This is my attempt to make the smallest possible font. Each character fits inside a 3x3 pixel square (4x4 pixels if you include the space between characters). This font can be useful where pixel space is at a premium, like on an LED matrix or a mechanical display.
I don't consider this a truly complete font because there is no distinction between the capital letters and small letters. Also, some of the special characters can be difficult to descern without context. Nevertheless, this font can create readable text strings and convey information using a minimum of resources.
I am publishing this font under a Creative Commons license, so that anyone can use it for any purpose. Attribution is appreciated but not required.
Leave a comment if you make something cool with it!
James Robert Patrick IV
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 cloneA really tiny font which uses only about 15/64 of a brick per glyph. This could have been even smaller, of course, but I wanted it to be readable, so I used 3x5 forms. This means I can do a 3x4 lowercase later if people want it.
Is there any practical use for this? Probably not. But, at the original size, the entire Lorem Ipsum text takes up about half of one line, so that's something. :D
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...
A compressed, squareish microfont. 4x4, monospaced, no wasted matrix.
I like how this one uses all the space it occupies. Glyphs like ijl1 fill out the words they're in rather than creating voids. Also, i looks kind of like a lit candlestick, and I like that.
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Original size: 3pt (use multiples of this size for pixel perfection)
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.
Squareish, slightly futuristic 2x2 design. It's made to fit in with industrial, sci-fi, and Soviet-style aesthetics. It's also far more internally consistent than my other 2x2 designs!
Because this uses so much nudging, diacritics will be impossible unless I composite many of the existing glyphs or place the diacritics really high... I'll think about it...
Megashark's hard 1px outline was experimentally converted to a soft 1px outline. This result is far less readable to my eye, though it does look cool! Its printed words have a balloon-esque, almost organic quality.
"S.D.M.G." stands for "Super Dolphin Machine Gun", a weapon from the game Terraria. The Minishark and Megashark are from the same game. :^)
This is a clone of MegasharkAn experiment to see if 3x3 fonts are more legible when drawn in negative space. I consider this to be not only a success, but also the most readable 3x3 design I have seen - particularly the uppercase.
The successors Megashark and S.D.M.G. are more useable and more stylish respectively, while Minishark strikes a good balance.
This is considered an E3x3 because, while it's created in a 5x5 grid, it has an effective drawing area of only 3x3. The outermost square only has pixels drawn in it when the interior design dictates such.
A mostly-4x5 design made for legibility, aesthetics, and an almost authoritarian regularity. This makes it suited for comics, tutorials, general reading, and more. It can be easily read at its original size with the same effort it would take to read a high-res design of the same size.
This design has been tested and reported to make an excellent font for IRC and other chat clients!
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Original size: 4.5pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
A rounded version of Pixelcruiser Flagship. I think rounding it off both made it better-looking and more readable! This now looks like something I'd use in pixel comics.
This is a clone of Pixelcruiser FlagshipA tiny font made for pixel art tutorials and streamer use. The inspiration comes from old art of video game controllers which I used to make, in particular the letters ABCLRXYZ which I drew many times on many controller buttons. The more complex letters (B,E,M,W) take on slightly abstract forms for neatness' sake.
Since these glyphs are all 4x4 unicase, compositing them for use in Fontstruct tutorials might save you a lot of work. Feel free to clone this for such a use.
Original size: 3pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
See also: Four on the Floor, Glyphstamp 1x1
An attempt to make the cleanest-looking headliner possible in 3x3.
Recommended: Use with kerning turned ON!
See also: Empty Clip, Empty Magazine, Misplaced, Slabberton
Version 1.5
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3x3 slab serif. This is based on Wallerton, Anachronistic Gunslinger, an IRC-based "TV show" which I used to write and produce. All the characters in the show were my AIs pretending they were cowboys.
Well, I managed to successfully produce a lowercase for this one!
Recommended: Use with kerning.
Super-tiny! This begins to approach the lower limits of visual interpretability. It's still far more readable than any 3x3 pixel font I've yet seen, though.
Like Four on the Floor, this font uses every trick I have picked up as a pixel artist and font artist to make itself as readable as possible. I consider this one suitable for general reading (e.g. when making pixel art tutorials or depicting book texts in pixel games), but only just.
Original size: 3pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
Another attempt at the challenging 4x4 grid. Only those characters which I could fit into the 4x4 grid were included. This time, I think I managed to get near the level of quality and style typical of a 5x5 font!
This is probably the smallest font most people would ever want to use for general reading. It took no trivial amount of experience and experimentation to come up with!
If you use this to make assets, you can use color separation to fit 4 glyphs onto an 8x8 tile or 16 onto a 16x16 tile. Check out my profile page for more microfonts you can use in your games!
Original size: 3pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
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)