Blinkenlights Font
The facade of the Haus des Lehrers as a typeface.
In the Blinkenlights Font every letter is a piece of the facade of the Haus des Lehrers. Each pixel becomes one window element of the building: a tall window with the parapet strip below it – and on the ground floor the other way round, because that is how the building is built. A letter is as tall as the installation itself, eight floors from plinth to roof.
Born from the movies
The suggestion to make a typeface came from the Berlin type designer Verena Gerlach. The letters already existed: for the installation the project had made many text movies with lettering running across the facade – above all the Nerd TLAs series by Björn Barnekow with the three-letter acronyms of the hacker world. Those letters became the font.
The Blinkenlights Font was never drawn in a font editor. Every character is a frame in a Blinkenlights movie – painted like any other movie, in BlinkenPaint or in a text editor – and the frame number is its character code. A converter reads the BLM files and generates the font files directly from them. Tim Pritlove wrote it: in 2002 as Ruby scripts that produced PostScript fonts, today as a reproducible build that turns the same movies into TrueType, OpenType, WOFF, WOFF2 and SVG.
The styles
Two masters, Regular and Bold, come in three renderings: Blinkenlights shows the lit windows, Negative the solid facade with the windows punched out, Raster adds the unlit windows as outlines. The seventh style, Dingbats, carries 80 pictures instead of letters.
Blinkenlights Regular
Lit windows on a dark facade.
Blinkenlights
Blinkenlights Bold
The same, with heavier strokes.
Blinkenlights
Blinkenlights Negative Regular
A solid facade with the windows punched out.
Blinkenlights
Blinkenlights Negative Bold
The negative of the bold face.
Blinkenlights
Blinkenlights Raster Regular
Lit windows filled, unlit ones outlined.
Blinkenlights
Blinkenlights Raster Bold
The raster of the bold face.
Blinkenlights
Blinkenlights Dingbats Regular
Pictures instead of letters.
ABCDST
Try it
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
All characters
Every text style holds 227 characters: ASCII, Latin-1 with all accented letters for Western and Central Europe, the typographic quotes and dashes, and the fi and fl ligatures. Regular and Bold form one family – bold text picks the bold style by itself.
Uppercase
- A A
- B B
- C C
- D D
- E E
- F F
- G G
- H H
- I I
- J J
- K K
- L L
- M M
- N N
- O O
- P P
- Q Q
- R R
- S S
- T T
- U U
- V V
- W W
- X X
- Y Y
- Z Z
Lowercase
- a a
- b b
- c c
- d d
- e e
- f f
- g g
- h h
- i i
- j j
- k k
- l l
- m m
- n n
- o o
- p p
- q q
- r r
- s s
- t t
- u u
- v v
- w w
- x x
- y y
- z z
Figures
- 0 0
- 1 1
- 2 2
- 3 3
- 4 4
- 5 5
- 6 6
- 7 7
- 8 8
- 9 9
- ¹ ¹
- ² ²
- ³ ³
- ¼ ¼
- ½ ½
- ¾ ¾
Accented letters and ligatures
- À À
- Á Á
- Â Â
- Ã Ã
- Ä Ä
- Å Å
- Æ Æ
- Ç Ç
- È È
- É É
- Ê Ê
- Ë Ë
- Ì Ì
- Í Í
- Î Î
- Ï Ï
- Ð Ð
- Ñ Ñ
- Ò Ò
- Ó Ó
- Ô Ô
- Õ Õ
- Ö Ö
- Ø Ø
- Ù Ù
- Ú Ú
- Û Û
- Ü Ü
- Ý Ý
- Þ Þ
- Ł Ł
- Œ Œ
- Š Š
- Ÿ Ÿ
- Ž Ž
- à à
- á á
- â â
- ã ã
- ä ä
- å å
- æ æ
- ç ç
- è è
- é é
- ê ê
- ë ë
- ì ì
- í í
- î î
- ï ï
- ð ð
- ñ ñ
- ò ò
- ó ó
- ô ô
- õ õ
- ö ö
- ø ø
- ù ù
- ú ú
- û û
- ü ü
- ý ý
- þ þ
- ÿ ÿ
- ß ß
- ı ı
- ł ł
- œ œ
- š š
- ž ž
- µ µ
- ª ª
- º º
- fi fi
- fl fl
Punctuation
- ! !
- ? ?
- ¡ ¡
- ¿ ¿
- . .
- , ,
- : :
- ; ;
- … …
- ' '
- " "
- ‘ ‘
- ’ ’
- ‚ ‚
- “ “
- ” ”
- „ „
- ‹ ‹
- › ›
- « «
- » »
- - -
- – –
- — —
- ( (
- ) )
- [ [
- ] ]
- { {
- } }
- / /
- \ \
- | |
- ¦ ¦
- _ _
- @ @
- & &
- # #
- * *
- † †
- ‡ ‡
- • •
- · ·
- § §
- ¶ ¶
Symbols
- $ $
- ¢ ¢
- £ £
- ¥ ¥
- € €
- ¤ ¤
- % %
- ‰ ‰
- + +
- − −
- ± ±
- × ×
- ÷ ÷
- = =
- < <
- > >
- ¬ ¬
- ~ ~
- ^ ^
- ⁄ ⁄
- ° °
- © ©
- ® ®
- ™ ™
Accents
- ` U+0060
- ´ U+00B4
- ¨ U+00A8
- ¯ U+00AF
- ¸ U+00B8
- ˆ U+02C6
- ˇ U+02C7
- ˘ U+02D8
- ˙ U+02D9
- ˚ U+02DA
- ˛ U+02DB
- ˜ U+02DC
- ˝ U+02DD
Blinkenlights Dingbats
Each picture lies on a key: type the character underneath to get it.
- 0 0
- 1 1
- 2 2
- 3 3
- 4 4
- 5 5
- 6 6
- 7 7
- 8 8
- 9 9
- A A
- B B
- C C
- D D
- E E
- F F
- G G
- H H
- I I
- J J
- K K
- L L
- M M
- N N
- O O
- P P
- Q Q
- R R
- S S
- T T
- U U
- V V
- W W
- X X
- Y Y
- Z Z
- a a
- b b
- c c
- d d
- e e
- f f
- g g
- h h
- i i
- j j
- k k
- l l
- m m
- n n
- o o
- p p
- q q
- r r
- s s
- t t
- u u
- v v
- w w
- x x
- y y
- z z
- # #
- $ $
- % %
- & &
- : :
- ; ;
- < <
- = =
- > >
- ? ?
- @ @
- [ [
- \ \
- ] ]
- { {
- | |
- } }
By the way: the heart on the S key decorates the menu bar of BlinkenPaint.
Download
- blinkenlights-font.zip – all seven styles as OTF, TTF, WOFF and WOFF2, plus CSS and licence
- blinkenlights.css – ready-made @font-face rules for the web
- Specimen – the overview generated by the build
- github.com/blinkenlights/blinkenlights-font – sources, master movies and converter
Single styles and the SVG format are listed with the styles above.
Licence
The Blinkenlights Font is released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1: use it, modify it, embed it and pass it on, commercially too. "Blinkenlights" is a reserved font name – a modified version needs a different name. The fonts said so as early as 2002: All Rights Reversed – Reprint What You Like. The Open Font License says the same in a form that package managers and foundries recognise.