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)
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.
An experimental design using 1/8 weight lines alongside 1/16 ones. The 1/8 lines are the smallest that can be accurately nudged. Centering them is still a problem at times, and I need a few impossible composites to perfect the glyphs ABEFHKQRXYijkx34789, but overall I'm quite fond of how this doodle turned out.
I think I could use some intensive compositing to get rid of the central dividing line in glyphs like A and H. I'll give it a try when I can.
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.
A quirky Pseudostencil design with a central horizontal slot going through it. The "slot" is 1 brick tall for lowercase and 2 for uppercase, and becomes a vertical slot for numerals and certain symbols.
This is named for the cowboy and lasagna emojis. These were repeatedly added to then removed from several popular chat clients and websites. Changing emoji standardization or government conspiracy? YOU DECIDE.
An alternate, more asymmetrical & stylized Madmouse.
This could be considered an avantgarde spurless or mixed-spur design. Some letters have spurs and some don't. This is entirely dependent on the diagonal lines, which were placed so that they would slant up and to the right. "s27" are obvious exceptions.
This is a clone of MadmouseAn alternate take on Eyeball Kids which has more expressive eyes.
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Making this has given me an idea for an ASCII Roguelike tileset wherein lowercase letters represent juvenile creatures and uppercase letters represent adult ones.
This is a clone of Eyeball KidsSemiserif semispur minimalism.
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This design uses a few novel glyph-shapes and techniques to achieve its look. Most notable of these is the serifed a which lets the serif protrude to the right. I avoid this feature in almost all designs, especially pixel fonts, because it adds an unnecessary 1px of spacing - but for this font, the feature can be included without changing anything for the worse. Many other glyphs have this same sort of protruding serif/spur, and the slanted geometry of the serifs/spurs affords them a look that "retreats" from neighboring glyphs, rather than seeming to protrude into them.
Font from the ingame marquee display of Barcade Brawl, a 2015 game by yours truly. This was made to look similar to the system fonts from old arcade boards, PC microsystems, etc. You've probably seen the fonts I'm talking about; they're everywhere and many people refer to them singularly as "the arcade font" or "the NES font".
This is 7x7 with no wasted matrix, but it looks better without monospacing since not every glyph is the same width. It also makes a decent terminal & chat font, at least for those who don't care about the case of the messages they read and write.
Feel free to use this in your games, etc.!
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Original size: 5.25pt (use multiples of this size for pixel perfection)
An even smaller and more stylized take on Madcat/Madkitten. It isn't really a Decolike anymore, but it is readable at smaller sizes than almost all my other designs!
This uses some compression/truncation tricks to fit glyphs into a smaller grid. Those tricks are usually used in pixel designs (such as Chlorophyte) but I think they worked out well here, too!
This is a cloneAsymmetrical 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.
Verbossus in sans-serif!
This is a clone of VerbossusLinestrider's two-lined little brother.
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Probably won't update this one again, because it uses a lot of brickswapping and so it is likely to get corrupted by additional editing/saving.
This is a clone of LinestriderA 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 TangereenV0.2.6: Finished Cyrillic.
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A small scale faux-bezier design with a cutout-esque look. It offers different advantages at different sizes. Most glyphs are legible down to 4pt.
As this design evolves, it gives me an increasing "board games" feeling. This design seems very well-suited for board game parts, especially cards and smaller plastic pieces.
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This has a few notable design features:
- Asymmetry helps keep letters like bdpq from being confused for one another
- Serifs and flags accomplish the same thing for groups of similar letters such as ce and ftſ
- Semiserif style helps reduce the need for kerning to almost zero
- Simplified polygons and counter shapes help pixel optimization
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See also:Cartoon Riot
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.
Here we have a filled-counter pseudoserif pseudostencil that is also a borderline IVO design at the same time! It also has a bit of a "double font" look going on if you look at the negative space.
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Design Rules:
1. Internal negative spaces of glyphs will be filled such that a 0.5-brick-wide void exists between the filled space and the glyphs themselves.
2. When a glyph's horizontal line intersects with the filled space created by Rule 1, both the filled space and the line will be broken.
3. Vertical lines will only connect by two tapering curves or by the implied connections created by filled negative space.
4. Filled negative spaces may only join with the outer perimeters of glyphs.
The new Eyeball Kids™ from Pixel Kitchen® are the best way to get your child interested in experimenting with eyeballs. Color 'em! Italicize 'em! Throw 'em into oncoming traffic! Abuse 'em all you want because EYEBALL KIDS ARE ETERNAL.*
! ! ! DO NOT FEED EYEBALL KIDS AFTER MIDNIGHT ! ! !
* - Eternal under normal use conditions. See the enclosed manual for terms.
A design that combines tropes from fantasy, sci-fi, and sports in a subtle and pixel-optimized way.
Structurally, this looks like a high-res version of Marengi Mk2. There are still plenty of differences between the two, but since they seem equally readable to me, I'm tagging this as a chat font.