PS TYPE LAB PRESENTS. LETTERED BY MARK CANESO. 40 FONTS. 12 DEGREE ITALICS. 500+ GLYPHS.

SUNDAY · No. 1 · PRICE 10¢

Motion is off. Everything still works, it just does not move.

Every letter got the same box.

Panel is a slab, a sans and two monos drawn inside one fixed-width cell, then let out. Four families of 10 styles, one set of guidelines. Swap any of them and nothing moves.

Activate on Adobe Fonts Read the strip

First, the box.

Mark Caneso started Panel as a monospace. Every glyph had to fit the same cell, the wide M and the narrow i alike. The answer to a fixed width is in the terminals: the a, the g and the r curl, and the italic l loops. The cell never changes. The letters stop caring that it is there.

DRAG THE CELL. THE M EXHALES. THE i PULLS ITS FEET IN. THE BASELINE DOES NOT MOVE.

FIXED

Cell width, from fixed to proportionalfixed

PROPORTIONAL

ADVANCEM W i l: 740 / 740 / 740 / 740 (fixed)CELLPanel Mono Regular, 740 units for every glyphOPEN INTO

"Can something with a rigid, fixed width also feel relaxed?"

MARK CANESO, PS TYPE LAB. PRINT MAGAZINE, TYPE TUESDAY.

Then he opened the box.

Four families. One baseline. Nothing moves.

The proportional slab and sans came after the monos and kept their skeleton. Cap height 700, x-height 517, ascender 960, descender 270, in all 40 fonts. So a Panel headline, a Panel Sans paragraph and a Panel Mono caption sit on one set of ruled lines like they were lettered by one hand, because they were.

PROPORTIONAL

Panel

Panel Sans

FIXED WIDTH

Panel Mono

Panel Sans Mono

MEDIUM · THE YELLOW LINE IS THE BASELINE. IT HAS NOT MOVED.

THE CAST SHEET. 40 STYLES, ONE SET OF LINES.

The cast sheet: 40 styles of Panel, Panel Sans, Panel Mono and Panel Sans Mono
Style	Panel	Panel Sans	Panel Mono	Panel Sans Mono
LIGHT
LIGHT ITALIC
REGULAR
ITALIC
MEDIUM
MEDIUM ITALIC
BOLD
BOLD ITALIC
BLACK
BLACK ITALIC

Hover or tap a style. It re-sets this line.

SCROLL THE SHEET →

SET "CASES" IN THE SLAB. NOW IN THE SANS.

Tap Sans. Watch which letters move.

ONLY THE a AND THE e CHANGED. THE c AND THE s NEVER HAD SERIFS. THAT IS ON PURPOSE.

Caneso removed the serifs from the c and the s "to enhance open forms," and that ambiguity is what lets the slab and the sans agree. The rest of the alphabet keeps its slabs in Panel and drops them in Panel Sans, on the same skeleton.

Tap a letter that did not change and it says so.

Same cast, four costumes. Here is what they can do.

Three features that earn a panel.

We could list all 20 OpenType features. Three of them change what a page can say. The swash A and T turn Panel Black into a sound effect. Panel Mono's first stylistic set swaps 41 glyphs for typewriter forms, and its italics read like a caption spoken aloud. And a pair of brackets around a figure becomes a numbered panel marker.

Panel Black with swash A and T. The only panel allowed to shout.

THWACK

Type your own. Anything with an A or a T.

Black. Impact lines 48 px.

swsh: A, T and their accented forms. Roman Panel, and all 10 styles of Panel Mono.

Panel Mono, the caption voice

Meanwhile, at the drawing board, the letterer rules three lines and starts again.

Plain.

Press it and the caption re-letters into the italic. The l loops.

ss01 in Panel Mono: 41 substitutions, 46 in the italic, where the l loops. ss02: the tailed Q and an alternate s.

A pair of brackets around a figure becomes a panel marker.

rule the lines

pencil the words

ink the borders

drop nothing

As typed.

Syndicate rate card. Panel Sans.

Format	Panels	Rate
Daily	6	1,250
Sunday half page	12	3,400
Sunday third	9	2,150
Throwaway panel	1	110
Blue pencil, each	11	0.85

The blue rule falls between the same digits in every row.

Est. 2023. 40 fonts. Certificate of Excellence, TDC70, 2024.

