Comics are a silent medium that is full of noise. The gunshots, crashes, and whooshes all live in the lettering — the stylized sound effects (SFX) splashed across a panel. Done well, they are half sound and half illustration.
Onomatopoeia: words that sound like sounds
Sound effects are built on onomatopoeia — words that imitate the noise they describe. Some are conventional (BAM, POW, CRASH, THUD), but the best are invented to fit the exact moment: a long SHhhhhk for a blade leaving its sheath, a soft fwump for a body hitting a mattress. Do not be afraid to coin your own; readers “hear” them instantly.
Let the lettering imitate the sound
The shape of the letters should carry the quality of the noise:
- Sharp, jagged edges for hard, sudden sounds — a CRACK, a SMASH, breaking glass.
- Smooth, flowing, italic letters for continuous or soft sounds — a WHOOSH, a hummmm, wind.
- Dripping or bubbly forms for liquid sounds.
- Thin, small lettering for quiet sounds; heavy, bold, huge lettering for loud ones.
In Striply, SFX are a separate kind of text item — you can rotate them, stretch them independently in width and height, and give them their own font, so the same word can be squashed, skewed, or blown up to match its volume.
Size equals volume
The single clearest signal of loudness is size. A whispered tik might be a few small letters in a corner; an explosion's KA-BOOM can dominate the entire panel, even spilling across gutters into neighboring panels for a truly enormous blast. Scale is your volume knob — use the full range.
Color and stroke make it pop
Classic comic SFX use a bold fill with a contrasting outline — think yellow letters with a heavy black stroke, or red with white. That two-tone treatment is what makes sound effects leap off the page and read instantly as “sound” rather than dialogue. Striply gives SFX independent fill and stroke colors for exactly this reason. Match the color to the mood: hot reds and yellows for impacts, cool blues for cold or electronic sounds.
Placement matters
Put the effect near its source — the SFX for a slamming door belongs by the door, not floating in the sky. Angle it along the direction of the action so it feels like part of the motion. But keep it clear of your speech bubbles; a sound effect that collides with dialogue muddies both.
Add a BAM! to a panel in the editor, then try stretching it, rotating it, and swapping its colors — you will feel how much the same word can change.