Fonts & typography

Advent of Fonts 2024

December 2024 sees the fourth year of my Advent of Fonts project where I published a 24-day advent calendar of 8x8 pixel on Mastodon.

Advent of Fonts 2023

December 2023 saw the third year of my Advent of Fonts project where I published a 24-day advent calendar of 8x8 pixel on Mastodon.

Advent of Fonts 2022

Through December 2022 I again produced a 24-day advent calendar of 8x8 pixel fonts this time primarily on Mastodon.

Advent of Fonts 2021

In December 2021 I tweeted a 24-day calendar of 8x8 pixel fonts.

Using variable web fonts for perf

Webfonts are now ubiquitous across the web to the point where most of the big players even have their own typefaces and the web looks a lot better for it.

ZX-Origins - free 8-bit fonts for games

I started designing fonts around 1987 on an 8-bit Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Many years later, my involvement in the Spectrum emulation scene led aul Dunn to ask me if I could provide fonts for his excellent BASIN Sinclair BASIC for Windows. My interest in 8x8 fonts was suitably rekindled, and I ended up delivering about 60 - some even extracted from my original +3 disk images.

Typography in bits: For a few pixels more

Examining the system fonts of the TRS-80 Color Computer, Dragon, Tatung Einstein, Commodore 128, Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, and Oric Atmos.

Typography in bits: Other English micros

Examining the system fonts of the Sinclair QL, Memotech MTX512, Amstrad PCW, Acorn Archimedes and SAM Coupé.

Typography on the Microsoft Campus

One of the great things about working for Microsoft was the sheer breadth of the company means there are lots of cool and interesting things going on that you can peek into even if it’s not your area.

Typography can be fun

People are always surprised when they hear you’re interested in typography. The appreciation and interest in the shape of letters and symbols is definitely a little more unusual to find as a hobby but it’s actually quite fun!

Android’s Roboto system font for Ice Cream Sandwich

Google have switched system font for Android’s latest release (known as Ice Cream Sandwich) from the Droid Family to a new typeface known as Roboto.

Typography in 16-bits: System fonts

A look at the system fonts of 16-bit machines including the IBM CGA & VGA Adapters, Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, and Atari ST.

Typography in 8 bits: System fonts

Examining the system fonts of the Commodore PET, Apple ][, Atari 400/800, Acorn BBC Micro, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and MSX.

Font hinting and instructing – a primer

Taking my bitmap font Envy Code B into the vector TrueType Envy Code R was a long process, the most difficult being hinting.

The Xerox Alto mono-spaced font rises again

Computing history tells us of a mythical place where many of the innovations we take for granted today were either invented or refined to a working level at a single location known as the Xerox’s Palo-Alto Research Center (PARC).

Envy Code R preview #7 (v0.7)

Envy Code R preview 7.2 is released with many glyphs redrawn and a full complement of box-drawing characters.

More screen-shots of Envy Code R preview #7

Work on my Envy Code R programming font has resumed and I’ve spent hours playing with the hinting process to ensure it looks good at sizes above and below 10 point:

Getting the hint (Where is Envy Code R?)

I know, I said there would be a good chance that the next version of Envy Code R would be out this weekend but the annoying sizing, thickness and cropping issues that came up at some sizes above and below the optimum 10 point were really annoying me.

Envy Code R coding font v0.7 preview

The next version of my Envy Code R font especially designed for programming (monospaced, easily distinguishable characters) is nearing completion and represents a very response-driven update to feedback, specifically:

Droid font family courtesy of Google & Ascender

Google’s Android project, an open platform for mobile devices, has been hitting the news a lot in the last couple of days with it’s open APIs, Java-based development platform and optimized virtual machine.

Droid Sans Mono great coding font

Google’s Android project, an open platform for mobile devices, has been hitting the news a lot in the last couple of days with it’s open APIs, Java-based development platform and optimized virtual machine which includes the lovely set of typefaces from Ascender known as the Droid family.

Professional quality free fonts*

Older pixel fonts back online

Some of my older bitmap “pixel” font files are now available again, they are:

Envy Code A

Originally titled simply Envy this font was born out of dislike for on-screen small serifs and disappointment with many alternative programming fonts.

Envy Code B

While Envy Code A was being polished for release it dawned on my how I would now prefer a thinner, taller font with slightly looser spacing and aiming for the 'perfect' size to allow good representation of all letters clearly including those with accents. The 10pt variant is that font however during testing it became apparent some people would prefer a version with tighter vertical spacing. This could not be achieved without sacrificing the uniformity of accented characters with their non-accented variants.

Palm OS

Palm OS was designed for very small devices and as such the font is optimized for good visibility in constrained spaces. As such it makes a great proportional font in Windows where either space is at a premium (e.g. Visual Studio output window) or where you don't want somebody to read over your shoulder (MSN Messenger).

Envy Code R Jeff Atwood scheme

Jeff “Coding Horror” Atwood published a nice round-up of coding fonts he’s been looking at lately in Visual Studio with his own color scheme.

Envy Code R preview #6 released with Visual Studio italics

Envy Code R preview #6 forthcoming

Font rendering philosophies of Windows & Mac OS X

Jeff Atwood asked "What’s Wrong With Apple’s Font Rendering?". Well, MacOS and Windows take opposite approaches to rendering text so let's take a look at what that means.

Red Hat releases Liberation fonts

Linux vendor Red Hat have released a font family named Liberation under a GPL license.

Windows font evolution

Vista and Office 2007 are interesting as they provide major user interface work that also includes new sets of fonts. I thought it would be interesting to show the evolution of the various styles.

Programming fonts you might not have tried

If you’re tired of the ugly-as-sin Courier New and have tried the popular well-known scalable TrueType/OpenType mono-spaced/fixed-width replacements:

Envy Code R programming font – preview available for download

Envy Code R work continues

Preview of Envy Code R programming font

My last post got me thinking – if I’m so happy with Envy Code B bar it’s ability to scale or take advantage of ClearType then there is only one real option. I reached for the pixelated TrueType conversion of Envy Code B and five hours later had a rough version of my **first ever vector font** – Envy Code R.

Comparing programming fonts

The blogging about favorite programming fonts doesn’t seem to want to truly die down so here’s how I rate the most popular fonts for programming in descending order with my own Envy Code B which I use all the time – but now desperately needs the ClearType treatment.

InconsolataDG – Slashed zero’s

Inconsolata OpenType programming font

My quest for something to replace Envy Code B on my ClearType-enabled systems continues.

Envy Code B font available in TrueType format

It’s been a long time coming but finally – a TrueType conversion of my programming font Envy Code B.

Palm OS font available

Envy Code A & Code B programming fonts updated

ClearType, smoothed fonts and the bane of MS Sans Serif

Back in the days of Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and Mac OS 7 the operating systems used a bit mapped font as the default system font for the various windows and dialogs.