Recently, I was working on a few cartoons with a bloggy theme to them, and it got me to thinking – is there a recognised speech-bubble for computer screens? For example, the following bubbles are well known:
Now, I’ve seen (and indeed used) the square ‘Type’ bubble, originally designed to represent typewriters, using a Courier or Times styled font for computer screen type, but was never completely satisfied with it. Courier, in particular, is a particularly dated typeface for computers, and I wasn’t clear whether the square box indicated computer. I’ve had a play round, and come up with a few possibilities:
Now, I’m still not sure which one I prefer, there’s strengths and weaknesses to all of the above. I do think that the use of Arial in the bottom left bubble works, but is a tad cold, and am quite fond of the font Minya Nouvelle used bottom central for it’s looser ‘wobbly’ take on a formal font. I also like the use of the title-bar to give a computer window effect. There is, of course, the possibility of using a combination of ideas expressed above to create the ‘ideal’ computer speech balloon.
Anyway, I’ll open this one to the floor… thoughts and comments please!
Alex Hughes Cartoons 
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