Pixel & Grid Font Maker

What it is for

Pixel fonts give games, retro posters, badges and dot-matrix displays their look. Drawing them in a font editor is slow; typing them as small text grids is fast. Each glyph is its character on one line followed by rows of # for ink and . for empty cells, and a blank line separates glyphs. The tool turns the grids into a TrueType font you can install or use on a website.

It also suits the diagonal "brick" style: 2, 3, 4 and 5 are half cells cut along a diagonal (top-left, top-right, bottom-right and bottom-left filled), the same tiles as Lumina's Grid Font Builder. Lumina's Type Lab → Glyph Lab edits the same text with a live preview.

Worked example

We typed a tiny 4 × 5 font with H, I and Ä (written as U+00C4 on the first line) and chose Separate squares, Monospace, Letter spacing 0.5 and Dot or square size 0.7.

• TinyFive-Regular.ttf, 1332 bytes, 3 glyphs on a 4 × 5 grid.
• Cell size: 140 font units — the five rows above the baseline fill the cap height of 700 units.
• Every glyph is 630 units wide: four columns of 140 plus half a cell of spacing on each side.
• The H has 12 ink cells and therefore 12 separate squares; every read-back check passed.

The first built-in example, a 5 × 7 alphabet with two descender rows, gives 100-unit cells; in Merged cells style the I becomes one outline and g, p, y hang 200 units below the baseline.

How to read the result

• Glyphs lists each character with its glyph name, the number of ink cells, the number of outlines and the advance width.
• Contours shows the cell style at work: merged cells join touching cells into one outline, while dots and separate squares give one contour per cell (up to 64 per glyph).
• Read-back checks confirm that the written file maps every character and reproduces every outline.
• Download the font project opens in Lumina Font Foundry, where you can add kerning, more glyphs or a Bold master.

Tips and common mistakes

• Every glyph needs the same number of rows. Shorter rows are padded with empty cells on the right, but a missing row is an error ("Every glyph needs the same number of rows").
• Keep empty rows as . — a row of spaces looks like a blank line and splits the glyph.
• Rows below the baseline sets the descender. With 9 rows and 2 below the baseline, row 7 sits on the baseline.
• Proportional trims empty columns at both sides of each glyph; Monospace keeps the full grid width, which suits terminals and scoreboards.
• Without a space glyph, the space is half the grid height wide (or the full grid in monospace).
• Pixel fonts look sharpest at sizes that are whole multiples of the cell size on screen.

FAQ

Can I use characters outside the keyboard?

Yes. Write U+00C4 or U+20AC on the glyph's first line instead of the character itself, or space for the space.

What do dots look like up close?

Each dot is an eight-point quadratic curve; its implied on-curve points lie exactly on a circle with the chosen diameter, so dots stay round at any size.

Is there kerning?

No kerning or ligatures are generated; pixel fonts are usually spaced by the grid. Add pairs in Font Foundry if you need them.

Can I convert my Grid Font Builder project?

Yes. In Glyph Lab, Import Grid Font Builder draft turns your 8 × 8 brick font into this text format, triangles included.