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Deviousness `ChewedKandi has certainly gone out of her way to keep the vector community on the right path. Always making sure that her talents are infinitely scalable, Sharon has put her bezier curves to excellent use, and firmly anchored herself as an inspirational leader. We're absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for June 2013 to `ChewedKandi. Congratulations, Sharon! Read More
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Sta.sh
I don't have experience with pixel fonts so I wouldn't know how the lack of descenders makes laying out text easier. In "regular" type design that's not at all the case, so I wonder why it would be for pixel fonts. In any case, I don't think this font works very well at all. Not only the lack of descenders is an issue (and in my opinion it's a rather big issue for characters like i and j which look like : and ; ) but also the fact that half of your lowercase letters are the same height as the ascenders/capitals while the other half are of regular x-height. This inconsistency creates a very weird texture in the text and disturbs legibility, which I think is particularly important for pixel fonts.
The lack of descenders allow you to have perfect spacing between lines, regardless of hanging letters. This is particularly important in small pixel art, where space is at a premium. This is not the type of font you would use on a cell phone. However, this is they type of font you might use on a pixel stamp here at dA, or a small pixel-art/emoticon piece.
My gallery is full of other pixel fonts (several which have been used by developers in video games) which are more traditionally rendered.
"The lack of descenders allow you to have perfect spacing between lines"
I understood that this was your reasoning, but it's not strictly true. In pixels, a descender would be 1 or 2 pixels so I can't imagine that will clog up the leading. This font for example embraces all type principles and there's still plenty of room to tighten the leading.
My objection isn't necessarily to the strange design of Avatar as this was a conscious choice. I'm just a bit annoyed that it's being marketed as "readable"; that might be, but it's not legible.
I think you do have some nice ideas for this font, but as I said I don't think it's completely successful. If you insist on removing the descenders you might have to go for a unicase font. With a unicase font all letters are aligned both to the baseline and the capital height which will dramatically improve the legibility while maintaining your no-descender concept.
By the way, how come pixel fonts are never expanded into extensive type families? I don't use pixel fonts myself, but I can imagine it would be pretty cool to use a pixel font which is available in Regular, Bold and Italic.
This font was SPECIFICALLY created for dA avatars. As you may know, they have a 50x50 space limitation. Particular with longer usernames, it can be impossible for a user to have their full name on the font using traditional pixel fonts. So, this was created for that purpose. It is not intended in any manner for long blocks of text. A username, or perhaps signage on a very small emoticon piece. Perhaps "readable" is not the proper word, but "recognizable" would fit better.
Again, I think a lot of this “confusion” stems from the limited usage these fonts have in small pixel-art (particularly with emoticons). In dA stamps, with a finite amount of space, literally there are times you have 1-pixel spacing between lines. So, you simply cannot have descenders. As much as I rectify this a lot of the time using caps-only fonts, sometimes I like the look of lowercase letters, too.
Just showing an example of how tiny font can be used in pixel signage, here is a piece I did for the background of a zoo emoticon piece. Granted, this font is a bit more legible, but if I had used the avatar font, it would have worked fine. It was an ornament to a larger piece and the level of readability of this little piece was not ultra important.
I have started to make some larger, more traditional pixel fonts which can be used in more typical manners. However, as a tiny-pixel-artist, my little fonts are very popular.
As for why pixel fonts are not expanded. Well, tiny fonts tend to become more illegible when italicized–and they lose their shape when bolded. Since most are used for art pieces rather than straight typing, most artists simple use their PS to give those affects or hand-edit them.
That said, I thank you for taking the time to talk with me and share your viewpoints. I am very interested in continuing to make pixel fonts and your points are well taken and will be kept in mind.
Then why remove the descenders if this font wasn't designed for body text?
"Again, I think a lot of this “confusion” stems from the limited usage these fonts have in small pixel-art"
Perhaps from other people, but my confusion stems from the fact that I'm a type designer so perhaps I look at pixel fonts like they're normal fonts. I don't think that's completely unjustified though, as many if not most type design principles still count at this low resolution, though exactly because of the low resolution pixel font designers tend to break these type design rules in order to guarantee legibility at very small sizes. "Normal" fonts also tackle the issues of small sizes and limited space though, but of course they have cleartype hinting which is not allowed in pixel art. I think a problem might be that many pixel font designers create pixel fonts because they're easy to do and don't require a vast amount of knowledge. There's nothing wrong with that, but I often find advanced type design knowledge could also be helpful in pixel fonts. I don't quite see them so separately, and that might be the source for confusion.
"As much as I rectify this a lot of the time using caps-only fonts, sometimes I like the look of lowercase letters, too."
I understand that. That's why I recommend to look into unicase fonts. They mix uppercase and lowercase together. I'm quite sure that will create a good texture in a pixel font.
"Well, tiny fonts tend to become more illegible when italicized–and they lose their shape when bolded."
I know it wouldn't work for a pixel font the size of Avatar, but perhaps one a few pixels taller will work. I like the idea of it myself. I completely forgot about the faux bold and italic functions in Photoshop because as a non-pixel typographer I avoid faux styles at all times. In italic some letters look different from the upright, hence I thought it was a good idea to make an italic pixel font instead of relying on faux italic (which is actually oblique and no italic at all). Don't forget that 'italic' doesn't necessarily mean the font is slanted though. I just discovered an 8pt pixel typeface called Unibody which consists of Regular, Bold, Black, Italic (an upright italic) and Small-caps. Of course the most optimal diagonal line in pixels is 45 degrees, so I think an upright italic is a very clever solution.
"That said, I thank you for taking the time to talk with me and share your viewpoints."
You're very welcome. Pixel fonts do confuse me at times but I also find them rather interesting. I don't know if I asked you this or an other pixel font artist, but why do you like designing pixel fonts, and why specifically such small ones?
This one is astoundingly small! I love it, I can definitely see myself resorting to one this small with signs and avatars as you suggested