Here is my fourth attempt to make a narrow font that accentuates diagonals. It seems to be a good programming font at size 10. It makes it surprisingly easy to read upper case consonant names.
Design is as follows:
Monospaced of course, because code pretty much requires this. Code fonts are built for both reading and editing, and when some letters are very narrow like the i and l in most fonts, that makes them very hard to select with a mouse and therefore very hard to edit and makes these fonts very hard to use for programming. In addition block cut and paste is important for programming and monospaced is required to do this easily.
Small sizes need to be easily readable. Sometimes you need to be able to see a lot of code on one screen.
Two Dimensional - designed for two dimensional grid-like work such as spread sheets and programming. Lines to draw reader's attention vertically are preferred over lines to draw reader's attention horizontally (as in most fonts). That makes this font more difficult for reading text and less difficult for reading code.
Glyphs are wide in the center of each letter so that diagonals and crossbars are easy to see, and narrow toward the top and bottom so that the characters pull away from each other and are easy to tell apart.
Bodies of the lower case letters are made relatively tall so they are easy to read in code, yet maintaining a clear difference between the height of the lower case and upper case characters - very important.
From top to bottom: 2 blocks upper diacritics, 1/6 block space, 2 blocks stems and upper case, 5.5 blocks lower case body, 1/3 block space, 2 blocks lower diacritics.
Clear distinctions exist among the members of each of the following groups of glyphs: ({[ ])} Il1 aes Ss56$ Zz217? `' ., uUvV coCO0D pP ;: ~- to help tell exacty what each glyph is. This is critical in programming.
Numbers are really large. It doesn't hurt at all for numbers to stand out in programming. This is ok because numbers never have diacritics. The 7 has a bit of a scoop so it does not look like a 2 when underlined.
Vertical alignment - The pairs {} () and [] line up precisely vertically.
The dots are large and distinct so they show up easily in code.
Large numeric 'operators' +-/\%^~=* are easy to read in code.
At least one block touches the right edge in each glyph so that Visual Studio can figure out what's going on. This also means that many glyphs do not touch the left edge and some narrow puctuation glyphs have a tiny extra block off on the right edge.
Floating a little bit above the zero line helps in dealing with underlines.
Avoids horizontal strokes to reduce problems with pixelation at various sizes in various programming tools.
Sans Serif (mostly) so that you can cram glyphs together more tightly.
Also:
Diacritics have lots of space since the area above and below the capitals is more than 2 blocks, so they can be added later on.
Looks scripty - There is a bit of a scripty thing going on because of the wide bases for the lower case i and l, so this is enhanced a bit in the I, J, S, U, Z, f, t, u, z and s.
Narrow enough to be mistaken for an informal text font although since it is designed for two dimensional work, simple lines of text are not that easy to read.
A little too thin - A little bit too thin to be easy to read on a pixelated screen below size 10, although it does print very nicely, so I am labeling this Friendly Geek Light, and I am building a Regular and a Bold font also.
Recent Changes:
Made the 'h' lean to the right to distinguish from the 'b'. Straightened out the '+'. Made the 'F' drop below the rest of the upper case to make it look less like an 'f'. Heightened the 'v' to make it smoother.
Happy cloning ... please show us your additions! This octagonal design needs some more punctuation and a few necessary symbols to be 'useful' on posters, folder spines, clothing etc. Courageous folk will add diacritics.
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 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 A26Recreation of the pixel font from Taito's "Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode III" (1991). Note the roman numerals, mapped to their respective unicode characters (U2160-U2162). Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Attempt to recap the classic lettering by "Theo Van Doesburg" for avant garde architectural magazine "De Stijl".
Apart from some small variations I made between a couple of upper and lower case characters the two are mostly copies!
Style variation in the "STF_CONNECTED SQUARES v2" typeface family.
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A remastered version of "CONNECTED SQUARES". A previous recap I did from the work of late great dutch graphic designer "Jurriaan Schrofer".
This time I made a much more accurate version. I also added uppercase letters and some extra punctuations.
Enjoy!
How to use:
Enter your text using lowercase then make another text field where the same text will be in uppercase, then make it semi-transparent and put over the first text.
For big text
This is a clone of SF Work Sans BodyRules of Aximen font design project:
1. All letter characters and numerals must incorporate a section of the staff (any part of it, the staff is fully represented by the I).
2. Norse Futhark usually used a vertical line at the top and bottom of each rune to show it's flow across a stone or woodworking, that would follow the contour of the media. This means that no character can share the base line, nor can it share a part of the top line (as it's complete design, if sharing a guideline, would effectively disappear, like an L with an underline at the baseline would look more like an I). These are immaginary lines in uppercase, but the same glyphs will be used in lowercase which will offer a lowline directly below and sharing the base line at the top edge, as well as a top line at maximum character height where the bottom edge will share the top line (top of character boundry).
3. Accented characters will show accents below the low line or above the top line and the appropriate top or bottom edge of these lines will act like character boundry. In the uppercase register, these accents must mirror the placement of the lowercase, even though the low/top lines are immaginary.
4. Extra points for incorporating more of the staff into the actual character design. The staff line itself (again, represented in the I) represents the line used between characters in some Futharc runes.
5. Alphanumeric characters should represent modern letters and numbers, but not look modern. But, they do not have to look like runes, either. Yet, they should still be readable, though not necessarily well adapted to speed reading scanning of normal letter shapes. No character need to comply with Summer Institute for Linguistics standards, guidelines or rules, and the characters that bend such rules the farthest are considered the best.
6. Each character should be taken indivually as if the only design problem. Individuality and uniqueness of each character is prized well above unity as a typeface. Diversity, even of style througho0ut the same character set, is encouraged and applauded.
Typeface design inspired by brand logo of British consumer electronics company "Sinclair Research Ltd."
The entire typeface was build exclusively around the already existing eight letters that make up their logo.
I have no clue on wether a complete typeface ever was made, or that someone has tried this before. So far I have never stumbled upon one yet , not even in their official product ads and brochures.
Enjoy!
LENA (Inline) - Geometric retro display type family
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This is a part of the typeface family called 'LENA'.
A font family that comes in 3 different style varriations: Inline Solid, & Text
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Here you can find the rest of this family:
LENA (Text)
LENA (Solid)
Cheers