I was making some new bricks to add to Brick Basket when the idea of a segmented display made from composites occurred to me. The result is this experimental 25-segment display.
This achieves some interesting "double line"/"folded line" effects. It also gets some pecuilar distortions at smaller sizes.
Iteration 1.11
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Tribal doodle thing. Still in its experimental phase. It's named for Abraxas, a Tromp from the PC game "Commander Blood". (As it turns out, the same name has many historical and mythological uses.)
A font made to the height of the visible field when the FontStructor is zoomed all the way out on my screen. I've always wanted to make something that vaguely pushed one of FS' limits - in this case, the height of the field which I can observe without scrolling.
Well, I could've made this even taller, but I wanted it to be somewhat useable at least. :D
This was originally a pixel design, but then I changed my mind and converted it to high-res. That gave it a more architectural look.
Version 1.2
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A slightly futuristic and stencilesque design using halfwidth bricks.
The idea here was to make every glyph simple and minimal, not only in terms of overall geometry but individual line connections as well. Some glyphs are still more complex/less minimal than others, but I think it's a good amount of variety.
Experimental sliced sans serif. My goal here was to make a design which would result in an extremely compact and durable physical stencil. Almost all of the sharp points and acute angles are within the negative space, so it should be easy and very safe to make, handle and work with this stencil.
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Version History
1.3 - added More Latin and Google Fonts Basic bands.
1.2 - added uppercase, changed name to "Aegris Stencil".
1.1 - edited for more readability at small size. Glyphs with enclosed loops were altered so that the "movement" of the segments always runs clockwise.
1.0 - released.
A spirally design which tries its best to be lineal. Check out the "M" to see the "ammonyte". :D
Well, for some time I've wanted to make a font entirely with spirals. This is not that font, but it's as close as I've gotten to actually carrying out the idea. This is also small enough to use for body text, which is likely more than will be able to be said about an actual 100% spiral font.
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Original size: 15.75pt (use multiples of this size for pixel perfection)
Experimental 49-segment display.
In making and studying other segmented displays, I noticed they tended to have strong-looking right angled lines but weak-looking diagonals. This is my attempt to make a design where both styles of lines look more appealing and join together more solidly.
I decided to make a design which incorporated the thinnest/lightest weight lines possible in FontStruct. This is the result; I'll add more if people like it.
These 1/32 lines cannot be accurately nudged, so a unique line has to be built for each vertical position where I want a line. These lines also cannot be centered on a place where two curves meet (such as the middle of B or R). This introduces some unintentional asymmetry to the design, but I like it, so I'll keep it.
There is also the problem that forming a diagonal line of the same line weight is nearly impossible. While angled 1/32 lines can be formed, their angles are all close to 0. No method exists for making a line which slants at 45 degrees while also being 1/32 weight. So, I had to make some thicker lines in certain areas. I don't think they detract from the design, but if you scrutinize this enough, you'll notice them.
I came up with an original high-res design, then brickswapped to turn everything into square bricks. The result sort of reminds me of Proxima Punch Pixel Squared, but less art deco and more computer-esque. It has a really old and naive look to it which could make it good for retro-terminal use.
"Buttons Foe" = "Obtuse Font". Not only is it an obtuse font in look and construction, it's reminescent of an era when computers were thought of as adversarial, magic voodoo boxes. So both the name and the anagram are equally applicable. :^)
An attempt to make a Calculatrix with both squares and hexagonal segments. The result doesn't really fit in with the others, but it has a harsh and highly technical appearance about it which I like.
More glyphs later, maybe?
I wondered what a plain version of Candylander would look like, so I made this. :D
I think a fully half-arc version could look even more stylish than this! Hope to find time to create one soon. (EDIT: Done, see Migrator)
This is a clone of CandylanderA dashed line design made with the new half-arc bricks. The emphasized spurs/stems and off-kilter geometry give it a quirky, almost handwritten quality. Its striped appearance makes me think of candy as well as the Cheshire Cat, thus the name. :D
I doubt the upper case would look as cute as the lower. So I've cloned all LC to UC to make this easier to use...
Stained-glass blackletter Frankenfont thing. :D
UC cloned to LC to make this easier to use...
This is a clone of Chimera SpineA hexagon shape, a forced perspective effect, and a typeface all had their DNA extracted and recombined by evil scientists at Salk Institute. "Chimera Scales" is a hexagonal blackletter and the culmination of 8 years of genomic research. It has the ability to look like itself no matter what environment it's in. ALSO IT EATS HUMAN SOULS.
EXPERIMENTAL BLACKLETTER THING or EBT (codename "Chimera Spine") first came into AMFA custody on July 23, 2018. As of this time it is still considered to be non-dangerous. Study of EBT has proven that there is a relationship between its venomous barbs and English letter frequencies, with more common letters being especially likely to have these barbs. The venom itself, while not lethal to any known form of biological tissue, has [REDACTED] effects on the human psyche.
Another of Dr. Zeph's* mad experiments! This is an Alien Latin Groovy Minimalist Thingamabob with numerous unique forms of dyslexia-inducing ambiguity. It reads surprisingly well at small size!
* = not a real doctor
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.
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
SPOOKY GHOST FONT. A work in progress. Getting the right spooky apparition look is pretty intensive, but I managed to finish the basic character set before Halloween. :D
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This started as a 5x5 design. After realizing S and Z would look far better if I made them 1 square taller, I converted the whole font to be roughly 5x6. At this low resolution, it's hard to get the degree of irregularity which I think makes these letters look ghostly... but, the idea is certainly present!
This design seems like it'd fit in with a lot of horror and science fiction stuff, too. Apart from the "smoky"/"ghostly" look, it has a "melted" one which suggests a hot place or maybe immersion in acid. It also looks a bit like slime, and finally at smaller sizes it has a glitch-esque appearance.
A font inspired by the use of eggplants in video games. Many video games have unexpected eggplants in them. This is FontStruct's unexpected eggplant.
I decided to fill in the lowercase to add some variety. Hit SHIFT for shiny glyphs.
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See also: Spellforged Servitor
A pixel font which combines four experimental techniques at once:
1. Structurally disconnecting the stems from the open parts of letters.
2. Allowing glyphs to extend beyond the reaches of width and starting position.
3. Designing glyphs specifically to connect and form new shapes, rather than simply allowing shapes to emerge from existing characteristics.
4. Designing glyphs so that the overall font is free of a need for kerning.
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Alternates are now on UPPER CASE. I'll continue to update this as I get more ideas!
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Original size: 6.75pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)