monogram
monogram v1.1: fancy update + open source tools
At long last, it's here: monogram now has Greek character support, and a brand new Italic subfamily available.
I've been cooking up this update for a long time now. Most of it has been ready, but spread around several disorganized files in two different computers, and I never did find the time to actually whip it all into a publishable state. Well, I've recently been chosen to participate in the prestigious industry-wide lay-offs of 2024, so all of a sudden, I got a lot more time on my hands!
( by the way I do take donations,
in case you're feeling generous )
So I've taken this opportunity to make this update the best I could. If you're a monogram user, you'll be able to enjoy:
- Better symbol and diacritic support;
- New font variants and families;
- New bitmap export formats;
- …and all for free!
Now, if you are a typeface nerd like me and would like a glimpse of my process, I have good news for you too: I have open-sourced my entire pipeline!
This repository includes all of the scripts and automations I have made to edit, merge, build and inject metadata into fonts, as well as deploy them to my itch page using butler.
It also contains the entire CSS and HTML code of my project page, so you can inspect the ungodly hacks I have employed to get it all looking and behaving just as I wanted.
Released under permissive licenses so you can do it too!
There's still a lot I want to tweak and improve, both in the font and in the process, but for now I'm happy with what I managed to make. It feels great to finally have this stuff pushed out into the world, and I hope this proves useful to someone else out there.
If it does, let me know! Leave a comment here on itch, or hit me up over on twitter.
I'm off to make games and stuff now. Have a good one!
Comments
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since you’re asking if folks found Monogram useful…
so, this is probably not something you expected your font to be used for, but Monogram was the backbone of my Strawberry Jam 8 entry, Vacation. Strawberry Jam is an annual month-long game jam with the same theme every year, which is “whatever the devs are hot for”, explicitly inviting “adult-only” content.
Vacation is a Pico-8 game about being hypnotized into experiencing yourself as a pooltoy orca. “About” might be putting too much distance in there, it’s a text hypnosis session using a simple minigame as part of its schtick and mechanism. And the bulk of that text is in Monogram!
Monogram is the most legible Pico-8 font I found that had the friendliness and playfulness I needed for the concept I wanted to express. I had initially specifically wanted something “not-monospace” so it would feel less computer-y, but all other fonts I could find were substantially less legible or comfortable to read and I soon realized that it was much easier to get text placement right with a monospace font.
Out of 76 entries (74 after DQs), Vacation got 16th place overall, and 2nd place in the “Kink” category, the category which the game jam’s organizer describes as “Does it transcend the typical bounds of what is typically understood as sex?” in the judging criteria. I’m proud of that result, especially for my first game jam!
So, uh, a Pico-8 hypnokink Experience by a furry into inflatable toys may not have been what you were expecting Monogram would be used for, but here we are.
Here we are indeed, Kistaro.
Can't say I expected this font would find a use case in this specific niche, but it's really cool to hear it worked for you!
This font was originally something I made for my own use, and I specifically wanted to make it monospace so it'd play well with text rendering anywhere, but without feeling too much like a "coding font". I'm glad that's how you felt about it too.
This is actually the first released PICO-8 project using monogram I've seen, so it sort of vindicates the work I put into my P8 port hahah!
Congrats on completing you first game jam! Keep at it, and let me know if monogram ever finds itself in another project of yours. Cheers!