3 / S C
We really loved writing the previous article in this series, and it is one of the most popular articles by traffic. So we are back for round two.
I am one of the older people on our team, so my role is to bring up 80s and 90s era nostalgia in every conversation - television sets, VCR, gaming consoles, MS DOS, Windows 3.1 are my staple go-to topics.
Since I still spend time losing at Paratrooper and drawing occasional 8-bit designs, you can see that my fascination with monospace typefaces never went away.
i. VCR OSD Mono
VCR OSD Mono is a retro pixel typeface that harks back to the rudimentary displays of the 70s and 80s, evoking the imperfect beauty of early digital aesthetics.
i-i. OCA-A, OCR-B
OCR fonts have a charm of their own. The need to be machine readable presents an opportunity for clean and clear forms.
OCR-A at the top has clear, angular shapes. It’s the OG. OCR-B below has five variations, that includes sharp versus rouded terminals, slanted, and two inverted.
ii. Jetbrains Mono
I have known Jetbrains Mono for a long time. But I came to recognize it much closely in Not Boring Weather app. Mono typefaces work very well for meta-info - stats, numbers, captions - and how !Boring Weather utilises Jetbrains Mono in its all-caps glory made me fall in love with the typeface.
Jetbrains Mono in !Weather
iii. PP Supply Mono
PP Supply Mono (by Pangram Pangram) builds on the industrial design aesthetics. I especially love that OSD-inspired V, Y, and W with calliper-shaped terminals and / that looks like a cable.
iv. Verily Serif Mono
Verily Serif Mono is an interpretation of Bitstream Vera Serif, the classic computer-era liberal typeface, in the propoertions of Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.
(top to bottom) Bitstream Vera Serif, Verily Serif Mono, Bitstream Vera Sans Mono: see how Verily Serif stacks with its inspirations
v. Ballinger Mono
Olivetti typewriters went on to be the foundation of the Memphis design and Google’s design philosophy at some point.
By Folletto at Italian Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3077257
Signal Foundry’s Ballinger with its large counters wants to become a text font - not unlike Jetbrains before which was a conding typeface.
Other monospace typefaces I am really digging these days are Iosevka, 8 styles, 9 weights, 3 slopes/slants, 2 widths (for most styles); and Monaspace, especially the Neon and Krypton versions.
