The 5x5 pixel font used for the Virtual Gremlin, an old emulator/game I wrote. The standard font for ingame text.
This font was also designed to work well with IRC clients and ASCII games (see sample).
Breaking the 5x5 grid was unfortunate but necessary in order to make legible characters in non-Latin languages.
Version 1.5: All permutations of E and F were refined and improved.
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A modernized, rounded, and truncated version of Marengi. This is made to be a good text editor/chat font. It has very few kerning pairs, so it should render fine in any software.
Ascenders are only allowed to be as tall as the uppercase/numerals, while descenders are allowed to go 2px below the line. This creates a natural line spacing that is readable and not too dense. (Diacritics break this rule, of course... darn them...)
Gone are the curved descenders/termini on letters like gjty. The simpler geometry makes this design more suited to speedreading than its predecessor. In fact, altering those four letters alone improves speedreading on this font by up to 14%!
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09JUN2019: I have been using this as my main IRC/chat font for some time now. Of all my chatfont designs, this has proven the easiest to read and use.
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MIV: 8.31
Original size: 6pt (use multiples of this size for pixel perfection)
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.
I use multiple text editors, and made this font to be an alternate font for Windows Notepad.
This was designed to be similar to Marengi Mk2, the font used in my FS Tutorials. Apart from using a smaller grid size, Eglantine achieves a closer line spacing through the use of short ascenders/descenders and the removal of the dots from i and j. It is also more condensed and optimized for speedreading, resulting in a font that is pleasant to read despite being quite small.
This design does have some wasted matrix, but this is necessary to achieve the desired effect. The global matrix is still only 7px tall, so this can still be used on most small canvasses.
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Original Size: 4.5pt
An experiment in subtle asymmetry (it's most evident in the upper case).
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Version 1.7 (14Sep2018) - ExtL-A added, GFB completed, Greek started
Version 1.6 (18Aug2018) - Changed name from "RC Badwolf" to "Badwolf"
Version 1.5 (15Aug2018) - altered 2357,ð
Version 1.4 (14Aug2018) - altered space width and mw
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See also:Navajo Deco
Version 1.3: Added Polish.
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Another asymmetrical sans-serif made for use in rulebooks for the Freeform Limitless Adventure Kit (FLAK) pen-and-paper game system. This one is classed as a hybrid and works well at all point sizes!
It began as a Constant Height design, but now I don't classify it as such since most of the letters with diacritics are taller than those without. A few letters (eszett, thorn, eta, etc.) are allowed to descend slightly, as well.
This font has also found some use on signage at a friend's bistro!
Experimental 24-segment display or massive monochrome Mondrian matrix. Pixel compatible!
The thinking behind this one was that with incongruously sized segments arranged in the proper way, I would create a design which was effectively 5x5, but which accomodated more glyphs than 5x5 usually does. Negative space is incorporated into the structure of many glyphs, though not enough to classify this as an IVO design.
"Qualtron" is the name of an imaginary entity that a friend believed in - a being meant to represent the result of "a mathematical equation that can rule the universe". I didn't inquire further about it... :D
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Design Rules:
1. Segments can have interior length/width of 2 or 5.
2. The central 2x2 square must always remain open.
3. Square bricks and 90-degree angles only.
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Original size: 20.75pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
The main font used by MARENGI Omnisystems in my video game series, "Endless Sea Of Stars". These letterforms can be found engraved into or projected onto practically every piece of MO technology. This script was designed in 2011 to be suitable for printing, logo design, art, and many other purposes. It lacks the constant height which most of my other pixel fonts have, but makes up for it with its bookish appearance.
Unfortunately, replicating the exact design of the antialiased version of this font is impossible, not only on FontStruct, but on all software other than ESOSVM. This is because ESOSVM uses a custom renderer which makes use of proprietary techniques. Marengi HD comes close, but not very.
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Versioning:
2.6 (19Aug2018) - "bdďđ" were perfected. Space width reduced.
2.5 (20Jul2018) - "IÌÍÎÏø" were perfected and massive kerning work began.
2.4 (15Jul2018) - "J" was perfected and several letterwidths were altered.
