Work in progress …

Planning only to track down some bugs in the FontStructor, I was suddenly struck by similarities between the random shapes I was placing on the canvas and images I had stumbled upon recently on the web – I think it was in this article in the Guardian.

The images were of Peter Womersley’s modernist design for “High Sunderland”, fashion designer Bernat Klein’s erstwhile home, near Selkirk in Scotland. I wasn’t at first drawn to the modernism, but to the promised description of the experience of living in a house which was visually so open to the outside world – although ultimately the article wasn’t especially enlightening on that point. Later I found more extensive sources of images of the building on the web.

Working on this was the first time in quite a few years that I have been possessed by my own, earnest FontStructing rush. I was very pleased to find that the FontStructor tool still works as well and simply as it ever did – allowing for a uniquely swift and unimpeded creative progress through a set of modular glyphs.

The basic grid for each letter, based on the characteristic modules of the building, is topped by a slightly heavier bar and so slightly asymmetrical in the vertical, like the structure of High Sunderland itself, but it is essentially square and consists of six parallel horizontal bars.

In the FontStruction, the emphasis is on these crossbars – with every effort made to avoid partial horizontals and additional vertical lines, especially for the basic latin alphabet. The font is essentially unicase, with some variants in the lower case.

At one point I noticed that there are some window panels in High Sutherland which do have a single, thinner vertical divider (for sliding open presumably) so I used this for the middle legs of the M and W. After completing the initial FontStruction I also noticed in photographs of the building that there is at least one window with multiple vertical subdividers, so maybe that can form the basis for a new grid and a new FontStruction (High Sutherland B).

Things started to get fun for me when I got into the punctuation and accented letters. I saw no alternative to adding additional verticals for the hash, the percentage sign and some other glyphs.

I really like the percentage sign, although I’m not sure how legible it is – but I guess ultimately that it is an issue with the whole font.

When it came to glyphs with unavoidable diagonals – such as the slash glyphs – I went for a stepped approach, which I think is basically a good one, maintaining the emphasis on horizontal lines, and suggestive of musical notation – but the steps are a bit sloppy. I probably need to revisit them.

I’m not sure about applications for this FontStruction. Maybe it would be useful to someone intending to erect their own mid-modernist dwelling in the hills, or to someone planning to put up some new shelves!

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 vertical take on Morse code. These glyphs are read left-to-right from the bottom up and spaced so that 1 pixel = 1 unit of time, whether moving horizontally or vertically. Letters have 3 spaces between them and words have 7 spaces.

The result is a concise design that can easily be fed to tone-generation or image-to-audio software (e.g., AudioPaint) to produce accurately encoded & timed Morse code, no matter the frequency (speed) of the transmission. You can use this principle to create and place messages into music or games, make messages match a tempo or beat, arpeggiate words and turn them into music or sound effects, and much more.

The name is a pun. :P

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21NOV2018: I've recently learned that many radio stations use an expanded version of the International Morse Code, adding many symbols and punctuation to it. Though these new glyphs are not part of the standard, they are commonly used and agreed on, so I will keep adding them as I find them.

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Original size: 4pt (use multiples of this size for pixel perfection)

I went and mangled Spelunker by Zephram. I am messing with the shapes of the spaces between the letters. The name of the font indicates that most of the letters are wearing bell bottoms.

Stemless superminimal 2x2. It's small yet bold, much like Napoleon!

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)

A font inspired by the use of eggplants in video games. Many video games have unexpected eggplants in them. This is FontStruct's unexpected eggplant.

I decided to fill in the lowercase to add some variety. Hit SHIFT for shiny glyphs.

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See also: Spellforged Servitor

A rounded sans-serif design inspired by the lettering in comic books. Since achieving properly rounded terminals for slanted letters like A and V was impossible, I reworked their designs.

Version: 1.4

A 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

A fairly standard 5x5 design with a little added flair. The sort of text you might expect to see in fantasy maps and atlases.

