What better way to celebrate our bright future than pushing a whole creative medium forward? Introducing Brick Patching – a combinatoric approach to constructing hyper-tunable curved and angular modular forms.

Stay tuned to this space; *eventually I will describe this highly useful hack and fully document the technique.

Upgrade your gray matter cuz one day it may matter.

Let not the death of our elders be the demise of our ways of life. Let not the passage of time be measured in the passing of languages beyond all living memory.

Based on the Lakota orthography © 1982 Leroy C. Curley.

Extended character and symbol set by William Leverette

Another leap toward the elusive subtractive Boolean.
Each character consists of nine bricks arranged in a 3 x 3, filtered and scaled, composite-stack matrix. Insane levels of smooth detail result.
This filtered, subtractive stacking technique extends those first published here.
Enjoy a private clone to grok my unknown approach. The possibilities are endless...

What began nearly 8 years ago as an experiment in multi-stage, multi-resolution pixel serif type drafting (starting smallish then manually upscaling x4), took on the robust character you see here after countless edits and some tricky lessons learned along the way.

The initial weight was on the light side (cloned privately for posterity), so I took a leap into this bookish weight by fattening each glyph copy-pasted 1 pixel shifted both up and to the right. A rudimentary technique, by no means novel, yet almost wholly effective. I saw fit from here to only make a handful of corrections, keeping the slightly rounded and slanted serif shape that resulted as well as the subtle reenforcing of a pen-nib construction. 

More intriguing is the 1-bit “anti-aliasing” scheme I found myself  progressively guided toward while finding the lines of these curves developing the initial light weight. Implied diagonals and said curves – as well as refinement of contrast – are substantially more granular and specific than had I taken a black-and-white posterized, or stairstepped approach.

At half-resolution, the resulting smoothness is acceptible. This type of hinting will be useful in developing a substitution rule set consisting of subpixel slanted or curved bricks to produce a “vectorized” version.

Indeed, such a process could be purely automated by a proficient developer or properly trained neural network (this would be a really interesting future feature for fontstruct pro – rather than hinting a font after painstaking vector construction, why not reverse the process by way of en vogue ai-assisted upscaling?).

Basic accented charaters and numerals are being added as I churn through the extended character set...

All credit to Buro Destruct for their original bitmap design. Except for the &, that one’s mine.

I originally released this in 2008 as an exploration of the optical effect possible using different modules in a simple, gridded bitmap design. Buro Destruct iconic design was an inviting point of departure.

I have recreated/republished this at the request of four who took the inspiration and ran with it.]]> https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/770924/med_lsd Mon, 04 Feb 2013 23:19:06 +0000
A family of fonstructions: nine parametric variations in four weights utilizing advanced filters and bleeding-edge composite stacks. Most excitingly, overshoots are tackled with a combination of vertical filtering and composite bricks. Enjoy a private clone to see how it’s done.]]> https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/719851/fs_isthmus_1 Sun, 14 Oct 2012 06:18:34 +0000
Here’s how far I got.]]> https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/682612/fs_light Sun, 14 Oct 2012 05:47:38 +0000
]]> https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/700628/fs_galactica Fri, 07 Sep 2012 03:26:48 +0000

Ray Meadow’s gorgeous take on uncial script is one of the best large-scale fontstructions ever released. The font has character, wit, and charm to spare and surely deserves all the attention and adulation awarded it by fontstructors and paying customers alike. Like any great work, it compels us to look closely and savour the details.

Inspecting Ray’s work, I sensed a range of mostly minor refinements and exacting adjustments that might make this gem shine all the more brightly. So, in the spirit of camaraderie, I requested permission to apply myself to a clone of his work in order to bring forth and share some of these suggestions. Approached in stages, the task of polishing this stone to my liking spread out over more than half a year.

My main goal was to smooth the modular geometry out as much as possible, address some stroke weight and contrast issues throughout, and rebalance specific forms. In many cases, I use custom composite and advanced stacking tricks to fine tune the curves of these letterforms. Upon studious inspection, a wealth of tweaks are revealed. I suspect that setting basic words and sentences is now an even greater joy with this version, and pray it will be of benefit and inspiration to make Ray’s great work even better.

The total effect strikes a greater unity between the uppercase and the lowercase. A few letters are significant departures from their starting points (K, k R, W) and offered both as suggestions for the mains and ideas for alternates. After so many hours of exploratory modulation, I am pleased to share this technical feedback with Ray and the fontstruct community*.

*For now cloning is off until I can communicate with Ray about the best approach to take with this. Hopefully we can find a way to share this without attracting a torrent of rip-offs.

>> thalamic’s description (with edit)

Permutation: The act of changing the arrangement of a given number of elements.

One font, two different brick combinations.

Picking any two bricks from the 169 available gives a total possible combinations of 14196 (169C2) different fonts. Counting a certain kinds of bricks as one--all four 45degree, for instance--gives 36 unique bricks, resulting in 630 (36C2) unique combinations or fonts.

