Pixel Fonts Explaination

Questions about font use in images? You’re in luck. Joe Gillespie is has quite a lot to say: “If you’ve ever tried setting text in Flash at small sizes, you will probably have been very disappointed. Flash’s over enthusiastic anti-aliasing makes small type look like an out of focus photograph. The problem comes from using fonts that were designed for printing and not specifically optimised for screen display. Printer fonts are intended to work with high resolution output devices not on low resolution computer screens.On the other hand, fonts that are designed for optimal screen display are going to look chunky and pixelated if they are printed. They are two different media and although you can compromise, the best fonts for screen display at small sizes are crafted pixel by pixel by experienced designers. That’s why they are called ‘pixel fonts’.

Before I start discussing pixel fonts and providing some tips for their use, it helps to first have a look at computer type in general to put things into perspective.

At one time, all computer fonts were pixel fonts. Well, everything you see on a computers screen is made up from pixels but, at that time, printing was performed by dot matrix printers and the printed output was a dot for dot copy of the screen image.”

Read the full full four paged article the Best Flash Animation Site V2.2.