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.
Small-grid doodle which creates new combinatorial forms.
I considered this design rather rough and unappealing until I gave it negative spacing. This caused the forms to merge together in unpredictable and interesting ways. The lesson here is that sometimes the metrics, not the aesthetics, are what "make" or "save" a design.
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 NirvaniteSome kind of great big ol' chain.
In retrospect, I think it looks like a jewelry chain from a dwarven civilization. Perhaps the hypothetical jeweler cut and ground the stones in an imitation of some dwarven font!
When glyphs are used in isolation, they somewhat resemble carved signets or seals. Increasing the letter spacing allows you to create a variation of the design. (This is something that must be done in-software since the font will render as monospaced by default.)
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12SEP2018: Added lowercase... the low resolution combined with the design method make it very difficult to render distinctive lowercase versions of every letter, but I'll keep working on it. There's a lot of similarity between pairs like S/5, Z/2, etc., so this font is most effectively used in forms of writing wherein context suffices to inform the reader as to the identity of each glyph (lists, prose, and technical writings). If you want to use this in a password system or something, I recommend using one case's glyphs only.
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Design Rules:
1. Negative spaces will be areas of 0.5 bricks' effective length or width.
2. Negative spaces may exceed the 0.5 measurement only by increments of 0.5 and in only one dimension at a time.
3. Glyphs will fill their framed canvasses to the greatest extent possible while adhering to the other rules.
An evil electromagnetic zigzag tape reel. Looks almost embossed, as if the letters were "pressed" into the waves somehow. In that way it reminds me of old hand-operated label makers. It also makes me think of electricity, TV static, ocean waves, tire tracks, fractured glass, and more depending on font size and color.
The name is inspired by an attack from a notorious NES game, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde".
"Mythical Bursts" is an anagram of "Bismuth Crystal". The design is inspired by said crystals as well as Mayan/Aztec carvings (or at least, the comparatively simple forms they have in popular media) and sgraffito art in which a surface is scratched off to reveal a contrasting material underneath.
12SEP2018: I've edited every glyph in order to disconnect the letterforms from their enclosing shapes. This makes the font much more readable and consistent.
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Original size: 42pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
A single line is bent on itself to trace letterforms in 5x5.
This is part of my "IVO" series (Inline Versus Outline) wherein inline and outline elements are split, merged, and altered to make them ambiguous and to allow new styles to emerge. They may look like maze fonts, but they have a different design methodology altogether.
A multi-outline design with intentional aliasing.
At the original size, it looks nicely textured. The illusions become more harsh as one zooms in.
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Original size: 12.75pt (use multiples of this size for pixel perfection)
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.
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.
Just doodling!
It breaks up clusters of words wherever punctuation appears. This might help with reading it out loud, by showing how long a sentence is at a glance and making it very obvious where to pause.
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.
Another of my many doodles. Fun to make!
Finally, a design where all the diacritics blend in and look natural!
Some puzzling boxes, indeed! These are named for Lemarchand, maker of the puzzle box which appeared in the movie series "Hellraiser".
This design has a variety of textures and optical illusions up its sleeve. See the sample for a few of them.
Original size: 47pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
A stencil design in which diagonal cuts are used to imply angles and curves. It does not quite obey the rules of a segmented display, but it tries its best!
This is inspired by some text I put on the side of the Sheepslayer Mk.2, a flying dragon car piloted by Lyll "Hatch" Soretti in my game Seven Candles.
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.
(WIP)
An attempt at an angular, futuristic Fraktur design. It's also inspired by ancient Greek stonecarvings, or at least, the way such carvings are depicted in comics and cartoons. It has a lot of intentional asymmetry to make it look quirky and slightly comical. (I tried making everything symmetrical with composites, but it looked boring!)
I welcome any suggestions for this one. I've never tried to make a "normal" Fraktur, only avantgarde ones, so I'm not very knowledgeable about the style.
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
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)
A pixel font which uses diagonal arrangements only, resulting in several optical illusions at once! It can appear to have solid lines, gradients, polka-dots, and more.
The negative spaces within the glyphs are as few as possible, to facilitate coloring them in. A few of them ("V", "W", "7", "^" etc.) are a bit arduous... I recommend zooming way in while coloring them...