General Failure

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by zephram

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A vaguely Courierlike OSD (Onscreen Display) font which tries its best to be casual. The name is inspired by the old computer joke: "Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?"

No filters or faux-beziers, just stock bricks and a bit of stacking/nudging!

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More about the design:

It started as a doodle and an attempt to make a smooth, low-resolution, low-poly font, and then it became a Courierlike. I have other fonts that tried to do polygonal round shapes before this (such as Cartoon Riot) but this design is my first real success in this area.

Initially, I made the angled glyphs before the round ones. I didn't want to change the angled ones, so glyphs like C, O, and Q became a bit wider than they are tall. I'm quite fond of this, because in most designs these glyphs tend to have a tall and narrow character. I think the mildly squat look of this font makes it cuter and gives it more personality.

A lot of glyphs were altered in specific ways to look more like metal type, especially anything with diacritics which touch the letters themselves. Other glyphs were altered specifically to be interpretable at small size. I also use angled contours and actual round bricks alongside each other within the same glyphs, another technique which is geared toward style and interpretability at small size.

This font came with many new challenges and an array of new techniques had to be designed. Loops were an insurmountable challenge because of the low resolution and heavy line weight, so I drew rounded areas to suggest them. You can see it on letters like Greek γ, ζ, and ξ.

11 Comments

Prototype.

Comment by zephram 27th february 2019
Comment by zephram 27th february 2019

After lots of iterating and advice.

Comment by zephram 27th february 2019

looks like some general success

Comment by JingYo 27th february 2019

Courier's worst nightmare! :D

Comment by Cookielord 27th february 2019

Thanks, guys! Picked up a lot of new techniques while making this.

Comment by zephram 27th february 2019

The Cap Height is 10 bricks, the X-height is 9 bricks, and the Descent is 4 bricks below...

Comment by anonymous-1520403 27th february 2019

Lyrics of "Clonkity Stonker" from Trap Farmer Brer Brah. :D

Comment by zephram 27th february 2019

Added Greek, Cyrillic, and all the Extended Latin A. Whew!

Comment by zephram 28th february 2019

You missed the dot on the lowercase į...

Also the circumflex on Ĝ and ĝ...

Comment by anonymous-1520403 28th february 2019

Thanks, 77. Fixed them.

Comment by zephram 28th february 2019

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