Matrix Sans Fonts

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Introduction ▪ Features ▪ Design philosophy ▪ Copyright/Legal

Introduction

Matrix Sans is set of open-source fonts based on the classic 5×7 dot matrix capitals. The pixelated, retro-style design captures the look of that ubiquitous format, incorporating the best features from historical examples. While its forebears are strictly utilitarian and technologically restricted, Matrix Sans is intended to be a useful, modern, display font family. There are six variants available:

Regular
is like most “pixel” fonts that use connected, square dots, like the displays of 8-bit home computers and video game consoles from the 1980s.

Print
is made up of separate circular dots, resembling the output of a dot-matrix printer or the expiry dates on food products. It also mimics the electronic signs found on motorways, at airports and train stations, etc.

Raster
consists of horizontal lines with rounded edges, emulating a raster (the set of lines traced out by the electron beam in a CRT, as seen in old computer monitors).

Screen
is similar to Print, but uses square dots instead of round ones. It matches the look of the “character LCDs” seen in many devices, as well as some light-up LED displays.

Video
is 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.

Smooth
is also interpolated, but with perfectly smooth diagonals instead of the jagged steps seen in the other styles.

Each style also has an accompanying “SC” variant with small capitals in place of the regular lowercase (except for Georgian scripts).

The fonts were created by drawing the Regular glyphs as bitmaps, then turning them into outlines in FontForge with the help of a custom Python script. This method made it convenient to provide multiple variants with different styles of dots, allowing for faithful renditions of the various real-world examples of dot-matrix fonts.

Features

Character set

The Matrix Sans fonts support dozens of languages written with the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Georgian and Armenian alphabets. The character sets supported are:

For a full showcase of the supported characters, see the Tests & Demos page.

[Click to see supported languages]

Latin script

Afar, Afrikaans, Akuapem Twi, Albanian, Azerbaijani, Bambara, Basque, Belarusian, Breton, Catalan, Chamorro, Chichewa, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Dyula, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Fanti, Faroese, Filipino/Tagalog, Finnish, French, Fulah, Gaelic, Gagauz, Ganda, German, Gikuyu, Greenlandic, Guarani, Hausa, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Kashubian, Kuskokwim, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luba (Ciluba), Malay, Maltese, Māori, Marquesan, Moldovan, Ndebele, Norwegian, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Sami (Northern, Inari, and Lule), Sami (Southern), Samoan, Serbian, Setswana, Sidamo, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho (Northern and Southern), Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tsonga, Tuareg, Turkish, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Wallisian, Walloon, Welsh, Xhosa, Yoruba, Zulu.

Cyrillic script

Balkar, Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Erzya, Karachay, Kazakh, Kumyk, Macedonian, Moksha, Nanai, Nogai, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, Tajik, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Uzbek

Other scripts

Armenian, Georgian

OpenType features

Tag Feature name Examples
kern† Kerning GESTALT foray Fjord it’s → GESTALT foray Fjord it’s
smcp Small Capitals abcdefg → abcdefg
αβγδεζη → αβγδεζη
абвгдеж → абвгдеж
աբգդեզէ → աբգդեզէ
c2sc Small Capitals from Capitals ABCDEFG → ABCDEFG
ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗ → ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗ
АБВГДЕЖ → АБВГДЕЖ
ԱԲԳԴԵԶԷ → ԱԲԳԴԵԶԷ
locl† Localised Forms Catalan: L·L l·l → L·L l·l
Romanian: ŞşŢţ → ŞşŢţ
Northern Sami: Ŋ → Ŋ
Dutch: Ij ij íj → Ij ij íj
frac Fractions 123/456 → 123/456
tnum Tabular Figures 123123 → 123123
zero Slashed Zero 0 → 0
ss01‡ Stylistic Set 1 DÐĎƊḌḎ → DÐĎƊḌḎ
ss02‡ Stylistic Set 2 2469 → 2469
ss03 Stylistic Set 3 3 → 3
ss04 Stylistic Set 4 Ŋ Ŋ → Ŋ Ŋ
ss05 Stylistic Set 5 φ → φ
dlig Discretionary Ligatures ff fi fl ffi ffl → ff fi fl ffi ffl

†enabled by default in most applications
‡default and alternate forms are swapped in Video and Smooth styles

Dimensions

On screen, the Regular, Smooth and Video styles look best at multiples of 15pt (20px) size, where their outlines exactly align with screen pixels. The fonts are deliberately unhinted, to prevent them from appearing uneven at other sizes.

In standards-compliant applications, the underline and strikeout lines have the correct thickness and positioning to match the dot-matrix “grid” of the fonts.

Each grid unit in the fonts is 1/10 of the em size—0.1em or 0.2ex in CSS units.

Design philosophy

When designing the dot-matrix patterns for these fonts, I attempted to strike a balance between the following principles:

Authenticity and quirkiness are often in conflict with consistency and sound design; the countless historical 5×7 fonts contain many unusual-looking (quirky) features, which by their nature are often inconsistent.

In order to retain the essence and charm of existing 5×7 fonts, yet rein in their oddities and avoid ugliness, none of these principles can be fully embraced. Instead, they serve as a guide while trying to choose the most coherent, well thought-out designs possible for this project.

Proportional spacing

Readers today expect visually consistent spacing around all characters, including narrow ones like 1 I i l and punctuation marks. Trading some authenticity for sound design, this font family is proportionally spaced, unlike most prior 5×7 fonts. The proportionally-spaced typefaces American Typewriter and OCR A Tribute are similarly inspired by classic monospaced designs, but take the further step of tweaking the proportions of the glyphs themselves, in the pursuit of a more conventional reading experience. This design doesn't go that far: all glyphs (and spaces between them) are still based strictly on a square grid. Where possible, glyphs have been kept to no more than 5 dots wide, which would allow for a monospaced version to be created with mostly the same glyphs.

The Matrix Sans fonts are open source, licenced under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1 (see link for full licence text and FAQ). In short, this means that: