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Call for Set Curators

News | | January 18th, 2025

Game Recreation Fonts

Random samples from the Game Recreations set.

Dear FontStructors,

The “Game Recreations” set, curated by Patrick Lauke (redux) and goatmeal has proved itself an astounding success, thanks to its enthusiastic and dedicated curators. It now contains over 2.3K designs! The largest staff-curated set “Dot Matrix” in comparison contains only about 100. This suggests to me that community curation of sets could and should be expanded if possible.

So. Is anyone out there interested in curating an existing, or a new Set?

You can find a list of all current, public Sets here. More can be added e.g. Conlang, Public Transport, Lift displays …

What is a Set?

The main idea behind Sets is that they provide a consistent classification of FontStructions – the consistency coming from the vision of a limited group of curators. Tags are great, but they tend to be more ambigious and applied inconsistently, reflecting the diversity of individual outlooks. (Most) Sets also include only higher quality designs – not necessarily Staff Picks, but coherent designs with a decent-sized character set.

Becoming a Set Curator

To curate a set you need to be.

  1. 18 or over.
  2. A regular visitor to the site – say, once every couple of weeks.
  3. Able to demonstrate a reasonable understanding of the Set you are curating – e.g. if you had created a range of Art Deco FontStructions, you would likely be well qualified to curate the Art Deco set. Maybe you are an experienced user or designer of Type who has a good understanding of specific genres and styles. Or maybe you just have a long-held fascination with one particular kind of font.

Ideally you will also have a record of friendly (at least not unfriendly) and trustworthy activity on FontStruct.com.

Curating a set is an entirely voluntary rôle for people who feel passionate about a particular style or aspect of the FontStruct world.

If you’re interested, let us know.

 


26 Comments

  1. Goatmeal

    @meek – Rob, thank you again for the opportunity to be a set curator.  The past 6+ years have been wonderful, allowing me to see the best that our fellow FontStructors have to offer.  Anyone with a passion for typography design should definitely take Rob up on his curator offer; you won’t regret it!  ;^)

    – Goatmeal — January 18, 2025 #

  2. Sed4tives

    Wonderful idea, I could curate Bauhaus and Jurriaan Schrofer sets!

    Cheers

    Sed4

    – Sed4tives — January 18, 2025 #

  3. Sychoff

    This is a cool idea! I would love to become a curator of several sets, but I also hope that some of the regular visitors to the site will also want to and write their preferences. I already have several sets in my favorites: 3D, Horror, Street-art, Futuristic, Blackletter, Retro, Pixel, Dots, but I have very broad selection criteria for them and even add fonts without pink stars.
    I think you should also remember to write in the profile description on the user’s page which set he is the curator of, so that they can be contacted with a proposal to add a font.

    – Sychoff — January 18, 2025 #

  4. redux

    In fairness, I’ve been cheating a bit by constantly pushing a slew of my own pixelfonts to the set…but still :)

    redux — January 19, 2025 #

  5. Rob Meek (meek)

    @Sed4tives, @Sychoff Thanks for your offers. I’ll be in touch.

    Rob Meek (meek) — January 19, 2025 #

  6. JeycoMonge

    Wow! Much Pixels in FS are here and with Colors is Cool,me too i Create Pixel Font! (No Much) FontStructors can make Fonts in every time and Every make Creativy in Here!

    JeycoMonge — January 19, 2025 #

  7. elmoyenique

    Time to expand FS and pitch in, compañeros. I’m in. I can handle Wild West, Groovy, Unicase or Heavy fonts (to name a few) if you see fit, Rob.

    elmoyenique — January 19, 2025 #

  8. Rob Meek (meek)

    @elmo Thanks for your offer! I’ll be in touch.

    Rob Meek (meek) — January 19, 2025 #

  9. thalamic

    four could probably do color fs and small size (say 5 bricks tall) fs.

    Frodo7 could do … well … practically any category. He’s meticulous.

    Tortoiseshell could possibly do the Art Deco category.

    If they are so willing, of course.

