A few interesting modern pixel fonts

https://unsung.aresluna.org/a-few-interesting-modern-pixel-fonts/

Comments

jrdresMay 27, 2026, 2:35 AM
A forgotten point is that modern pixel fonts all assume pixels have a 1:1 ratio: height the same as width, so an 8x8 character box is perfectly square.

That's NOT true for many of the old computer displays. Most had finer resolution in the horizontal compared to vertical lines, so more pixels across than in the same distance down. 1:1 "square pixels" was an innovation of the Macintosh, and very unusual for the time. So the fonts on this page displayed on other 80's machines would not look "right". And fonts from those machines brought to modern displays also look off.

KerrickMay 26, 2026, 7:22 PM
Analog Mono and Two Slice are really neat. If you like those, you'll probably also like another of my favorite modern pixel fonts: Departure Mono. https://departuremono.com
arttaboiMay 27, 2026, 6:21 AM
Amazing! Thank you for sharing.
bbxMay 26, 2026, 7:38 PM
It feels like the one used in the Papers, Please video game.
datawarsMay 26, 2026, 8:14 PM
Beautiful! Thank you!
fold_leftMay 26, 2026, 9:15 PM
Came here to say the same, I actually like Departure so much I use it as my coding and Terminal font. I'll definitely be trying out the fonts in the original post.
efskapMay 26, 2026, 6:37 PM
I like https://viznut.fi/unscii/ - meant for ascii art but still works well in a terminal, and still gets unicode updates
co-entMay 26, 2026, 10:49 PM
The 'fantasy' version reminds me of the Sleipnir font for Dwarf Fortress. Neat! http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/File:Andux_sleipnir_8...
evrimoztamurMay 26, 2026, 8:09 PM
Geist looks like unadulterated garbage, a sloppy rendition of a vector font onto a pixel grid, lack of character and care to banding and shape...
IgorPartolaMay 26, 2026, 11:55 PM
I worked on an embedded project a few years ago using a tiny 128x64 display and wanted to use a pixel font but none of the ones I found made me particularly happy so I made my own. Turns out it is very easy to do. Font Forge is fantastic and very easy to use and once you get going by nailing down a few letters at the size you want you can quickly make something that is cohesive, pleasant, and easy to read. I highly recommend this as an exercise.

As a bonus I added a bunch of open source icons as font glyphs for my project and it was really fun to figure out how small I can make them while still being distinctive.

FraterkesMay 26, 2026, 8:26 PM
So, Analog Mono and Geist both have enough pixels per glyph that they don't really read as pixel fonts below sizes of ~20px. Analog kinda aleviates that by being made up of big (overlapping) blocks of 2x2 pixels. Geist just kinda looks like a downscaled vector font (to me) though.
kevin_thibedeauMay 26, 2026, 10:04 PM
It looks like a high-DPI X11 font to me. It isn't particularly original or unique.
sambishopMay 26, 2026, 6:37 PM
as a lover of low resolution software, we must acknowledge the goat, never surpassed since 2003: https://www.dafont.com/04b-03.font

nowadays all the alpha exists in making your software look like a cool fantasy tome: https://skeddles.itch.io/eldring-pro

msephtonMay 26, 2026, 11:03 PM
Only to be rivalled by the long-standing Elisa font (also from Japan, like the 04 font) https://twitter.com/gingerbeardman/status/111533004449746944...
datawarsMay 26, 2026, 8:15 PM
That's 2 advanced for me ...
CarVacMay 27, 2026, 1:50 AM
I made myself a pixel font for composite (well, monochrome) video output on an RP2040:

https://github.com/PhobGCC/PhobGCC-SW/blob/main/PhobGCC/rp20...

(search for 1 to see letterforms)

The letters are 8x15 and verticals are 2 pixels wide to work better on older CRT televisions with less-sophisticated chroma filtering on their composite inputs.

I explicitly tried to avoid locking into 45 degree diagonals...

My only question now is, how do I turn this font into something I can use on a computer? I couldn't figure it out the last time I tried.

ianstormtaylorMay 27, 2026, 6:57 AM
A few different resources with various ways to go about it, one of which may be near what you were hoping for:

FontStruct: https://fontstruct.com/

Calligraphr: https://www.calligraphr.com/en/

Kreative Korp: https://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/index.shtml#rela...

Glyphs: https://glyphsapp.com/learn/pixelfont

PixelForge: https://www.pixel-forge.com/

cocodillMay 27, 2026, 4:29 AM
Quite impressive [1]. Did you base it on a specific font, or did you just draw it however you felt like?

[1] https://imgur.com/a/0jcNGHv

CarVacMay 27, 2026, 5:08 AM
I did it with no reference to other fonts, just to my own tastes. It took a bit of iteration to get letter centering on the lower cases to work well but I think it's in a good place.

