RetroPix was the first typeface I designed back in 2019.
The brief dictated that we had to create a typeface utilizing pixels or circles in a grid in Illustrator. We had the freedom to choose between uppercase or lowercase letterforms. We were permitted to make the typeface as complex or as simple as we wanted.
We had to start with designing O E C D G V if we were designing an uppercase alphabet and h o a g t x if we were designing a lowercase one.
I opted to design a lowercase typeface as I found the letterforms more of a challenge to create when utilizing minimal pixels. I tried to keep all letterforms in a 6x4 pixel grid (baseline to ascender line) with an exception for the glyphs "m" and "w."
The following year I grew interested in making the typeface a "real" font so I began researching how I could make that happen. I discovered Fontstruct, a website where you can upload your glyphs and turn them into a font. I looked at the default character set on Fontstruct and decided to design the rest of the characters. I designed the uppercase in a 6x5 pixel grid (Baseline to caps height). The spacing was handled automatically by Fontstruct.
If I were to revisit this project I would import it into FontLab and redo the spacing and kerning so that it is a little more refined. You can download the font free with a Creative Commons Attribution License.
