BitFontCreator – Create your own bitmap fonts

Monday, Feb. 21 2005 | Author: derek

Bitmap or “pixel fonts” were all the rage a few years ago, and still pop up every now and then today. There are already some great sets out there, much of which you can find at “DaFont.com”:http://www.dafont.com/, but if you don’t see anything you like there, you can always create one yourself.

Normally that would involved using a difficult program like Illustrator plus some sort of font creation program, but with this little Flash app, it’s as easy as tic-tac-toe.

Just click in the white squares to fill in the pixels, and preview your font with real text whenever you like. When you’re finished, save the font and it will be zipped up and sent to you to download.

It is pretty time consuming to create a whole font-face, let alone one that looks half-way decent, but it’s a fun little app anyway.

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6 Responses for "BitFontCreator – Create your own bitmap fonts"

norgus

February 21st, 2005 at 12:37 pm
1

There is a reason people use trutype fonts, that reason is the sub-pixel information makes the font look good even when scaled.

Bitmap fonts are just… ugh. If you want to make a retro-feel chunky thing it would probably serve well though. (although there must be a million ‘retro’ fonts already)
AkaXakA

February 21st, 2005 at 1:12 pm
2

This is fantasticly simple.

Long live pixelfonts!
Lea

February 21st, 2005 at 1:26 pm
3

Norgus, but Pixel fonts aren’t created to be scaled. They’re created to be used for screen only, at specific sizes only, usually 8pt, 10pt, or 12pt. It’s great for buttons, flash apps, and other screen-related items.

If people want a high-quality 8-bit looking font to scale, there are ones that are created by high-quality font vendors that offer TrueType or PostScript.

Anyway, I think my pal Cal has a better how-to on creating pixel fonts, though it involves a $50 app as opposed to a free Flash app.
Ian

February 21st, 2005 at 3:48 pm
4

And its for posts like this one that this site gets its name :) Thanks for keeping ‘us’ updated!
AkaXakA

February 21st, 2005 at 5:22 pm
5

I’ve actually created a half-way decent fontface with this, but when I save it, the ttf file doesn’t render in the windows font-preview or the fontbrowser from STC Associates.

Guess that’s why it’s still 0.1 (or the Japanese support could be the problem.)
Tiberius

February 23rd, 2005 at 4:57 pm
6

Norgus, seeing the fact that you havent made a website in your life, And you are only doing one now in college you can’t comment.

I use pixel fonts, mainly for sub text on sigs, and text on navs, and it looks perfect with anti aliasing. Ask any experienced Photoshop user they will tell you the same