2.3 (18May2018) - "hnru34679ÀÁÂÃÅÈÉÊÌÍÎÏÑÒÓÔÕØÙÚÛÝÞßàáâãåæçèéêìíîïñòóôõøùúûý" were perfected.
2.2 (17May2018) - ":;gjty%/\ÂÆÊÎÔÛâæêîôû¼½¾" were edited for more consistency and readability.
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MIV: 8.74
Original size: 11pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
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Version 2.6
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Inspired by a comment by jonrgrover.
I built diamonds sized according to the Fibonacci series, then made a segmented display out of them. The design was then carved away to make the glyphs you see here. I used the members 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8. These sizes proved most feasible to work with in this sort of arrangement.
I gave the terminals a flared appearance which I think makes the glyphs look slightly Celtic. The design also makes me think of beach sand and things found on the beach - shells, pretty rocks, and so on.
A continuation of Tangereen. This version took a lot of figuring out and a lot of changes, both aesthetic and structural. I managed to make it different from other double-line designs like Glitzfang and Junglira while still keeping it simple and cute.
This is used in FS Tutorials, FS Idea Soup, FS Obscura, and most recently, AMFA's 3D printed parts.
This is a clone of TangereenMade on a whim as a result of rediscovering an old design (see sample).
It's pixel perfect at 12pt, 24pt, 36pt, etc. :^)
Since the inspiration image had only uppercase in it, I took some style liberties with the lowercase. The result is mildly comical!
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)
24-segment display. This one belongs to a small family called Calculatrix.
Like Calculatrix 12, this one is spaced so that every segment appears in its proper place, as if the text were being rendered on one giant display. (If using this in your own software, you will want to check the line spacing as it can vary depending on the software.)
I suppose this font could be used for weaving or embroidery work, as well... it has that look about it...
TIP: Try zooming out while already at Pixel size!
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...
Original size: 15pt
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A font which has a spurless, sans-serif, pixelated polygonal look which is somewhat reminescent of fonts used in VHS technology.
A lot of applied science went into this design. It's designed to remain legible on all media in all use conditions, provided that one uses the original size or a multiple thereof. Numerous technologies and mediums were employed to realize this objective.
"Diaspora" was tested and refined for use with/on/against:
• CRT, LCD & e-Ink screens
• image formats & compressed imagery (GIF, JPG)
• printers (inkjet, bubble jet, laserjet, & thermal)
• analog video & multi-generational copies (VHS, Super 8)
• digital video (AVI, MP4, MPEG, WEBM, WMV)
• 3D and voxel models (Blender, MagicaVoxel, POV-Ray)
• dynamic scaling hardware (game consoles and capture devices)
• imagery plugins & filters, including image degraders
• image scaling/interpolation hardware & software
• image recognition hardware & software
These all have traits which degrade, distort, compress, glitch, or otherwise alter imagery in various ways. This design aims to minimize the loss of legibility from these effects and to attain the best scores possible in various forms of imagery analysis. So far, this has proved extremely useful, as it can remain fully legible even when extreme JPG or video compression are applied to it thousands of times.
A piece of software I helped write, called the Marinan Imagery Deconstruction AI System (MIDAS), is being used on captured images of this font. The end objective is to realize the design which has the best all-around Marinan Interpretability Value (MIV) for all the tested platforms - the design which is considered by MIDAS to be the most legible in the most media under the broadest range of use conditions and quality levels.
MIDAS uses a set of considerations made with both humans and computers in mind, so a high MIV does not necessarily equal a better font - it just means one that the system thinks is easier to visually interpret. Note the use of the phrase "visually interpret" as opposed to "read". MIDAS tries to determine how well people and computers can tell what shapes are, not how much enjoyment they'll get from reading or how much strain they might undergo while doing it.
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VERSION HISTORY:
1.0.0 - initial release.
1.0.1 - More Latin support added.
1.0.2 - First batch of tests run.
1.0.3 - gjy5&ßẞ were improved, some glyphs added.
1.0.4 - Second batch of tests run. Space width reduced.