Uppercase only!

Original size: 3.75pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)

A seriously spurless sans-serif. It approaches minimalism, but doesn't quite get there. This gives it a look that lets it blend in with lots of things!

It reminds me of a font I saw years ago on some futuristic-looking tinned rations. I don't remember what the brand was, but I remember the label having a very rounded sans-serif font like this one.

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See also:2K4S

A monospaced 3x5 font used in Vidora15 and later programmable electronic displays made by AMFA Cybernetics (formerly "ATMA Robotronics").

This font is made with AMFA encoding in mind. As such, the character set is very limited and there are no glyphs which require NKRO>1 or buckybits (Alt, Ctrl, Fn, Shift, Strg, option keys, etc). The glyphs normally present at these codepoints have been reverted so that any text displayed in this font is also effectively displayed in AMFA encoding. The encoding has 48 possible glyphs (including one which doubles as both "null" and "new line") so there are 96 glyphs in this font overall.

Hope this saves you some work, Feng! :^)

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Since this exact font and encoding scheme were used in other devices and software, some of which were (or had) games, I'm also tagging this with Game Recreations.

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Original size: 4pt (use multiples of this size for pixel perfection)

MIV: h6.24 @ 1x / m8.35 @ 1x

Experimental 5x3 font. This went through quite a few iterations! The result is surprisingly readable, but still not quite something I'd want to use as a chat font.

In making this I did my best to avoid compression and truncation, trying instead to use the interpretation of light as my guide. Many glyphs don't look much at all like what they represent, but as my eye glides over them, they make sense and I read them without issue.

A 5x5 Greek pixel font designed by request for a friend. This is going to be used in some amusing comics! Too bad I won't be able to read them. :D

(This also supports Dutch and English.)

Telos Unicase with overzealous antialiasing applied to it. It looks as if it were automatically antialiased by 16-bit hardware - a bit smudgy, almost pencil-shaded. Check it out at 2x Pixel size!

Despite its simple looks, this font is just about the densest thing I can create on a 5x5 grid without obfuscating the letters themselves.

While using this font I discovered some unforeseen uses for shaded styles such as this. Since the "antialiasing" occurs in only one shade and never overlaps or replaces solid pixels, it can be easily mass-selected. One can quickly and easily recolor sections of the font, convert it to the non-antialiased version, or clone the layer the translucent pixels are on and achieve more interesting effects.

Version 1.1: KRX were modified to be more readable at small size, MQW14'"@ were edited for style, Basic Latin band completed, More Latin band underway.

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A font made by request for an author of custom Warhammer 40K modules.

Mildly quirky serif font made for the signage/logos of a certain event. Limited character set.

A font made to reskin a particular roguelike game. This is made to look cold and slightly insidious. I accomplished this by using a 6x6 grid which, apart from being a slightly odd size, gives the forms asymmetry and makes their enclosed parts look as if they're squinting or sneering. Best seen on letters like ABKPRVY.

Monospacing helps give the whole thing regularity and reinforces the clinical/overly-serious feeling.

The game this is made for has very few ASCII glyphs. But, I will expand this to support all ASCII characters soon. I know many games (CDDA, DCSS, DF) support new tilesets so maybe I'll optimize this for those kinds of games...

See also: Nobody's Treasure

A 5x5 design expanded to 11x11. This gives it a cinematic marquee look.

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.

A dashed line design made with the new half-arc bricks. The emphasized spurs/stems and off-kilter geometry give it a quirky, almost handwritten quality. Its striped appearance makes me think of candy as well as the Cheshire Cat, thus the name. :D

I doubt the upper case would look as cute as the lower. So I've cloned all LC to UC to make this easier to use...

Pixel demake of Arizone Unicase. Same glyphs as the original.

Do it: https://www.fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/629119/ocd_disco_round

https://www.fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1682290/robospace-orbital

https://www.fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/372247/ecdb_1