A font recreated from photographs of classic Commodore 64 keycaps

jankhg 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This reminds me of this beautifully written article about the font Gorton.

https://aresluna.org/the-hardest-working-font-in-manhattan/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49201953

▲

abrookewood 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Very cool! Hope you like this one ... about a font carved into a tree!!

https://bjoernkarmann.dk/project/occlution_grotesque

	▲	Forgeties79 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That’s really neat. Interesting watching them grow sideways

▲

mxfh 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

in the further reading there is also a list with a number of recreations of related digitzed routed fonts: https://aresluna.org/the-hardest-working-font-in-manhattan/r...

▲

tniemi 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The old versions of VIC-20 used a font called Microgramma.

https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/1pjw7q6/t...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgramma_(typeface)

	▲	Sharlin 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Perhaps best known for being the basis for Eurostile, a staple of SF movie typography.

▲

petecooper 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>https://github.com/szabadkai/c64-keyboard-font/issues/4

This saddens me, frankly.

▲

BearOso an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The S is misproportioned. M should have the middle go all the way to the baseline. The middle stems on 3 and 4 are too long and too short. The punctuation is all different sizes. This is just me glancing at the normalized comparison image. It's really obvious.

	▲	petecooper an hour ago \| parent [-]
		>It's really obvious. I'm not disputing that -- the approach of the issue OP was what irked me.

▲

kalleboo an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's an asshole issue, but at the same time the AI that did the work isn't going to have it's feelings hurt.

▲

dylan604 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why would keys with full words like shift/return/etc be useful in creating a font. Basic comprehension skills are at a loss for this user. The issue comment should have ended with the first sentence. However, could the keys with full words have been used to provide clues on kerning or other spacing to use when building the font?

▲

dar5hak 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If creatively expanded to more characters, this would make a pretty nice coding font.

▲

Oarch 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Oh gosh, this is really rather nice.

▲

unD 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I haven't read "Press play on tape" in decades!

	▲	Sharlin 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There was a band named PRESS PLAY ON TAPE (stylized in all caps, of course) playing SID covers and similar stuff that I saw performing a couple of times back in the 00s/10s. Actually, looks like they’re still active at least to some extent: https://pressplayontape.com/

▲

Loughla 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It really is though. Very clean.

▲

epcoa an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

More AI slop.

▲

otikik 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"!" is like half of the size of "?". Even if that's faithful to the keyboard, it is very annoying.

	▲	BearOso an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's not faithful. The AI took the original image and assumed the ! was supposed to be elevated like that. This project is low-effort AI generated. Edit to add: This GitHub user has a over a hundred repositories full of random slop. It's clearly being used to generate activity for a resume or something.

▲

gwbas1c 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The special characters / punctuation are not aligned. The !#$% characters either float too high or need to be a little bigger.

(Yes, I copied the image from the page into Paint and drew a line)

▲

zooweemama 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We need one for the ZX Spectrum too!

	▲	stevekemp 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You can find a Speccy font here: https://www.dafont.com/zx-spectrum.font

▲

exceptione 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A weird thing: the exclamation mark `!` seems to be elevated from the baseline, judging from the specimen.

▲

mark-r 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What, no Euro key?

(Yes, I realize the € symbol didn't exist until 1996)

▲

exitb 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nice. It never really occurred to me how different these are from 64C keycaps. I guess through our affinity for retro look, the original typeface ended up feeling more modern/current than the newer one.

	▲	judetechdevs 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Same, the old one somehow looks newer lol

▲

orbital-decay 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But what font did the C64 keyboard originally use?

	▲	nathell an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Dunno about the original C64 (which is what this attempts to recreate), but the C64C used ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro Book according to https://github.com/FeralChild64/MechBoard64-keycaps

▲

Sharlin 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s a very pleasant looking humanist sans. Now I’m wondering about the story of the original typeface – were the glyphs specifically designed for the keyboard? Seems more likely that some existing font was used.

	▲	judetechdevs 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It looks too nice to have been drawn just for keycaps :(
	▲	mxfh 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Kind of ambivalent state of things, a research thread to solve that provenance issue to some degree of certainty is always only one prompt away too.

▲

petesergeant 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The download links seem broken, does anyone have the TTF?

	▲	dekoruotas 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Readme links to: https://github.com/szabadkai/c64-keyboard-font/blob/main/fon... Instead, it should be linked to: https://github.com/szabadkai/c64-keyboard-font/raw/refs/head...
	▲	Tomrn 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		https://github.com/szabadkai/c64-keyboard-font/tree/main/fon...

▲

cringleycringe 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I love AI!

▲

amai 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No umlauts?

▲

appstorelottery 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Very nice - thank you!

▲

amelius 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Apple ][ please.

(Actually, I think the Commodore had a better font)