1.0.5 - Experimentally converted to a rounded spurless design, then converted back to a plain spurless after testing. A few new ligatures were added.
1.0.6 - Cyrillic and Greek enter development. Many of these letters must be altered to be distinct from their Latin counterparts.
1.0.7 - Some spacing values changed to increase internal consistency. More difficult tests are being devised. However, since only I seem interested in this type of work, this project is going on hiatus for some time.
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See also: AMFA, a font built with similar considerations in mind
Experimental mosaic... or maybe a new mineral species?
This one started as a doodle. I began placing circles to see what kinds of complex shapes I could make, and this was the result.
It achieves a new visual effect at almost every size up to the original. Also try slowly moving the zoom slider for some interesting animations!
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This font is now nearly 1MB in size! I guess it has to do with the intrinsic complexity of circles.
Alternate take on Nirvanite, this time with bullseyes rather than solid circles as the large segments.
This one is a lot more organic than its predecessor, but also a lot more confusing. Looks like clusters of alien tadpole eggs to me!
This is a clone of NirvaniteA medium-res pixel font I designed in 2017 for printing the text of "The Story of Book" (TSoB), a tale which began life as an imaginary joke story and then was actually committed to paper.
TSoB is woven from my and my friends' whims, flights of fancy, in-jokes, and intentional idiocy, as well as contributions from several AIs. The resulting story changes tone, style, mood, and context at seeming random, and is subversive toward its media and reader beyond insufferability. All this was done just to make Trap Farmer Brer Brah slightly more interesting to the very few people who will ever bother to get and read The Story of Book in-game. So this font is based on an Easter egg.
Formerly known as "Specula".
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By request, a font with the two-toned look of a Pokéball. No filters! The Pokédollar sign can be found on "¢" and a Pokéball is on "•".
"Eviolite" is an item that powers up the defenses of Pokémon that are not fully evolved. Looks like a lavender-colored gem.
Pixel demake of Goud. This is easily the best Goud for body text, as it remains crisp at all sizes!
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Original size: 9pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
A 7x7 outline design which is made to form solid-looking masses from the glyphs while still allowing the outer perimeters of words to take on some unique shapes.
Original size: 5.25pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
A fusion between Roman-style text and pixel art - the sort of font that might have existed in old 80s font software. It's fairly wide and verbose and is something of a colossus among pixel fonts.
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Original size: 13pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
Asymmetrical alien techno stencil.
This uses some experimental techniques, of course, but I'm not sure how to concisely explain those. Let's just say that each type of line bend and line connection has a rule associated with it. These get naturally modified by the structural asymmetry the font has so that simple rules appear in many forms and variations.
Third iteration of Tangereen with a bit of Paradoxy Effect. This one is rather fancy, so probably best used as a Display font.
The center portions of these glyphs make me think of sliced oranges and moon phases. They could act as cabochon settings, as well! So you could use these shapes to make jewelry set with a birthstone, monogrammed pendants/insignia, and so on.
A design that combines decolike asymmetry with a double line concept. It also incorporates some experimental methods to unify the wider glyphs (mw@#™, etc.) with the others, by allowing the middle sections of these letters to have both the single and double lines. This results in a look that is at times architectural and at other times almost like loopy cursive.
A font which uses some custom macaroni bricks. This one has the same kind of structural asymmetry as Phenomenologist. Angles and corners on the left are almost always sharper than those on the right, which gives glyphs a structural asymmetry as well as a sense of rightward momentum. This technique also imparts variation to some otherwise very similar letterforms (bdpq, mw, sz).
This is named for a species of android from Doctor Who.
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Other design decisions:
- Make the ascender height shorter than the uppercase
- Use squares for dots/diaresis and circles for punctuation, so that they are more quickly distinguished
- Allow the sharp curve and gentle curve to swap positions when it's beneficial to the glyph (BX8&)
- Incorporate angled lines into several glyphs so that none of the glyphs which have them seem out of place (SZsz012569*~$)
- Ignore the other design decisions for glyphs which need a standardized look due to their use in programming and other syntax-based forms of writing (most symbols & punctuation)