The first of several font updates I’ve been working on is now complete!
Originally I only intended to add international characters to this font, but when I really sat down and took a look at the font… well, I think I’ve definitely improved over the years. Some of the choices I made with the original character set are just baffling to me now. Yikes!
Here’s a compilation of most edits to existing characters:

Wider: Capital B, S and Z all got one pixel wider. If I remember correctly, the width of these characters was part of a misguided attempt at a monospace font… but then I ended up breaking my own rules on multiple other characters even in the original release, so these unfortunate characters were just collateral damage I never repaired. The B and Z in particular feel much more comfortable.

Fuller: Capital P and R both got larger counters. Originally the counters were up so high to line up with the tall x-height, but looking back it just feels way too forced. The R in particular went through a lot of back-and-forth revisions. On its own, the R actually looks really good with the tail nudged one pixel to the right (and actually would be closer to the original design). Unfortunately the increased width made the rhythm awkward alongside other characters. Oh well!

Better: Capital J, dropped the serif on the right that wasn’t adding much and making the character optically drift. On the capital N the opposite happened; the top right serif that was originally omitted (to make N the same width as other characters) makes its return to balance things out. Finally, capital Y gets a more comfortable shape instead of trying to force it to line up with the tall x-height (same as the P & R edits above).

Slimming Down, Pt. 1: Lowercase c, e and g all slimmed down a bit. Originally they were designed to match the roundness of the lowercase o but in retrospect that was a poor decision. The lowercase c and e can almost get away with it, but that lowercase g was a bloated eyesore.

Slimming Down, Pt. 2: The original lowercase i, j, l and t were also victims to to my attempts at monospace design. All of them were too wide with no real point or payoff.

Much Better: Lowercase d, h, k and y each had their own individual problems. The d… why on earth did I put the serif on backwards originally? Fixed. The h was rounded out as it always should have been, the k slimmed down slightly from several changes, the the y had the most drastic update of all! We’ve changed from a standard straight-line y to a rounded one. I think the roundness gives a more unique feel overall to the font. I never liked the original y anyway!

Misc. Changes: There were more changes the font outside of the alphabet, but most aren’t worth commenting on. I’m choosing to highlight just two of these edits: the 3 went from round and boring to a more classic design. The ampersand got more room to stretch out and feels more cohesive.


Aside from the changes detailed above (and more not mentioned), Pixolde also received about 240 additional characters in the form of additional punctuation and accent support, plus around 350 characters each in the bold and italic styles. It was a big undertaking, and there is definitely room for improvement, but overall I’m pretty happy with the update!