Periodic

I designed the original Periodic as a pixel font on Fontstruct. As I played with the design, the more I fell in love with it. I like the idea of using the exposed pixel as a design element. Over the past few months, I’ve been tweaking it so that it would work better in print. And I’m using Periodic on my new business cards.

For the final version, I’ve connected the corners and broken the strict pixel grid for some of the special characters. The entire design is monospaced with old style numerals. I’ve also added an oblique version. It’s very readable at small sizes and distinct at display sizes. Get SbB Periodic from the “Download Fonts” section.

New Fontstruction: Periodic

I needed a pixel font for a project I was working on so I built one in Fontstruct. Periodic is a monospaced design with upper and lower case, a wide range of characters and punctuation and old style numerals. For best results in Photoshop, turn off antialiasing and set the type size to 16 pixels. If you need a pixel-based design, download Periodic for free at Fontstruct.

Launching Alliance

Today, I’ve posted new typefaces, Alliance Standard and Alliance Stencil, in the Download Fonts section. And I’ve also made available 4 additional typefaces over at Fontstruct: Alliance Dot Five, Alliance Dot Seven, Alliance Pixel Five and Alliance Pixel Seven.

Alliance and Alliance Stencil

Alliance is an odd experimental typeface. And it’s one I’ve worked on sporadically for a long time. It started as a series of sketches centered around the concept of a modular science fiction stencil system. Alliance is somewhat inspired by Joss Whedon’s Firefly and the inefficient bureaucracy of the ruling government, the Alliance. Building a modular stencil system where the stencil pieces come together at a 45 degree angle seemed like an inefficient concept. However, the result is an odd set of letterforms with a unique structure.

There are nine stencil shapes that can be combined to make the characters. The dots in the middle were added when I realized that you would never be able to line up a stencil system like this without some sort of guide.

Dots and Pixels

I built Alliance’s modular stencil system before I discovered Fontstruct. I liked the basic letterforms and saw opportunities to expand the concept with Fontstruct. So I translated the design into two of science fiction’s favorite type cliches: dot matrix and pixels. And then, I did nothing with it. 

Limitations

I finished the design, but never released it. While I was happy with the general structure, I was unhappy about the limitations of the typeface. Punctuation was a problem. Should I build out a full character set or only the characters that could be built using the system? Stylistically was it too limiting? Was it even worth finishing? Should I scrap the whole thing and start from scratch?

As I took my time finishing it, I adopted many of the concepts for some of my other Fontstruct typefaces. Power Grid, Transmission, Cereal Box and Technobabble all take cues from some of the letterforms in Alliance. But Alliance sat unreleased.

Finishing up

A few months ago, I came across some of my original sketches. And I decided to finish Alliance. In an effort to make it usable, I made some compromises on the system for some punctuation. However, it does not have a full character set.

You can download Opentype versions of Alliance Standard and Alliance Stencil from the Download Fonts section here at Sketchbook B. And you can download Dot Five, Dot Seven, Pixel Five and Pixel Seven over at Fontstruct.