You can see an older version ("a" has been revised to better center the letter) in action on a monochrome CRT here: https://github.com/PhobGCC/PhobGCC-doc/blob/main/For_Users/P...

frankling_May 27, 2026, 3:57 AM
There are also these somewhat classic-looking bitmap terminal fonts large enough for modern displays: https://github.com/B2HDPI/B2HDPI
achr2May 26, 2026, 11:04 PM
I am very fond of Gohu font. I have used it on a recent static blog formatting adventure http://dntbl.ink , converted to woff2. I couldn't be happier with how it renders and gives that VAX feel.
BoltgoltMay 26, 2026, 7:35 AM
> Geist Pixel isn’t a novelty font. It’s a system extension.

Okay LLM

spharsMay 26, 2026, 6:14 PM
To be fair, that's a direct quote from Vercel themselves introducing Geist Pixel: https://vercel.com/blog/introducing-geist-pixel
wyreMay 26, 2026, 8:20 PM
ya because Vercel generated the copy with an LLM
hnlmorgMay 26, 2026, 8:26 PM
Some people wrote like that before LLMs polluted the water.

Just like people used em dashes before LLMs.

I used bullet points heavily before LLMs.

thechaoMay 26, 2026, 9:26 PM
I felt personally attacked when LLMs came out: I'm an avid user of "—", bullets, numbered lists, and the word "delve". It's been a miserable couple of years.
mikepurvisMay 26, 2026, 9:00 PM
Many many years ago I wrote a book for Apress, and the style guide for that instilled in me a lot of practices that now make my writing feel LLM-ish to some readers:

- Use bulleted lists, but always introduce and conclude a list with prose; a list can't immediately follow a heading or end a section.

- Use a mix of long and short sentences; in long sentences with parentheticals, use a mix of commas, parens, semicolons, and em dashes.

- With multiple continuous blocks of prose that aren't naturally broken up by an illustration or heading, start a paragraph with an inline bold statement to help anchor the reader.

flkiwiMay 26, 2026, 10:42 PM
LLMs write like that because people wrote like that. Enough, unfortunately for my remaining love of humanity, to cause the LLMs to adopt the quirk.
hnlmorgMay 26, 2026, 11:03 PM
I know. That’s my point.

People talk about LLM writing style like it’s a unique butterfly and humans don’t write that they. But we do. Which is why LLMs do too.

sublinearMay 26, 2026, 8:36 PM
I still use bullets extensively. You can easily tell when a human writes them when they are trees instead of lists.
hnlmorgMay 26, 2026, 9:44 PM
I don't think even that is a reliable indicator because I'm currently reviewing an LLM generated bullet tree right now.
sublinearMay 27, 2026, 3:00 AM
Oh interesting. Before the LLM craze, I only ever saw good bullet trees in legalese and git commit messages. The trainwrecks were far more likely to be the rare attempt by HR in a big email or in the odd Jira epic by a PM.

I wouldn't think LLMs would have much to train on. I still see some bad ones, but I don't feel like the quality ratio or overall quantity has changed. I do see more bullet lists though.

wyreMay 26, 2026, 8:32 PM
For sure, but I don't think I'm going to give Vercel benefit of the doubt that they aren't writing their copy with an LLM.
FarmerPotatoMay 26, 2026, 7:54 PM
but what does that even mean?
egeresMay 26, 2026, 9:39 PM
Sarah Cadigan-Fried has designed some very cool modern pixel art fonts worth checking! https://www.soft-type.com/
erickhillMay 26, 2026, 9:53 PM
There's an interesting symmetry between the knitting, perler bead and pixel art crowds.
phatskatMay 26, 2026, 11:02 PM
There was a talk at a Linux conference a while back relating knitting to programming and I’ve yet to watch it because the audio on YT wasn’t great but it’s on my list.

I find knitting very soothing, and it also scratches the same itch as programming.

rigonkulousMay 26, 2026, 10:26 PM
See also, beach pebbles.
fsckboyMay 26, 2026, 7:42 PM
>Andrew Gleeson designed Analog Mono, “fixing the crimes of VCR OSD Mono.” There used to be this classic pixel font that you’d see everywhere in the 1990s on hi-fi equipment: VCRs, TVs, camcorders, etc. One of its challenges was a low baseline which resulted in all the letters with descenders pulled up

"VCR OSD Mono is a free bitmap font created by Riciery Leal, inspired by the on-screen display text of vintage VCRs. It is suitable for retro designs and supports 39 languages"

VCR OSD Mono committed no crimes, but it is a crime to make that accusation. VCR OSD Mono faithfully duplicated VCR ASCII character generation. If you want to "fix" it, what's stopping you from "fixing" it all the way to Helvetica or Times or Typewriter? Give a rationale that justifies your own changes, but don't attack others who have a rationale for theirs.

it's fine you want to make a new font. it's not fine to point fingers at people who did a more faithful job than you.

mindslightMay 27, 2026, 4:11 AM
Honestly I was just trying to figure out how many lines of text I could cram onto a small OLED display, and came to the conclusion that the descenders were an unnecessary waste of space. 2+ pixels of vertical space wasted for 5 glyphs! So my heart goes out to VCR OSD Mono.
rigonkulousMay 26, 2026, 10:25 PM
Hey .. you do need to know that font people regularly reference each other like this .. its kind of a thing in typography, and its a means of demonstrating inspiration and lineage, more than anything else - calling out ones inspiration, in fact.

