Continuing on the theme of overzealously antialiased pixel fonts, here's a 3x5 no-wasted-matrix design. The shading enabled me to make many glyphs which normally need to be truncated or compressed (MWaemswz@«©»®, etc). Looks best at 2x Pixel size!
This gives me an "old newspaper" feeling and seems like the kind of font that would be used for the text of such newspapers in old adventure games.
Unfortunately, I could not get the shading effect to work in any graphics software except by turning antialiasing on, and this ruins the look. So if you want to render text in this font, I recommend going to View -> User Input, typing your text here on this page, and then screen capturing it...
A compressed, squareish microfont. 4x4, monospaced, no wasted matrix.
I like how this one uses all the space it occupies. Glyphs like ijl1 fill out the words they're in rather than creating voids. Also, i looks kind of like a lit candlestick, and I like that.
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Original size: 3pt (use multiples of this size for pixel perfection)
An experimental logotype and another attempt to create a distinctive design in 2x2. Some words look better than others... it's best for 1-2 word phrases rather than body text.
"B", "P", and "R" are compromise designs... no satisfactory way exists to create their curves while maintaining the optimal line width, so their counters were filled a bit to give them the same sense of solidity as the other letters.
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A "denghon" is a giant, many-limbed, extradimensional creature found throughout my games, especially ESOS.
Is it Ironic that I spent a lot of time making a minimalistic font? Maybe not...
In any case, this is a font I made with a challenge of keeping every character within a 5x5 block size (4x4 blocks for the lowercase letters)
The only character NOT within a 5x5 square is the @ character. It somehow ended up a little wide.
Squareish, slightly futuristic 2x2 design. It's made to fit in with industrial, sci-fi, and Soviet-style aesthetics. It's also far more internally consistent than my other 2x2 designs!
Because this uses so much nudging, diacritics will be impossible unless I composite many of the existing glyphs or place the diacritics really high... I'll think about it...
Megashark's hard 1px outline was experimentally converted to a soft 1px outline. This result is far less readable to my eye, though it does look cool! Its printed words have a balloon-esque, almost organic quality.
"S.D.M.G." stands for "Super Dolphin Machine Gun", a weapon from the game Terraria. The Minishark and Megashark are from the same game. :^)
This is a clone of MegasharkAn experiment to see if 3x3 fonts are more legible when drawn in negative space. I consider this to be not only a success, but also the most readable 3x3 design I have seen - particularly the uppercase.
The successors Megashark and S.D.M.G. are more useable and more stylish respectively, while Minishark strikes a good balance.
This is considered an E3x3 because, while it's created in a 5x5 grid, it has an effective drawing area of only 3x3. The outermost square only has pixels drawn in it when the interior design dictates such.
A mostly-4x5 design made for legibility, aesthetics, and an almost authoritarian regularity. This makes it suited for comics, tutorials, general reading, and more. It can be easily read at its original size with the same effort it would take to read a high-res design of the same size.
This design has been tested and reported to make an excellent font for IRC and other chat clients!
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Original size: 4.5pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
A rounded version of Pixelcruiser Flagship. I think rounding it off both made it better-looking and more readable! This now looks like something I'd use in pixel comics.
This is a clone of Pixelcruiser FlagshipA tiny font made for pixel art tutorials and streamer use. The inspiration comes from old art of video game controllers which I used to make, in particular the letters ABCLRXYZ which I drew many times on many controller buttons. The more complex letters (B,E,M,W) take on slightly abstract forms for neatness' sake.
Since these glyphs are all 4x4 unicase, compositing them for use in Fontstruct tutorials might save you a lot of work. Feel free to clone this for such a use.
Original size: 3pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
See also: Four on the Floor, Glyphstamp 1x1
An attempt to make the cleanest-looking headliner possible in 3x3.
Recommended: Use with kerning turned ON!
See also: Empty Clip, Empty Magazine, Misplaced, Slabberton
Version 1.5
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3x3 slab serif. This is based on Wallerton, Anachronistic Gunslinger, an IRC-based "TV show" which I used to write and produce. All the characters in the show were my AIs pretending they were cowboys.