    I don’t think I’m qualified enough to do any. But I would be happy to do any category I’m assigned. 

    thalamic — January 19, 2025 #

  10. Sychoff

    @thalamic: Don’t underestimate yourself so much, you are the best creator of 3D and Op-art fonts here, and I couldn’t categorize most of your fonts at all, you are so original! And you forgot V. Sarela (Yautja) as the best in retro-futuristic fonts. I would also like to draw attention to such new authors as frongile, Prepper, Enzo Bicudo Pepi (MetrikEnzyme), Fruptile Shrump, IronClaws – they clearly have very good font expertise and perhaps they should get pink stars a little more often)

    Sychoff — January 20, 2025 #

  11. Rob Meek (meek)

    BTW There are also a whole load of Sets which are not yet published:
     

    Wireframe, Grafitti, Octagonal, Variable Stroke, Cuneiform, Knitting, Glitch, Horizontal, Wavy, Strikethrough, Eastern Europe, Straight Lines, Sci-Fi, Bricks, Seasonal, Negative Space, Thai, Faux Cyrillic, Twisted, Typewriter, Sports, Ink Traps, Tall, Hole Punch, Circus, Clean, Copperplate, Sign Language, Collegiate, Tiny, Industrial, Woodcut, Calligraphic, Compact, Overline, Symmetry, Victorian, Winged, Runic, Tiki, Psychedelic, Faux Asian, Geometric, Trajan, Biline, Inverted Matrix, Triline, Speed, Puzzle, Art Nouveau, Braided, Conceptual, Spurred, Left-leaning (Italics), Tuscan, Filled gaps, Comb, Eccentric, Condensed, Cutout, Arrow Terminals, Cute, Bubble, Feather (?)

    Rob Meek (meek) — January 20, 2025 #

  12. MetrikEnzyme

    Cool!

    MetrikEnzyme — January 20, 2025 #

  13. thalamic

    @Sychoff: It’s kind and generous of you to say so. Thank you. Yes, there are a lot of people that can do curation. 

    Apart from curated sets, what if we all divided a certain number of All fs gallery pages (say 10) among us and tag every font as deeply as we can. 82369 fs currently listed; 32 fonts per page; 320 fonts for a person to tag; 257 people needed to tag everything. To whoever is interested in doing this, Rob can assign the pages (sorted earliest to newest) to that person so no duplication occurs. This way the curators can filter for the tag of their category and have far fewer fs to curate from. Doesn’t have to be unique 257 people either. Once a person is done tagging their initial 10 pages, s/he can ask for the next 10. Doesn’t have to be 10 pages either. It could be 2. The smaller this number, the larger the number of people required to tag everything. Just a suggestion

    thalamic — January 20, 2025 #

  14. four

    This is a great idea, Rob. I would be happy to get involved in curating one or more sets.

    four — January 23, 2025 #

  15. riccard0

    A cool set could be “historical recreations” that could include both (non game) vintage computer fonts (e.g. DOS, pre-vector Mac and Windows, etc.) and reproductions of historical grid-based/modular designs.

    Since both are of interest for me, I would gladly curate such set.

    riccard0 — January 23, 2025 #

  16. Sed4tives

    St. Rob MeekCLause,

    I have some additional set categories: Grotesque, Didone & Retro-Futurism

    Also something like a “Commemorative” or “Celebratory” set would be nice.

    A set reserved for fonts related to specific calender events, holidays and celebrations i.e. the day the earth “stood still” ‥or “became flat” (depending on where you live) or perhaps celebrate the lunar cycle, blue monday, maybe friday the 13th? Or simply to commemorate “the invention” of H₂O ‥or “its demise” (again, depending on where you live).

    And not just think that we should than turn such a set into this shrine for worship RobMeek and his amazing creation. (Yeah well, okay, this pretty much exactly was what I had in mind).

    But, all jokes aside… this could for example also contain the “Community-Collabs”, “Christmas-themed fonts” or other  “FontStruct-anniversary works”.

    Perhaps a “Non-Font” sets (e.g. Fontstruct Tools, Forums) would be a nice little bonus.
    Sort of a cheat to jailbreak FS’s mainframe a bit, and exploit some unintended use for this “curated set” system to create something of a tidy ‘lil corner for fellow Fontstructivists, where they can tap straight into the very fabric of our commonwealth ‘s design-type continuum.
    • Fontstruct Tools — Would enable easy access to contributed assets, resources and content related to Fontstructing. For example the numerous  “User-Created” FontStruction tools. For the gross majority these are likely to remain hidden deep within largely unexplored dark and forsaken realms of FontStruct’s interstellar catalogi-verse.
    • Forums — These in terms could provide this centralized main page that contains a small set of topics for discussions, questions or a means for support, as well as other helpful type design goodies. And in itself this can function as sort-of this miniature knowledge-base.

