other direction!), so it isn't the worst that could have happened.
In spite of the fact that the new Astérix text is pretty horrible, it isn't as bad as the handwritten(?) text which appeared in some of the later seventies English editions - Mansions of the Gods was a disaster, as I recall...!

Tintinrulz
the 'z' looks like a three

That's the "long zed" or letter yogh, and it has fallen out of favour in recent years; it actually used to have a slightly different pronunciation in Middle English, and was a bit like the "ch" sound in the Scottish loch and the "g" still used in Dutch; sometimes it even approximated a sound close to the "-ing" ending. Over time it sort of mutated into "g" and "z".

Followers of recent politics in the UK will be aware of a chap called Sir Menzies Campell, where Menzies is pronounced "Ming-ees" (or "Ming-is", with an unvoiced "s") - and that's why: the yogh started to be written as a z, but the pronunciation eventually morphed to "(in)g".
A very similar charcter called an eng, like an "n" with a curled tail below the line from the right foot, is used in phonetics for the "-ing" sound.

However it is pronounced, the yogh is still found in some italic scripts to this day, and it was how I was taught to write a "joined-up" letter zed at primary school... If you look at Peanuts strips where Sally is shown writing, and her writing appears above her head, she uses the long zed (or "zee", I guess) too, as it's in the same script I learned...

(Sorry if that was boring, but I rarely get to dredge my memory for what I learned at University (or primary school!) these days...!)

John Sewell
could they take the opportunity to tweak the text slightly to correct the continuity errors in Cigars and Seven Crystal Balls, or would that irk the purists even more?

Are you talking about internal continuity errors (i.e. some problems you have identified within those books specifically), or are you thinking of restoring the original continuity of the French books to the English canon?

If the latter, I know that MT & LL-C were against it when I asked them about at Greenwich, and I think that there was a thread about it on here somewhere (I've tried to find it, but couldn't)*, where it was judged a step too far.

I took what MT had to say to mean that as the translations/ changes were made, for the majority of the books, with the approval of Hergé, that the books as they stood were authorised, and that they wouldn't be interested in revising them.

However now that they are all out, and in standard versions, I am not certain that it would hurt to iron out the wrinkles as far as order is concerned; I'd still keep them in Marlinshire though. I actually think I'd find a continuity revision less disturbing than the loss of the Hyslop writing.

It occured to me last night that the thing is that the Hyslop writing looked like it could have been written by Hergé - the penmanship is of the same quality as the line-work of the drawing - in a way that the French books have never been. As far as I am concerned, he out-Hergéd Hergé in that respect!

*Update: It was in this thread.

I better buy the 7 Tintin books I've got to go for my collection before the new editions cross the seas to Australian shores!

jock123 Interesting - from M. Fadeur's message, I'd taken it to be Casterman.

Perhaps I was being a little presumptuous. Your theory that Casterman have had plates made, with the relevant text removed so that any language can be dropped in, is very plausible. However, the new lettering looks as if it has been applied to an English edition because, as I mentioned earlier, some of Hylop's lettering remains. Of course this could also have been cut from an English edition and pasted in, but that seems less likely.

I think it's quite probable that an outside company or freelancer, employed by either Casterman or Egmont, did the re-lettering work; so little work in publishing is done in-house these days.

I may also have been a little harsh earlier; looking over Tibet again it's fair to say that the "POOOAA" is the worst example, most of the other sound effects are not too bad.
It's a consequence of having been spoiled by the high standards of the old edition!

I'd say computers are partly to blame for the loss of quality in design over the last 15 or so years. In the old days becoming designer would have required studying technical drawing, etc. These days it's very often applied to anybody that knows how to push fonts and images around on a page. Just knowing about computers is certainly no substitute for real draughtsmanship!

And thanks to jock123 for the info about the "long zed"! I always did wonder why "Menzies" was pronounced "Mingis".

Tintinrulz I better buy the 7 Tintin books I've got to go for my collection before the new editions cross the seas to Australian shores!

Aye, gather ye Hyslops while ye may! ;-)