the danger of graph paper

(7 comments)
2007.07.20
So finally at Staples I found what I was looking for, item 716522, spiral bound graph notepaper. (I could live without the 3 holes, but whatever.)

One day during a meeting I started to see if I could make an alphabet where each letter was a 2 x 2 grid of triangle and squares. My first attempt had little lines to help define letters, but then I wanted to see if I could make a font without those tweaks. The result was something like:



Not the most legible, but hey. Kind of looks like the old Pac-Man font.

So here's the Java applet I made to help me... you can type your own text.

To view this content, you need to install Java from java.com "trifontula" // source code // built with Processing

(The code is very raw, but clever in bits, especially some of how it draws the outline but not in the internal squares.)

I tried adding certain punctuation (especially what a URL would need) with mixed results. It's not the most useful font in the world, but I think it clearly shows the dangers of letting geeks take notes on graph paper.