In this font, if the bricks are swapped with each other, the result will be a different font. Hence order of the bricks matter. In which case, nCr (combinations) is not the right choice. What's needed is nPr (permutations). 169P2 gives 28392 permutations and a 36P2 gives 1260 permutations.

So, at a minimum, 1260 fonts are possible with the current implementation of FontStruct, with just this particular layout of bricks. This whole permuatation thing is so fun and easy to play around with. The original fs Permutation series worked with just the bricks that were available by default. Since then, the FontStructor has evolved, allowing for, in part, custom bricks. This new permutation was not possible before. This one is created just to show that custom bricks can be dragged and dropped on top of the existing ones replacing the standard bricks. The bricks used here are [edit:1/4 brick staggered identical custom composites] .

Clone it and play around.

Instructions
1. Select a brick from the standard bricks or create your own custom brick.

2. Click and drag it to the brick in the first position in My Bricks until that brick turns gray.

3. Release.

4. Repeat steps 1-3 for the brick in the second position in My Bricks.

Learn. Enjoy. Share your permutation.

]]> https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/531789/fs_permutation_ix_2 Thu, 15 Sep 2011 02:23:20 +0000
Permutation VIII: dual weave pattern + character stroke via composite bricks, 2:2 advanced filtering.

>> thalamic’s description (with edit)

Permutation: The act of changing the arrangement of a given number of elements.

One font, two different brick combinations.

Picking any two bricks from the 169 available gives a total possible combinations of 14196 (169C2) different fonts. Counting a certain kinds of bricks as one--all four 45degree, for instance--gives 36 unique bricks, resulting in 630 (36C2) unique combinations or fonts.

In this font, if the bricks are swapped with each other, the result will be a different font. Hence order of the bricks matter. In which case, nCr (combinations) is not the right choice. What's needed is nPr (permutations). 169P2 gives 28392 permutations and a 36P2 gives 1260 permutations.

So, at a minimum, 1260 fonts are possible with the current implementation of FontStruct, with just this particular layout of bricks. This whole permuatation thing is so fun and easy to play around with. The original fs Permutation series worked with just the bricks that were available by default. Since then, the FontStructor has evolved, allowing for, in part, custom bricks. This new permutation was not possible before. This one is created just to show that custom bricks can be dragged and dropped on top of the existing ones replacing the standard bricks. The bricks used here are [edit: custom composites] .

Clone it and play around.

Instructions
1. Select a brick from the standard bricks or create your own custom brick.

2. Click and drag it to the brick in the first position in My Bricks until that brick turns gray.

3. Release.

4. Repeat steps 1-3 for the brick in the second position in My Bricks.

Learn. Enjoy. Share your permutation.

]]> https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/531507/fs_permutation_viii Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:18:00 +0000
Version 2.0

A winning, small-matrix rendition of this super-elliptical monoline sans. If you’d like, please enjoy a private clone to tour the brand-spankin’ new interiors.

I embraced innovation at the expense of imperfection with faux-curve composite stacks. These custom bricks are used to resolve the most glaring proportion issues besetting version 1 (and 2’s) capitals. I risk intermittent aliasing as well as potential inconsistencies in both curvature and stroke contrast. Yet these composite-stack discontinuities (A,C,D,G,J,O,Q,S,U,V) marry unexpectedly well with the extensively used macaroni bricks and remain themselves smooth up to an impressive 72pt.

Manual kerning leaves a lot of room for improvement. The alternates are included mostly for curiosity’s sake. Another work in progress with samples to follow. Feedback is always very appreciated; thanks in advance for it! :)]]> https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/517481/fs_rondeux Sat, 20 Aug 2011 22:09:34 +0000

Please enjoy a private clone to see how I dealt with contrast, curves, bracketing, variable letter width and the difficult-to-achieve emboldening of the capitals’ vertical strokes within a minimal fontstruct matrix (and If you like what you see, please download for personal usage and vote kindly! :)

Intaglio’s amazing recent work makes similar strides (see the excellent rounds, for example), offering a solution before me to several of these long-standing impasses of the medium.

More characters to come... :)]]> https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/452941/ohm_run_slab Sat, 09 Apr 2011 06:18:09 +0000
My mother asked me to design a non-intersecting (no counters) polygonal alphabet for her to use as a teaching tool in her fourth graders’ math class. Of course, I immediately thought of fontstruct!

Here is a (somewhat refined) departure/sequel to the example design I created to help inspire their projects. :)

Alternates are included in the lowercase. Just letters for now...

Bump the zoom up a few notches in the preview widget to get proper hairline spacing. Enjoy!]]> https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/423872/polygonal_ii Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:47:20 +0000
How about this way, Xenophilius? :^) It looks, err, rather covoluted at the default display size. Try zooming in! 8)

P.S. There’s a starting character on Í (option+shift+s for Mac). Spaces can be used to pad the wave effect and create shapes and background textures. Enjoy!]]> https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/452966/w_stripes_the_font Fri, 04 Mar 2011 23:28:17 +0000