Oldstyle figures in Panel: onum with tnum, because in the slab and the sans the oldstyle figures are tabular.

Now you letter one.

The letterer's desk.

Type the dialogue. Pick the voice. Every control on this desk moves something: a nib slides, a key presses, a knob crosses its track, a figure counts.

Dialogue

Family

Weight: Medium

Style

Size40 px

Alignment

Features in Panel

Panel has no typewriter set. Try Mono.

Panel sets 1/2 as typed. Fractions live in the monos.

font-family: "Panel", "Panel Fallback", Georgia, serif;
font-weight: 500;
font-style: normal;
font-size: 40px;
font-feature-settings: normal;

Meanwhile, the reader switches families.

I'll take the slab for the headline and the mono for the receipt.

WHAT YOU TYPED HERE PRE-FILLS YOUR STRIP IN (8)

The funnies, as they run.

Panel runs in real life. Here is how it reads when nobody is looking at the letters: a strip, a wire, a proof, a menu, the mail.

THE SAME BOXBY THE LETTERER

MONDAY. THE CELL IS 740 UNITS WIDE.

I have been holding this in since 2023.

NEXT DOOR, THE i.

Take some of mine. I am mostly feet.

THE EDITOR OPENS THE BOX.

Oh. Oh, that is better.

SUNDAY. THE SWASH A ARRIVES.

Am I late? Where did the box go?

It opened. Nothing moved.

SYNDICATE WIRE

RECEIVED 09:26 · 26 WORDS · CHARGE 1.55

TO THE LETTERER STOP KEEP PANEL FOUR STOP DROP NOTHING ELSE STOP CELL IS 740 STOP BASELINE STAYS STOP SUNDAY HALF PAGE RATE 3,400 STOP EDITOR

PANEL MONO, SS01, TABULAR FIGURES. THE WIRE VOICE.

YBRK

PROOF No. 7NOT FOR PUBLICATION

SUNDAY 1/2 PAGE: 3,400.00
SUNDAY 1/3 PAGE: 2,150.00
THROWAWAY PANEL x 2: 220.00
BLUE PENCIL x 11: 9.35
TOTAL: 5,779.35

PANEL SANS MONO WITH TNUM AND FRAC. THE MONOS CARRY THE FRACTIONS.

LETTERS TO THE LETTERER

Dear Panel, my M finally has elbow room.
Sincerely, a former Courier user.

Dear Panel, I set the receipt in you and nobody noticed. That is the compliment.
Yours, a cashier.

Dear Panel, the c and the s are the same in both cuts. I checked. Twice.
Regards, a proofreader.

TDC70 CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE IN TYPE DESIGN. TYPE DIRECTORS CLUB, 2024. PRINTED IN TYPOGRAPHY 45. TOURED IN 11 COUNTRIES.

Mark Caneso draws letterforms of all shapes and sizes. He studied at Otis College of Art and Design, has worked from Southern California, Hawaii, Portland and Austin, and designed the TypeCon identity. PS Type Lab is the type foundry and custom-lettering department of his studio, pprwrk; its other faces include Campaign Grotesk, Campaign Slab, Quatro, Hoss Round and Scale. Panel, 2023, is his four-family answer to one question about fixed widths. He says he likes work that makes you look twice.

The editor has notes.

DROPPED.

Syndicates handed cartoonists a fixed layout with throwaway panels a paper could drop to fit the page. Tonight the editor keeps one panel per round. You are a letter. Stand in it.

Telegram from the editorRound 1 · window 2.4 s

ONE PANEL STAYS. STAND IN IT.

Arrows or WASD hop. 1 to 9 jumps, and the hops still cost time. Tap a panel on touch.

DROPPED

Each round the telegram names a setting to keep: the slab, the italic, the swash. Hop to the panel lettered that way, by arrow keys, WASD, the figures 1 to 9 or a tap, before the window closes. Three other letters are hopping too, and the window shrinks every round. Miss it and your panel falls off the page with you in it. Last 30 seconds and the editor keeps everyone still standing.

Pick your letter

Score00 panels kept · last bonus +0best 0survivor timer 30.0 s

Rivals

Three other letters. Each has its habits.

&, the ampersand. Quick to move, quicker to guess.

Q, the tailed Q. Drags its tail. Slow, and sure.

l, the looped l. Reads every panel twice.

