I built a monospaced icon font for astrological symbols — planets, zodiac signs, aspects, and houses.

My main goal was to keep the glyphs crisp and recognizable down to 10px without them turning into a muddy blur. Metrics are matched to JetBrains Mono so it drops cleanly into developer and data interfaces, but I used a wider advance width (800 UPM) and a slightly lighter main stroke (80 UPM) to give the more complex symbols room to breathe at small sizes.

Quick specs:

• Advance Width: 800 UPM
• Main Stroke: 80 UPM
• Target Size: 10px and up
• Compatible with: JetBrains Mono metrics

Design logic:

• Planets — every glyph is built around a circular foundation. Even Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune (which are traditionally pure hieroglyphic curves) keep an arc as the core structural element to imply the sphere.
• Zodiac — more calligraphic, with manual optical compensation to fit the tight 800-unit box.

Fully open-source under the OFL 1.1.

Links to the GitHub repository and Live Specimen are in the comment below.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the grid and legibility at small sizes!

I grabbed some variable font files for a client last week and tested them in the usual programs. Inkscape kept the weights looking right but the spacing went off at intermediate weights. LibreOffice just skipped the variable axes completely. I ended up exporting static versions by hand, which took a couple hours. If anyone here actually works with variable fonts in open source software on a regular basis, I'm curious which setup keeps spacing consistent. Screenshots would help. The marketing talks up how flexible these fonts are, but the practical experience seems to lag behind

So, I am documenting opentype features that work in LibreOffice writer, and going through Fontforge tables.

And the table 'alig - ancient ligatures' is listed as a ligature table in FontForge.

I don't have this on my list of registered opentype features copied directly from microsoft's font website. Is there a different list? Is there a different standard that alig is from?

Here's an update on the monospace Kode Mono Arabic. Eager to hear your feedback 🙏

TNR first emerged in the UK for The Times after the typographer Stanley Morison wrote a diss track against the 19th-century-themed typeface that was in use at the time. Thereafter, under Morison, Victor Lardent developed Times New Roman, modelled after certain traditional typefaces (with Plantin as the leading template).

From my limited knowledge, this font was (at least initially) designed as a uniquely Timesean typeface, though it was soon enough released commercially. This allowed non-TheTimes uses, culminating with Microsoft Word making it the default font.

Questions:

1. If Microsoft Word hadn't chosen TNR as their default font, would it look more unique? Or was TNR designed to look anonymous?
2. Why exactly do so many use it (not only The Times; also reports, theses, etc.)? Is it thanks to its traditional-themed design?
3. Do you personally like TNR? I personally don't like it that much (though I don't hate it either); I prefer open-source serif typefaces, like Lora.

I am currently working on creating a linguistics website called The Online Encyclopedia of Linguistics and Related Fields. Because of its subject matter, the font in question will have to support the International Phonetic Alphabet, as well as some other uncommon characters. I initially wanted to use Brill, but it has a noncommercial-only license. I was also thinking of using Gentium, but its calligraphic vibe doesn’t really fit well with the semi-scholarly purpose of the site. I would absolutely love to use STIX Two Text, but a few IPA symbols (such as the labiodental flap and the symbols for upstep and downstep) are not supported, and the Greek letters βχθ clash visually with the rest of the font.

So put simply, which alternatives to Brill allow commercial use, and don’t have a calligraphic vibe? Would it be worth spending the money to get a custom font that has full IPA support?

Hi everyone, i really need help for my thesis project.

For my thesis, I’ve chosen pixel art, from video games to graphic design as my topic. As part of the project, I’ve been asked to create a pixel art font that, when the letters are put together, forms something for example, a pixel character sprite, a map of a videogame, a background, or some kind of image/pattern. The main problem is that I honestly don’t know where to start. I’ve been looking for inspiration and for people who have done something similar, but I haven’t really found anything useful. The letters need to remain recognizable as letters, but at the same time they should work when placed next to each other, so that they can create a larger image or pattern.

I’ve been stuck on this for about a month now, and I’m starting to run out of ideas. Does anyone have any advice, references, or examples of similar projects? Thank you so much in advance for any help!

4 years ago I posted my first ever typeface here and now together with Fontdue and a bit of help from Claude I managed to get my own type shop running :)

nordtype.com

I'd love to hear what you think about it!!!

Just a few pics of some of the pages in this specimen book. Must have been very expensive to produce considering there a quite a few pages in color as well. This specimen book originally belonged to my Grandfather who started/owned a type shop from 1946 through the late 80s.

Font of the week: Maximalist

An unapologetically over-the-top style of blackletters, Maximalist gets the most out of all available space inside each letter. Using both Major and Minor styles there are endless possibilities with taking it too far, and thats just perfect.

I’ve been a bit annoyed by the lack of Frutiger in my toolkit of late, and I’m not sure which flavor I want to license to remedy that. Currently leaning towards either Neue Frutiger (Linotype = Monotype) or Fact (ParaType), but I’d love to hear y’all’s takes.

