Dear Internet
A fun, cursive, pixelated font.
Dear Internet,
Intro
Hello, Internet!
Over the course of 2024-2026 I returned to old-fashioned handwriting on paper to store information, process thoughts and work my way around ideas. With it I rediscovered how the shapes flow into each other. I began comparing my own handwriting to that of others, to signs and to old documents, and saw a system taking shape before me. At the same time, I was wondering, for no reason in particular: what are the limits of a pixel grid, and can it contain the nuances of cursive? Can the two meet?
So I started sketching out this font and implementing all of the strange quirks of handwriting. Where I wasn’t sure, I did what I would do intuitively in my own handwriting. In other places I borrowed from pieces of handwriting I saw around me. I did not aim for legibility per se (neither does my own handwriting: my wife, for one, still can’t read it).
Since I decided to give it away for free, it became a sort of personal letter in handwriting, addressed to the (digital) world. So I called it Dear Internet.
Features
Vibes
The vibes are certified very cool by me and critically acclaimed by friends & family alike. They could be a good fit for your indie RPG, for a spooky website, or for other such things!
Hey pal, looking for adventure in that cave over there?
Contextual alternates
This being a cursive font, letters will change shape based on their position in a word. This is a core feature of the font and is not meant to be turned off.
In the example below, you’ll see an initial form, a medial form and a final form:
sessions
mommy
orzo
Ligatures
As fitting for handwriting, there are some ligatures. Some are rather obvious (fi), but others less so. For example:
f+i→fi
o+f→of
f+f→ff
o+f+f→off
o+l→ol
50% off all golf clubs
of course, fiber optic is iffy
Accents & language support.
Dear Internet supports a fairly broad set of languages and includes characters and accents enough for about 111 languages!
Crème brûlée
Weißbrötchen
Drożdżówka
Ořechovník
Pâinișoară
Ayçöreği
Dutch-language features
The Dutch language has a digraph comprised out of the letters I and J. They are often treated as one single letter and receive their own style.
By setting the language setting in the renderer (lang="nl" in HTML) the font will treat I+J as a special character:
IJ ij → IJ ij
Brouwerij ’t IJ
jíj en wij
A surprising addition that you didn’t know you wanted (but you do), is the Dutch krul:
enable dlig and type :krul:, which becomes
goed gedaan! :krul:
License
This is provided under the OFL (Open Font License).
All of the characters
Below is a list of all characters in the font.
- AU+0041
- ÁU+00C1
- ĂU+0102
- ÂU+00C2
- ÄU+00C4
- ÀU+00C0
- ĀU+0100
- ĄU+0104
- ÅU+00C5
- ÃU+00C3
- ÆU+00C6
- BU+0042
- CU+0043
- C
- ĆU+0106
- ČU+010C
- ÇU+00C7
- ĊU+010A
- DU+0044
- ÐU+00D0
- ĎU+010E