ZX Origins

4 June 2008

I created many fonts for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum which used 8x8 pixel monospaced fonts much like other 8-bit computers of the time such as the Commodore 64, Atari 400/800/XL/XE, Amstrad CPC and some modes of the BBC Micro.

A number of them were created back in the 80’s and early 90’s right on the Spectrum itself and a number much later in 2005 when I was asked to provide fonts for the excellent BASIN Spectrum-based programming system for Windows.

It is my intention to provide them in a monospaced and proportional versions where possible in a number of bitmap formats including ZX, BDF and Windows FON. I also intend to produce pseudo-scalable TrueType versions of each.

Artistic

Decorative fonts where the imagination ran as wild as 8x8 pixels will allow.

  • Blood Rain rusted-metal or dripping-blood?
  • Broadway
  • Cinemax
  • Dead Forest wilderness adventure
  • Death Metal
  • Eclipse
  • Fresh Box
  • Isofell
  • Pitstop
  • Stars
  • Truffle Shuffle
  • Unwanted Attention
  • Woody Tastic

Outline

  • Bubblegum
  • Little shadow
  • Bubblegum
  • Sinclair Outline
  • Small Outline
  • Square Outline

Reproductions

These are fonts I did not design myself but reproduced from other systems normally from screen-shots.

  • Almost Chicago
  • Amstrad CPC
  • Atari 8-bit
  • BBC Micro
  • Commodore 64
  • Kugel
  • Palm OS
  • Ramona
  • Spectrum
  • Teletext

Sans Serif

  • Chest Burster
  • Envious
  • Nicety
  • OCR-A optical character recognition
  • OCR-B
  • Plotter
  • Plotter 2005
  • Spec5
  • Tall Order

Script

  • Dunny on the Woe
  • First Pass

Serif

Techno

  • Bad 64 Port
  • Computing 60s
  • Datel Tribute
  • Egyptian Mercy
  • Franopix
  • Frontier
  • Insigbyte
  • Magneto
  • Mark of
  • Needlecast
  • Sketcher
  • Specmatic
  • Top Heavy
  • You Square

Traditional

  • Oriental
  • Pixharmonix
  • Unical

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