Daily Dish of Dominey Design
{  August 8, 2002  }

Susan Kare Bitmap Fonts

Before miniml - before mini - there was Susan Kare and her original bitmap typography and icons for the Macintosh. Nearly 20 years later, Kare has redesigned and introduced a collection of bitmap fonts and icons to the public. Available as one big pack, or a la carte. Will embed without blurring or counter filling in Flash.

Comments

I have recently started creating my own pixel fonts (as i have never been able to find one i am completly happy with) and I have an all new COMPLETE respect for Karen. She has some AWESOME fonts out there. If you want to see a great collection of fonts, and users go to the http://www.typophile.com forums. They have a great critique forum.

Posted by: Josh Dura at August 8, 2002 9:57 AM

Pixel fonts are fast becoming the new Verdana, which is the old Arial, which is the old Helvetica... Not that I don't use them sparingly on occasion, but when people use them for entire blocks of text, or entire web sites, I tend to get annoyed. Still, in the spirit of the original post, her fonts are indeed very nicely done.

Posted by: Bob at August 8, 2002 2:30 PM

Sooner or later, people will tire of Verdana, and will look in their collection of "web-fonts" for a substitute, and there aren't that many alternatives..
I've got a hundred bucks that says Georgia is the next Verdana.

Posted by: tomas at August 8, 2002 8:44 PM

Heh... it pretty much already is. :-) Who's got dibs on Courier? ;-)

Posted by: Bob at August 8, 2002 10:54 PM

Georgia and Verdana *are* pixel fonts, by the way. Both designed like bitmaps for maximum onscreen low-res readability.

Posted by: billy at August 9, 2002 8:07 AM

Susan has desidend everything from Genveva, to Chicago, New York Sans, and everything in bettween, it seems like... http://www.kare.com/MakePortfolioPage.cgi?page=4

Even windows playing cards (http://www.kare.com/MakePortfolioPage.cgi?page=7) for a soliatre game.

What I'm saying is... she's designed a lot, most of which you get for free...

Posted by: Scott at August 9, 2002 10:53 AM

Nice point Billy. It's worth pointing out that a 9px Verdana can often look just as crisp and legible as any embedded bitmap, with a smaller file size.

Posted by: Todd at August 9, 2002 11:35 AM

I don't think Georgia's going to outphase Verdana. They're both pretty useful - Georgia for serif, Verdana for sans. Choosing one over the other is a personal preference or a case-by-case decision, but saying Georgia's going to obsolete Verdana's like saying apples are the new pears.

Posted by: Brandon Oto at August 10, 2002 4:42 AM

Mmm. Apple-pears.

Posted by: Joga Luce at August 13, 2002 10:56 PM

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