Tuesday Tip: The Right Width of Gutters

In comic art, the "gutter" defines the space between panels. How wide should gutters be? Generally, not so far apart that the panels seem disconnected and no longer belonging to a meaningful visual group and reading sequence (fig. 1). When the gutter width is small enough, the page looks like a pictorial unit (figs. 2 & 3). However, most artists do not reduce the gutter to a single line (fig. 3), and we'll see the pros and cons of this approach in another post. Still, if you have the heart of an experimenter, one device with which very few comic artists have tinkered is gutter widths, especially varying gutter widths.