Well, I managed to successfully produce a lowercase for this one!
Recommended: Use with kerning.
Super-tiny! This begins to approach the lower limits of visual interpretability. It's still far more readable than any 3x3 pixel font I've yet seen, though.
Like Four on the Floor, this font uses every trick I have picked up as a pixel artist and font artist to make itself as readable as possible. I consider this one suitable for general reading (e.g. when making pixel art tutorials or depicting book texts in pixel games), but only just.
Original size: 3pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
Another attempt at the challenging 4x4 grid. Only those characters which I could fit into the 4x4 grid were included. This time, I think I managed to get near the level of quality and style typical of a 5x5 font!
This is probably the smallest font most people would ever want to use for general reading. It took no trivial amount of experience and experimentation to come up with!
If you use this to make assets, you can use color separation to fit 4 glyphs onto an 8x8 tile or 16 onto a 16x16 tile. Check out my profile page for more microfonts you can use in your games!
Original size: 3pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
Stylized 5x5 pixel font. Tiny but power-packed!
I designed it to have a slightly balloon-esque, oldschool arcade look. Feel free to use it in your games.
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Original size: 7.5pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
3x3 cipher, based on version 0.3 of "Micromaze". It uses its own form of binary notation for the numerals, wherein the upper-right 4 pixels play the role of the 1, 2, 4, and 8.
This is the smallest font in which I was able to give a unique symbol to every glyph (excluding the lower/upper case, which look the same). It reads sort of like Pigpen Cipher, but is more densely written.
Since MMC is obscure and of constant width/height, it serves many "gibberish" and "placeholder text" purposes in addition to being a modestly strong cipher.
Original size: 2pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
Experimental 2x4 font. Not the most legible, but maybe useful as a cipher. It requires some contextual knowledge of what you are reading for the best result.
Original size: 6pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
What started as a revisit of an old Impulse Tracker font, EK-WINTR, turned into an exercise in clarity and distinct letterforms in a small (4×8) array for as much as I could manage. I'll gladly add accented Latin letters on request (or as I get the urge), and I might have a go at filling in the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets soon if there's demand.
Note: E-Keet Winterlate BC is bicameral (typical upper-and lowercase forms). This is the “Alphabet 26” version (no distinction in forms between upper- and lower case).
Extra note: The vertical metrics are present wonky compared to the BC version because they're primarily calculated off of a few lowercase letters... which are very different between the two! Once FontStruct gains more direct control of vertical metrics, the generated fonts will line up fine.
Revision 2019-11-14: In loose regex terms, revised [MWmwÑñĒ™⇑], moved [₀-₉] to their correct slots, added [£←↑→↓⇒] and Roman numerals.
Revision 2019-11-16: Added [★☆].
This is a cloneWhat started as a revisit of an old Impulse Tracker font, EK-WINTR, turned into an exercise in clarity and distinct letterforms in a small (4×8) array for as much as I could manage. I'll gladly add accented Latin letters on request (or as I get the urge), and I might have a go at filling in the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets if there's demand.
Note: This is the bicameral version (typical upper-and lowercase forms). E-Keet Winterlate A26 is the “Alphabet 26” version (no distinction in forms between upper- and lower case).
Revision 2019-11-13: In loose regex terms, revised [MWmw™⇑], added [£←↑→↓⇒] and Roman numerals.
Revision 2019-11-16: Added [★☆].
This is a clone of E-Keet Winterlate A26My attempt at a font which uses only one grid square per glyph. I guess this is the Fontstruct equivalent of pixel art...?
As an extra challenge I decided to use no curved bricks. (This rule was since broken to add © and ®).
Even better letterforms could be created by compositing the entire thing. However, the goal here was to do what I could with the existing bricks. As such, only #?![]{}¹²³ make use of composites.
A little pixel font made with zero experience in less than 15 minutes. Enjoy.
If you think it could help you, I tried to put it under the most liberal license so you can freely use it or edit it for your personal and commercial projects. Don't feel the need to credit me.
Also see my "pixel joy" for a better but slightly bigger pixel font.