A doodle made with Brick Basket.
This has many uses! It works as a pixel font or a high-res one, and can generate a surprising range of visual effects.
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See also:Psycho Wave
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.
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)
Another of my many doodles. Fun to make!
Finally, a design where all the diacritics blend in and look natural!
Version 2.6
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Inspired by a comment by jonrgrover.
I built diamonds sized according to the Fibonacci series, then made a segmented display out of them. The design was then carved away to make the glyphs you see here. I used the members 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8. These sizes proved most feasible to work with in this sort of arrangement.
I gave the terminals a flared appearance which I think makes the glyphs look slightly Celtic. The design also makes me think of beach sand and things found on the beach - shells, pretty rocks, and so on.
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.
Fontstruct's first vacuum tube font!
This is a design inspired by Nixie tubes. Since these "tubes" are iconographic, they could theoretically represent 12AX7s, 6L6s, KT88s, or whatever tube/valve you wanted. Feel free to clone and build on this concept.
Military and wargame related icons. The 4 stars are meant to represent a player number. Erase the stars to make pieces for Players 1, 2, and 3.
Got a request or idea? Let me know. Feel free to use these in any games you're creating!
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A - Tank
B - Anti-Aircraft Gun
C - Jet Fighter
D - Stealth Bomber
E - Battle/Explosion
F - Big Explosion/Nuclear Explosion
G - Missile Truck/Mobile Launcher
H - Flying Cross Medal - for distinguished aviators
I - Strategic Map
J - Military Convoy Truck
K - Bullets
L - Shells
M - Bombs
N - Strike Zone
O - Sm. Helicopter
P - Surface-to-Air Radar
Q - Surface-to-Surface Radar
R - Infantry Section
S - Civilians
T - ICBMs
U - Radar/Comms Coverage Area
V - APC
W - POWs
X - Opposing Forces
Y - Navy & Marine Corps Medal - for noncombat heroism
Z - Communications Satellite
a - Reconaissance Satellite
b - Weapon Satellite
c - Satellite Array
d - Patrol Boat
e - Frigate
f - Destroyer
g - Aircraft Carrier
h - Submarine
i - Mines
j - Depth Charges
k - Artillery
l - Artillery Division
m - Mechanized Infantry
n - AWACS/Early-Warning Aircraft
o - Fortifications
p - Trenches
q - Terrain (Road)
r - Terrain (Woodland)
s - Terrain (Mountain)
t - Terrain (Mountain Range)
u - Terrain (Calm Seas)
v - Terrain (Rough Seas)
w - Terrain (Desert/Sand)
x - Terrain (Wetlands/Mud)
y - Terrain (Hills)
z - Terrain (Lake/River)
. - Falling Bomb
, - Transport/Cargo Plane
0-9 - Stencil Numerals
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See also: Donjonikons, Travelicons
A space-esque design made for a friend! The angular counters give this a simplified geometry which makes it easy to read despite its looks. Works well for small- or large-scale applications - chat, terminals, logos, and more. Supports Dutch, English, and Greek!
The original was cloned off and preserved elsewhere. The version you see here has centered glyphs.
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.
Asymmetrical 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.
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 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.
I finally made a folded-/ribbon-style design. This one contains a number of experimental techniques. Most notably, the swept parts of glyphs are allowed to extend beyond the letterwidths and sometimes even the baselines. This enhances the sense of movement, creates some interesting linkages, and reduces the need for kerning.
All of these shapes can be constructed with paper or ribbon, although lots of clever folding tricks, doubling, and pinning down/securing with glue would be required.
Alternate tilde on "±".
V0.2.6: 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 1.1
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A fusion of art deco- and Navajo-style design. Well, many civilizations used a square zigzag pattern such as this, but "Navajo" always comes first to mind when I look at this design.
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See also: Badwolf
Semiserif 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.
A slightly chimeric sci-fi design with no relation to Space Blam, Space Clam, Space Cram, Space Dam, Space Fam, Space Flam, Space Gram, Space Ham, Space Jam, Space Kazaam, Space Ma'am, Space Pram, Space Ram, Space Sam, Space Slam, Space Spam, Space Tram, or Space Yam.
In making this I attempted to achieve a harmony between angles and curves. You can see it especially well on "B", "3", "8", and "&".
V1.1: The More Latin is in progress.
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Another doodle... Well, shall I continue this one?
I sort of designed myself into a corner with the uppercase, by not using the same grid size as the lowercase. But, this choice led to an interesting and unique look so I'll keep it.
For my 300th Fontstruction, a more open and airy deco style than those I usually make. It has a strong sense of the "negative space has been sliced out" look about it which I tend toward in an art deco design.
Even though this is legible at a small size, I consider it a display font since many of its details are subtle. In retrospect I think this looks slightly Broadway-ish... but, this was just my attempt at a 5x5 deco.
"Gongclonker" is my nickname because I am a gong player.
Iteration 4: Basic Latin kerning finished.
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DOODLE DOODLE DOODLE!
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Design Rules:
1. Letters with spurs will have the spur begin at the baseline. This provides the distinctive "high heeled" look.
2. Any letter whose traditional design has a straight vertical line on its left side will keep the line, no matter how the lines of the actual letter travel.
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.
Experimental brush/pen thing. Has a slightly spooky look. Because of their tapering curves, many glyphs can render with a "split" or "stencil" look about them. This is due to software-imposed limitations on vector rendering. Designs which share this property can be considered Pseudostencils.
This design is not informed or inspired by any existing typographical traditions. I set out to make the "claw" bricks (as I call them) into a font and this is the result.
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