    And last, not least, I kind of liked riccard0‘s proposal for a “historical recreations” set, and think that in itself is an interesting idea. I just don’t think such a set would truly benefit from that broad range of tags as were described in the previous post. From a “historical” perspecive it isn’t all that far fetched, however, specifically with terms as resonant as “historical” its criteria subsequently quite literally could apply to pretty much everything of a certain age. And both terms “historical” as well as “recreation” by themselves takes in zero contemplation for specific aesthetics of a particular zeitgeist. So as this set grows, it would ultimately reach the threshold at which the whole catagory just renders itself obselete. Basically slowely becoming just a very long list of fonts, that represent, well… a little bit of (I guess) everything; That is, therefore translating to nothing. At a bare minimum I believe a “bifold” approach that effectively further catagorizes them down into pixelated “bitmap” fonts and “outline” fonts. But even then the issue would still remain. For example; fonts that represent ancient runic script or Egyptian hyroglyphics rightfuly classify as being both “historical” as well as “recreations”, both are previously existing forms of writing, both date back well beyond two millennia. Yet (non-game) vintage computer fonts and reproductions of grid-based/modular designs (e.g. lets say by the likes of; Wim Crouwel, Josef Albers, Theo Van Doesburg and Jurriaan Schrofer) also checks the same criteria to be rightfuly classified as such; “historical” and “recreations”. We all know to some extend that the rise of the “Digital Age” and computers, though it took place only as recent 60/70 years ago, carries huge historical significance. As is even more so the case with recreating the works of early pioneers in grid-based/modular concepts. Sparking several movements during the “Modernist” era of the early 20th-century, and paved way for so many later trends. So when concidering historical significance grid-based/modular concepts are litteral heavyweights. Yet neither of the latter more modern two poses any resemblence to the other two ancient writing systems what so ever, let alone aesthetically.

    And yet while for me personally this could potentially also be “one of” if not “the most” interresting catagory, perhaps this current basic method for classifying FontStructions might not be sufficient enough to cope with the common problems presented by a classification systems in general.

    Sed4tives — January 25, 2025 #

  17. Rob Meek (meek)

    There have been a few questions about Set curation, here and also in email.
    I’ve added a FAQ section with some short answers to the basics:

    Rob Meek (meek) — January 25, 2025 #

  18. caterpillar's.kimono

    I would be more than happy to help curate the art deco set~

    caterpillar's.kimono — January 25, 2025 #

  19. Rob Meek (meek)

    Fantastic! I’ll be in touch by email.

    Rob Meek (meek) — January 25, 2025 #

  20. Yautja

    @Sychoff Thanks for the shoutout. I’d be glad to help with the retro-futuristic/retro-computer set.

    Yautja — January 25, 2025 #

  21. Rob Meek (meek)

    Thanks for all the feedback and offers. I’m working my way through them and assigning the privileges to curate the relevant Sets. Very exciting!

    I’ve decided to restrict Set curators to adding FontStructions to agreed Sets (until now, anyone who could curate one set could curate them all). For example, if you’ve agreed to curate the Triline Set, you will only be able to add designs to that Set.

    People are welcome to curate multiple Sets, and we can have multiple curators for a Set, but it needs to be clear what’s going on. I think there’s a danger of misunderstanding if people are curating widely without others being aware of who’s tagging what.

    Rob Meek (meek) — January 25, 2025 #

  22. tortoiseshell

    I’m flattered by the mention thalamic. I fear I am a bit too busy with school at the moment, though I would be happy to help in an auxiliary manner as caterpillar’s kimono seems to be quite capable with Art Deco~

    tortoiseshell — January 25, 2025 #

  23. JeycoMonge

    I Love the Pixels!

    JeycoMonge — January 25, 2025 #

  24. Sychoff

    @meek: I think the restriction idea is not very good. Because how this happens is that a curator goes to the page of some author and instead of adding all the good works of this author to the correct sets at once – you need to call each curator of each set, this will greatly slow down the addition of fonts to sets.
    And also I need to have access to several more sets that are close to 3D (like Beveled, Folded, Extruded, Shadow). And there are still a lot of sets left without a curator – it seems to me that all curators could add fonts to them together. I don’t think it will be confusing. Attaching to a set is more about an area of ​​interest and more responsibility, not about restrictions. And the chief curator of Set can always remove the font if someone has added fonts to it incorrectly. 

    Sychoff — January 26, 2025 #

  25. Rob Meek (meek)

    @sychoff I do see your point, and yes we need to discuss the other 3D Sets – I’ll get back to you on that via email. I don’t think I’ll be lifting the restriction in the short term.
    I guess the call out was for people interested in curating specific things (like Game Set Recreations, 3D, Art Deco etc) rather than a call out for people interested in curation generally.
    We could undertake a general categorisation campaign, but that wasn’t my intention, and I think we would need some other things in place to do that well.

    Rob Meek (meek) — January 27, 2025 #

  26. vania 5617sonfan

    I could curate Public Transport ^w^

    vania 5617sonfan — January 31, 2025 #

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