Turye, uf2, and UxnVarvara; Glyphr Studio; Featured Foundry: Velvetyne

I’m potentially riffing from today’s TT Drop for Friday’s WPE. You’ll see why in the first section. Also, unlike the code-heavier Drops, this one should work well with Substack’s text-to-audio player, though I can’t wait to hear how it pronounces some of the words.

TL;DR

This is an AI-generated summary of today’s Drop.

• The blog post begins with a discussion on Turye, a tool designed for creating uf2 format fonts, and the Uxn/Varvara ecosystem. Uxn/Varvara is a personal computing stack based on a small virtual machine (VM) that allows the same application to run on various systems. It’s designed for hosting graphical applications and is programmable in its unique assembly language, Uxntal. The post encourages coders and designers to explore and experiment with Uxn/Varvara.

• The second section introduces Glyphr Studio, an online font editor that receives significant developer attention. It’s designed to make it easier to create unique fonts from scratch, with an intuitive interface that’s compatible with other design tools like Illustrator or Inkscape. The platform encourages feedback and collaboration, contributing to the development and improvement of a tool used by a large worldwide community.

• The final section features Velvetyne, an association and collective dedicated to researching and disseminating typography and typeface creation. Velvetyne hosts libre and open-source fonts, allowing for their free use and modification. The foundry aims to transform into an innovative playground for type projects that may not have significant commercial appeal but exude high poetic, aesthetic, or technical value.

Turye, uf2, and UxnVarvara

In this section, I want to talk a bit about Turye, a specialized tool designed specifically for the creation of uf2 format fonts. But, to achieve that, we need to talk about the Uxn/Varvara ecosystem/stack…

Uxn/Varvara is a personal computing stack based on a small virtual machine (VM) that lies at the heart of the software, allowing the same application to run on a variety of systems. It’s designed with an implementation-first mindset and is tailored specifically for hosting graphical applications. The Uxn ecosystem is programmable in its own unique assembly language, Uxntal, and the distribution of Uxn programs is akin to sharing game ROMs for classic console emulators.

The environment was created to host small tools and games. It’s built at a “human-scale”, designed for audiovisual interactive applications, and has a simple architecture and instruction set. It’s also offline-first, meaning it works locally and you only need a couple of documentation files to get going.

The VM is stack-based and is described by an Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), with Varvara being a specification for a set of I/O devices connected to a Uxn CPU. It’s also inspired by Forth machines, using the recombination of simple components to achieve appropriate solutions, and is a stack-based machine.

If you’re either a coder or designer who loves to experiment and push the boundaries of what’s possible, Uxn/Varvara is a playground for you. It’s a place where you can create, experiment, and learn in a supportive and innovative community. Plus, you’ll be working with and coding for a system that’s designed to be simple, efficient, and capable.

Graphical environments need to be able to display text, and Uxn uses the aforementioned custom font format to accomplish that.

Unlike the super complex modern fonts we tend to focus on in the Drops, UFX is a proportional bitmapped font format. The UFX file begins with 256 bytes corresponding to the width (in pixels) of each of the 256 glyphs in the spritesheet, followed by the pixel data in the .icn format for each character. The pixel data for each glyph is stored in a series of 8×8 tiles, and the drawing order goes vertically as to be able to skip extra draw calls for narrow characters if needed.

Now, you can’t really be expected to hex-edit your way into a complete font, thus Uxn has the also aforementioned Tyre editor to help you accomplish this task.

Turye’s interface (pictured in the section header) is designed to give you a comprehensive overview of your font’s glyphs, and it includes various tools to edit the pixels and width value of each character. This means you can tweak and adjust every aspect of your font, down to the smallest detail. It’s kind of like being a sculptor, or one of those chefs who can meticulously craft a serving plate to you just want to stare at your food and not eat it.

Unlike the fancy “modern” fonts, anyone can truly get in on the ux2 font action. It does require an equal attention to detail, but you have no Beziers or seriously complex tools to get in the way of your creativity.

You can check out Turye’s source and dig into more of the entire ecosystem behind it.

If you haven’t played in Uxn-land, I do highly suggest doing so. Perhaps start with their minimalist-yet-powerful Left text editor (which you can do in an Electron wrapper).

Glyphyr Studio

If you want to dedicate font-making time that folks in a broader ecosystem can use, you might be interested in poking at Glyphr Studio. It’s an online font editor that’s receives quite a bit of developer attention. Unsurprisingly, it’s designed to help make it a bit easier to create beautiful and unique fonts from scratch. The interface is intuitive (even for GUI-haters, like me) and easy to navigate. This is not the case for some of the “pro” typography tools, so this is 100% a great choice if you are — like me — a n00b in this space.

A great feature if Glyphr Studio is its compatibility with other design tools. If you have designs in Illustrator or Inkscape, you can easily import them into Glyphr Studio (I’m really regretting the decision to not use “GS” as shorthand). This helpful integration makes it easier for you to bring your creative visions to life, without having to start from scratch; or, collaborate with other folks who are good at, say, SVGs, but have not deleved into the world of glyphs.

The platform also encourages feedback and collaboration, so as you use it and provide insight or note bugs, you’re also contributing to the development and improvement of a tool that’s used by a fairly large worldwide community.

I have no complete font to show yet, but I took my own advice in an earlier Drop and started poking at making a new font designed to be used in charts, and am using Glyphr Studio for it. I’ll link to the project when it’s a bit more fleshed out.

Featured Foundry: Velvetyne

Velvetyne is an association and collective dedicated to researching and disseminating typography and typeface creation. It is a group/community side project, and its members hold IRL jobs within companies or as freelancers to support their livelihoods. The foundry aims to transform into an innovative playground for type projects that may not have significant commercial appeal but exude high poetic, aesthetic, or technical value. All the fonts hosted on Velvetyne are libre and open-source, allowing for their free use and modification. The foundry also occasionally takes interns and organizes workshops. One of the notable type designers associated with Velvetyne is Jérémy Landes, who has been part of the open-source foundry for the last 10 years.

Velvetyne’s recent website redesign and re-publication led to the retirement of 29 typefaces from its catalogue. This decision was part of the foundry’s effort to evolve and focus on contemporary creations at the margins of the mainstream type scene. The members expressed gratitude to all the contributors, emphasizing that they have played a significant role in shaping Velvetyne’s identity, even if their fonts are no longer in the catalogue.

One of the projects associated with Velvetyne is Karrik (see section header), a typeface family intended to look like an old-fashioned sans-serif, bringing the clumsiness from both vernacular typography and obscure early 20th-century typefaces.

FIN

If you do take a dip in the Uxn ecosystem, give Glyphr

a go, or found a cool Velvetyne font, def Drop us a note! ☮️