Pixel font generator

Pixel fonts build every letter from square dots on a grid, as screens and printers did when memory was scarce: the arcade cabinet, the home computer, the terminal.

Game titles and menus, retro posters, tech merch, and a high score or a game-over line on a cake.

Press Start 2P is the 8-bit arcade face, every letter the same width and the widest of the four; it is based on the lettering of 1980s Namco games. Pixelify Sans, from 2023, goes from regular to bold. Silkscreen sets capitals only, small and tidy, and VT323 copies a terminal’s monospaced letters, the narrowest here.

Pixel art blurs when it is scaled up: download the PNG at 3× and avoid stretching it beyond that size on the design.

Each pixel step is a tiny corner for the blade. Set the letters large enough that one square is several millimetres across, or the steps round off in vinyl.

On screen, pixel fonts are sharpest on their own grid: Press Start 2P is drawn 8 pixels a letter, so 6, 12 or 18 points (8, 16 or 24 pixels) keep its edges crisp. Two fonts further down the list, Coral Pixels and Sixtyfour Convergence, are colour fonts, and by Google’s own help Docs probably won’t display them.

The steps for any style, the PNG and the SVG into each app, what the licences allow and what happens to your words, are on the font generator.