Looks promising. Reminds of Skia, which to me is good.

> the true nature of what a pixel font might strive to be

Don't necessarily see grays as an emulation of outlines.
"Gray pixels are people too."

One way grays can help on their own merit is by balancing color better. For example look at your 2-pixel UC "V": a touch of gray on the insides would make it: nicely darker; seem less wide.

hhp

"Gray pixels are people too."

Point taken. That V does stick out, and like you say, there's not much I can do with it without the grays.

Here are a few versions of a serif to go with the sans. One that stays within the boyancy of the sans, and one that moves toward better readability.

Well, the italics variants are a fun challenge. They may or may not work ultimately, but I can't help trying to make them work. Of course, grays would fix this right up, but, this is a 1-bit exercise for now.

The same two serifs have been tilted, with the top one being cleaned up and the bottom one left raw. Not surprisingly, the bottom graphic is the most faithful to the non-italic members of the family.

And although I like taking pixel designs towards notchiness sometimes, I only like it if it looks like its been done by design. This is where the bold italics below falters, although it does benefit from the heavy line weight to carry the eye past some of its crags and holes.

I like the regular italic version better, but it faulters in a different way: in an effort to clean up the letters and give them uniformity across the set, a large portion of the style set forth by the non italics members is lost. In fact, characters stretch the limits of acceptability from bold to regular within the italics.

Any thoughts or critiques are most welcome!

> grays would fix this right up

Actually even grayscale bitmap fonts have trouble with italics.
To me you have to sacrifice an uncomftable level of crispness to get to a good balance.
Anyway, the silver lining is that it's a great excuse/reason not to make italics! :-)

hhp

I decided to take the direction the serif italics (above) wanted to go in, emphasizing letterforms that lent themselves to the italics diagonals, and ended up with another font.

I worked the italics backward graphicallly to reach the non-italic version of the font. It's not cutting edge, but I do like the congruency between the italic and non italic sets, and of course, the fact that the italics don't look like an afterthought when compared to the non italics.

Lookin' good.
Just one thing: I would give both 2-pixel Roman "V"s one more pixel at the base, to make them look less floating.

BTW, is it named after the World's Strongest Man champion of many years in the late 90s?

hhp

no, it's named after a rosy-cheeked blonde boy with glasses and purple tiedye shirts, who was a friend of mine in the fourth grade and who stole the affection of a certain girl in our class.

what made matters worse was that at the time, the fourth grade was when boys actually admitted to one another that they liked girls at all, which made holding hands and awkward kisses possible, and therefore inevitable.

which meant that at recess there was repeated, quantifiable proof that this girl only had eyes for him and wasn't even THINKING about me.

i was jealous of him after that, but always liked his last name. he coined his own nickname after it, in fact. mag wheels. eric "mag wheels" magnuson.

that font looked to me like a fast car (well, you know), and fast cars ought to have cool wheels. so, if this font were to have wheels, they'd be mag wheels.

Funny story!

And magnesium wheels rule, not just for looks: when you hit a curb, they don't crack, they don't bend, they shave off; plus they're light. I had a set on my old BMW 2002, and when I had to so sadly junk the glorious old soldier, those -and the Webber progressive 2-barrel carb- were definite keepers.

hhp