If there is any one particular hat who can sell controversy, its the typographer.

>fix it all the way to Helvetica

..

Akzidenz-Grotesk Helvetica || gtfo, nichtwa?

omoikaneMay 27, 2026, 3:27 AM
> Coral Pixels

The version at Github and Google fonts seems old, the one from the font maker's website is at version 1.01, which includes Kanji characters:

https://tanukifont.com/sango/

("sango" is coral in Japanese)

kristjanssonMay 26, 2026, 11:49 PM
I don't know if it counts as a 'pixel' font, but https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/ has hand-drawn bitmaps for a huge swath of unicode (and hand-hinting for aliased rendering IIRC?)

It's not quite as overtly retro, but it's a great functional font, and a great art object besides (at least that's how I justified the price!_

rebolekMay 26, 2026, 5:53 PM
I want better Topaz. My favourite font.
thristianMay 27, 2026, 4:19 AM
It's not exactly a better Topaz, but I made Topaz Unicode to be more Topaz: https://gitlab.com/Screwtapello/topaz-unicode
LocalHMay 26, 2026, 7:22 PM
I still use it (sometimes 1.x, sometimes 2.x) in terminals and IDEs to this day
sssilverMay 26, 2026, 6:18 PM
Two Slice is shockingly readable.
jareklupinskiMay 26, 2026, 7:06 PM
got caught up on decoding 'tends'
RedNifreMay 26, 2026, 7:21 PM
Could somebody explain the Coral Pixel font? It makes no sense to me, given that the whole point of sub pixels was to look sharp without looking colorful. It only ever looked like that when you took a screenshot and then zoomed in, which seems extremely niche.
bltMay 26, 2026, 7:56 PM
All technology, no matter how undesirable it once felt, eventually becomes nostalgic for somebody.
zeckalphaMay 26, 2026, 7:36 PM
Depends on the DPI of your monitor and your glasses prescription.
sheeptMay 26, 2026, 6:45 PM
My pixel font of choice is Sans Nouveaux[0] (requires Flash). It's MIT licensed too.

[0]: https://emehmedovic.com/sans_nouveaux/

vibbixMay 26, 2026, 8:57 PM
DweditMay 26, 2026, 7:26 PM
The first font on the page mentions raising up descenders (g j p q y) so that pixels don't go below the baseline. You can often find characters with minimal descenders in CJK (Chinese, Japanese, or Korean) fonts. Sometimes a raised-descender version is found among the fullwidth-form letters.
drob518May 26, 2026, 10:31 PM
I find our human need to embrace nostalgia interesting. That we would design blocky “pixel fonts” in vector formats so that we can scale and resize them is quite ironic.
keyleMay 27, 2026, 3:54 AM
Side note... the best pixel fonts are the ones a game programmer, on a 48hrs ludum dare run, is inevitably speed drawing, pixel by pixel, in MS Paint :)
somatMay 27, 2026, 12:53 AM
if we are doing a survey, there is spleen which was adopted as the default console font for openbsd.

https://www.cambus.net/spleen-monospaced-bitmap-fonts/

modelessMay 26, 2026, 8:28 PM
Two Slice is smaller than other tiny pixel fonts I've seen. Maybe the smallest legible font? Depends on your definition of legibility I guess.
layer8May 26, 2026, 8:58 PM
Previous discussion (124 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45236263
thechaoMay 26, 2026, 9:28 PM
_ .... . ... .... ___ ._. _ . ... _ .._. ___ _. _ .__ ___ .._ ._.. _.. _... . ._ __ ___ ._. ... . _._. ___ _.. . .._. ___ _. _ ._._._
NitionMay 27, 2026, 2:58 AM
When I came across your comment it was voted down to the point of being [dead]. I've vouched for it to bring it back; I thought it was very clever!
sota_popMay 27, 2026, 1:34 AM
Very cool! Analog mono has a very “Christmas sweater” vibe.
chupchapMay 26, 2026, 11:14 PM
Coral Pixels is pretty nice with a lighter background, but unreadable with a dark one.
Barrin92May 26, 2026, 10:22 PM
I'm a big fan of Departure Mono, very neat website design as well

https://departuremono.com/

gfatMay 27, 2026, 4:14 AM
This one and its site are gorgeous.

You might also like https://commitmono.com/

cui511511May 27, 2026, 7:10 AM
good
meetingslopMay 26, 2026, 11:30 PM
Two Slice doesn’t seem readable, is there a Threeslice?
bitwizeMay 26, 2026, 6:36 PM
Kumiko Yoshida should be brought before the war crimes tribunal or something. ClearType eyehurt is something that very much needs to stay in the past.
MrCloudsMay 25, 2026, 9:03 PM
loving pixel geist.
vibekoterMay 26, 2026, 10:28 PM
[dead]