A few factors I’m weighing:

• Fact is significantly cheaper than all of Monotype’s offerings.
• Adrian Frutiger himself was not happy with Frutiger Next; he did not draw the calligraphic italic and found it inappropriate.
• There is a spectrum of language/glyph coverage here. Across the upright of the Light weight: 394 glyphs in the OG Frutiger, 487 in Neue Frutiger, 703 in Fact (adds Cyrillic), and even 1819 in the massive Neue Frutiger World (adds Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, Georgian, Armenian).
• There are tradeoffs in weights and widths. The OG and Neue have two widths (regular, compressed); Fact has six (compressed, narrow, condensed, regular, semi-expanded, expanded), while Neue World has only one. There is a Neue Paneuropean with fewer scripts than World that retains the compressed width, but I’m not really considering it due to the price tag.

Which flavor(s) have you chosen and why?

the glyphs were drawn in scratch and compiled in fontforge
this was meant to be a regular serif but unfortunately its rather uneven (im not entirely sure on how to go about fixing this without learning more vector software)

Hello. I am very interested in the history and the design of blackletter typefaces. I have learned there are a few forms of Blackletter (Scwabacher, Textura, Fraktur, etc) but I would like to know about all these variations and how they developed and connect to each other. I have been searching the web for some time, but most of what I have found has been quite surface level, generally speaking of the differences between their outward appearances rather than the design.

I would most eagerly want to understand the principles in designing the letters of each style, as they can vary greatly in complexity as shown in the picture. It boggles me to see that one letter can have so many different elaborate designs even within the same style (especially capital letters), but I don't know why or how they are developed. I have been trying to design a blackletter typeface, but I lack the knowledge to properly conduct this project. So far I have been imitating and referencing, but I want to understand the references.

If there are any books, websites, or videos that explain or document these, please let me know, it would be of great help. Thank you very much.

i have a folder full of typefaces i genuinely like and somehow keep using the same handful anyway.

every time i have a new project, i’ll open the folder, look through a bunch of options, and then end up going back to one of the same three or four fonts because i already know exactly how they’ll behave.

the annoying part is that i don’t even dislike my usual choices. they work. i know their spacing, weights, weird characters, how they look at different sizes, all of it.

but after a while it starts feeling like i’m collecting typefaces rather than actually using them

i’ve got probably 80 or so saved at this point, and maybe a dozen have made it into actual client work.

do you have any way of breaking that habit?

i’ve thought about forcing myself to use one unfamiliar typeface on every project, but that sounds like a good way to make typography feel like an assignment

do new fonts eventually make it into your rotation naturally, or do you have some rule for actually giving them a chance?

Copyright, trademark, patent or what? Does it run out over time? Do fonts at some point fall into the public domain? When, starting with the U.S.?

i keep seeing this guy's website when searching for fonts, and the information seems scraped from the web, looking into his website the main page is talking about "Free education for all!" and how he has ponies?, what??

i'm very baffled and confused, who is this guy? what is he doing? and why is he doing all of this??

Hi. I manage a software development department for the US Government Publishing Office.

We have a need to create our own fonts in order to match the typographic characteristics of the legacy system that we are replacing.

If there are any experienced font designers who work in Fontographer I would love to hear from you.

I can be contacted directly at [mrsmith@gpo.gov](mailto:mrsmith@gpo.gov)

I've been working on Pencilings for a couple of months now and it's finally coming together. Here's my progress video!

Howdy! I'm looking for a font simimar to Calluna, but with support for Greek alphabet. Alternately, I might use a Greek font similar enough to Calluna so that the two can be used side-by-side without it being obvious. I'd prefer a free font, or one that is available via Adobe Fonts.

These will be for a book about ancient Greece; the footnotes will include the occasional quote in Greek. I like Calluna for its certain heaviness and old-fashioned appeal, yet I also think it is not too cumbersome and remains easily legible to a modern reader.

Or did "font" overtake it? Are "font" and "fount" equally correct in the UK?

"New in our library, Tyburn is a highly versatile interpretation of the Garamond archetype. Equipped with an innovative height axis alongside extensive weight and optical size axes, it brings a classic style firmly into 2026."

There's also a full free trial download: https://www.daltonmaag.com/font-library/tyburn.html

Not affiliated with Dalton Maag, just really enjoyed this.

Looking for examples of web apps or websites that have taken a lot of care in executing typography, usage of fonts, sizes, and colors. Want to inspire myself to pay attention to the details.

Thanks

I'm interested to know how icon fonts are created. I use fonts like Google's Material Icons frequently, and I'm curious how to go about making my own. Also, what are some good alternatives to Google's icon fonts?

Two new variable axes (width and roundness)

One file, from condensed & sharp to expanded & round.

Free and open source.

https://KodeMono.com
#monospace