My Fonts
Here are the fonts I have created for Quikscript. They all meet or exceed my suggested standard for glyph inclusion, QSGL Level II; this means they contain matching numerals, punctuation marks and other useful symbols—in addition to the Quikscript letters themselves. As the Quikscript letters are mapped to the Unicode Private Use Area, a special keyboard layout is required to type with them. Finally: the fonts are all available under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, which means you are welcome to freely use, modify, and distribute them.
These fonts are distributed in two formats: TTF (for installation on computers) and WOFF2 (for embedding in Web pages, as seen here). The source code for generating the fonts is available on my GitHub page.
On this page:
Quasar
Version 1.000, 26 Oct 2024
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A
a
0
This is my take on a Bauhaus-style geometric typeface. It was a bit of a stretch to make this one fit my naming scheme of words beginning with Q; I settled on “Quasar”, as that term not only evokes space age retrofuturism, but serves as an excellent demonstration of the font’s design characteristics. A key design principle was to avoid diagonal lines, often leading to the use of curves in their place—note the handwritten-style letters x, y and z.
Quikscript is already known for having several letters that are simple reflections or rotations of others, like and . Quasar’s strict geometric construction created a few more such instances, like , , and . The self-imposed ban on diagonals resulted in and becoming completely vertical, and therefore simple transformations of and , respectively. I originally wanted and to be a reflection and translation of , respectively, but this would have resulted in confusion between and , so I opted for a symmetrical design for them.
Weights range from thin to black. Those two “master” weights were drawn in FontForge, with everything in between being interpolated by Fontmake. Variable fonts are available; play around with the sample above! The static (individual weight) fonts have hinting applied, however, so they may look nicer on-screen in Windows.
Alternate forms of the letters g and w/W are accessible through the Stylistic Set 1 and Stylistic Set 2 OpenType features, respectively; alternate forms of , , and are accessible via Stylistic Set 3. The Stylistic Alternates feature activates all of these at once.
In addition to the various weights, Quasar comes in two variants:
- Classic: with small openings in the counters of letters like a, b, g, et cetera; much like the 20th-century typefaces that inspired this one.
- Regular: with conventional, closed counters in those letters, lending this style a more contemporary look. This results in a kind of “Latinised” appearance for the Quikscript letters , since their counters are now circular rather than closing the loop horizontally at the baseline or x-height, as they do in handwriting.
Quasar replaces my earlier fonts, both unfinished and previously unreleased: QS Rotund (2019) and QS Round (2018).
Quintessence
Version 1.003, 13 Dec 2023
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This font is intended to embody the quintessence of the Quikscript alphabet. The Quikscript letters are based on the writing samples found in the Quikscript Manual; I have taken no liberties with their design. Most of the numerals and other symbols follow the forms used in my own handwriting. All glyphs are monolinear with rounded endings, in order to get as close as possible to their unadorned skeletons.
The font contains kerning, plus ligatures (accessible through the liga (Standard Ligatures) OpenType feature) for the abbreviations described in the Quikscript Manual: ·, ·, · and .
Everything was first drawn in Inkscape—using strokes instead of outlines—to quickly obtain uniform stroke thickness and round endings. I used a batch script to automatically convert the stroke information to outlines suitable for importation to FontForge; a Python script automated that importation. All of this made it much easier to iterate designs, and make something as well-polished as I reasonably could.
Quintessence replaces my earlier fonts, all unfinished and previously unreleased: QS Manual (2020; previously used for the alphabet chart and other Quikscript text on this site), Gateway Hand (2018) and Gateway Rounded (2017).
Quantum
Version 1.000, 3 Feb 2023
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Shavian: 𐑐
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a
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This is a set of pixelated, retro-style fonts based upon the classic 5×7 dot matrix for the Latin capitals. In order to faithfully evoke the bitmapped computer fonts of the past, the dots are placed at strictly quantum intervals.
The fonts are proportionally spaced and kerned (except the Print Mono variant, obviously) in order to maximise the legibility of Quikscript and Shavian text. The Latin lower case was designed to match the appearance of the other two alphabets.
To save the tedium of manually drawing the outlines for these fonts, the master dot-matrix patterns were first drawn as an image in Paint Shop Pro. A Python script automated the processes of producing the bold versions and the Video style, and turning these pixel patterns into font glyphs. This also made it trivial to substitute different dot shapes for the other styles.
There are six variants of Quantum, most with a matching bold style:
- Regular is like most ‘pixel’ fonts that use connected, square dots like the displays of 8-bit home computers and game consoles from the 1980s.
- Print is made up of discrete circular dots, resembling the output of a dot-matrix printer or ‘best before/use by’ stamps on food products.
- Print Mono is more than just a monospaced version of the Print variant: it closely imitates those impact dot-matrix printers that can strike dots at half-intervals along the horizontal axis, allowing for much smoother diagonals and stronger (albeit squarer) curves. The ‘bold’ style is really bold-extended—double the width of the regular—in keeping with the simple auto-generated ‘enhanced’ font provided by many printers.
- Raster is made up of rounded horizontal lines, imitating the raster formed by the electron beam in a monochrome CRT monitor, as used by early personal computers.
- Screen has a similar effect to Print, but uses square dots instead. It resembles the light-up LED message panels on motorways, at airports and train stations, as well as the smaller ‘character LCDs’ in many devices.
- Video is essentially an interpolated version of Regular. It resembles the on-screen displays of VCRs, Teletext, camcorders and the like; harking back to the early days of computerisation in television and home video. This variant has no bold style, as the interpolation method has no effect at all on the standard bold designs.
The Quantum family replaces my earlier fonts, QS Matrix, QS Video and QS Matrix 2 (all dated 2020).
Quixotic
Version 1.001, 19 Jan 2023
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QUIKSCRIPT:
SHAVIAN: 𐑐
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To design functional Quikscript and Shavian glyphs for a traditional segmented display seemed like a nearly-impossible—indeed, quixotic—task. As it turns out, the results of this experiment are surprisingly legible, considering its limitations. I do not claim it to be a very pretty Quikscript font, though!
Since no descenders are possible with these types of digital displays, I differentiated the short and long letters with the same method used in some of Haley Wakamatsu’s Shavian fonts.
After deciding upon dimensions and designs for the segments, a Python script was used to automatically draw them and composite the glyphs from a list of simple definitions, specifying which segments are “on” in each glyph. This also allowed me to specify the font weight and slant as parameters, so those font variants could be produced quickly and accurately.
There are three variants of Quixotic. All come with a subtly slanted “italic” form in imitation of many real displays:
- Seven: based on the 7-segment display, as used in clocks, calculators and countless other electronic numeric displays. Certain words are viable, like PLAY, HELP, Error and so on, but many Latin letters are non-unique or unrecognisable. In fact, Quikscript fares somewhat better here, as all letters except and have a recognisable representation even if the deep (descending) letters sit high on the baseline. In imitation of real 7-segment displays, the full stop (period) is a non-spacing character, so it sits between two numbers as a decimal point. This variant is available in five weights, from Light to Bold.
- Fourteen: based on the 14-segment display, also known as the “Union Jack” or “starburst” display; often used in microwave ovens, CD and DVD players, and other devices that require an alphanumeric display. Here, all Quikscript letters have a unique representation, and the Latin capitals are now viable too. This variant is only available in a light weight, as there is not enough room for the diagonal segments when they are any heavier.
- Sixteen: based on the 16-segment display. This provides little benefit to Latin and Quikscript, but is necessary for a satisfactory rendering of Shavian.
The Quixotic family replaces my earlier font, QS Segment (2020).