RulesRounds survived × 100, plus 10 per 100 ms you arrived early.The window starts at 2.4 s and shrinks 8% a round to 0.9 s.One call in three may be corrected halfway. Move.Survive 30 s and the syndicate keeps everyone left.

The editor kept your panel. Keep the whole cast. Get Panel

Build your strip.

Four panels. Four families if you like. Your words. Ours is the ink.

I'll take the slab for the headline and the mono for the receipt.

Same cast. Different costume.

MEANWHILE, THE BASELINE HAS NOT MOVED.

it was late, and the l had begun to loop.

Panel 1 family

Weight

Balloon

Panel 2 family

Weight

Balloon

Panel 3 family

Weight

Balloon

Panel 4 family

Weight

Balloon

YOUR LETTER

The strip is set. Change any panel, or print it as it stands.

Meet the rest of the cast.

The character sheet.

Every encoded glyph, one family at a time. Hover or tap to see it on the ruled lines. The other costumes are the alternates a feature has to reach.

449 OF 449 ENCODED · 533 GLYPHS IN PANEL

OTHER COSTUMES

SWASH (swsh)

ALTERNATE S, X AND ? (ss01)

TAILED Q (ss02)

ALTERNATE AMPERSAND (ss02, ITALICS)

OLDSTYLE FIGURES (onum)

TABULAR FIGURES (tnum)

NUMERATORS AND DENOMINATORS (numr, dnom)

CASE-SENSITIVE (case)

CIRCLED AND NEGATIVE (dlig)

Latin Capital Letter A

UNICODE: U+0041
GLYPH: A
ADVANCE: 778 units
FAMILY: Panel Regular
REACHED BY: swsh

533 glyphs in the slab, 543 in the mono, 511 in the sans, 484 in the sans mono. Nearly 200 Latin languages. Every alternate has a name and a reason.

swsh Swash A and T with their accented forms. Roman Panel and all 10 styles of Panel Mono. The sound-effect letters.
ss01 Panel Mono: the typewriter set, 41 alternates (c f g k m s t y, S, X, the question marks); 46 in the italic, where the l loops. Panel: S, X and the question marks. Sans cuts: the question marks.
ss02 The tailed Q in roman Panel; the tailed Q and an alternate s in roman Panel Mono; an alternate ampersand in every italic.
dlig (0) to (9) become circled figures, [0] to [9] negative circles. There is no ⑩.
liga fi and fl, proportional cuts only.
onum Oldstyle figures. In Panel and Panel Sans they only exist as tabular oldstyle, so set tnum too.
tnum Tabular figures in the proportional cuts. The monos are tabular by birth.
pnum Proportional figures, the default in Panel and Panel Sans.
frac Fractions. The monos carry the lookup: 1/2 sets as a real fraction.
numr Numerators.
dnom Denominators.
sups Superior figures.
subs Subscript figures.
sinf Scientific inferiors.
ordn No. becomes the numero, №.
case Case-sensitive punctuation and accents for all-caps settings.
locl Turkish dotted i, Romanian comma accents.
ccmp Glyph composition for accented forms.
aalt Every alternate, for glyph palettes.
kern 11,700 to 13,700 pairs in each proportional style; none in the monos.

One more panel.

THE LAST PANEL

Get the whole cast.

PanelPanel SansPanel MonoPanel Sans Mono

Panel, Panel Sans, Panel Mono and Panel Sans Mono. Ten styles each, Light to Black with italics. Included with Adobe Creative Cloud: activate all four in one click. Desktop, web and app licenses for everyone else come straight from PS Type Lab.

Activate on Adobe Fonts License from PSTL

INCLUDED WITH CREATIVE CLOUD PLANS THROUGH ADOBE FONTS. DESKTOP, WEB AND APP LICENSES FROM PS TYPE LAB, PRICED PER STYLE AND PER FAMILY. 40 STYLES. 500+ GLYPHS EACH. NEARLY 200 LATIN LANGUAGES.

Designed by Mark Caneso, 2023. Version 1.005. TDC70 Certificate of Excellence, 2024. This site is set in Panel, Panel Sans, Panel Mono and Panel Sans Mono, and nothing else.

EVERY LETTER GOT THE SAME BOX. THEN IT GOT OUT.