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David Hatleydesign · AI/ML · generative tools

No. 04 / 16 · Pixel · MonoSpecimen · 2026-10-27

Cap 700X 500Base 0Desc −200Outline

A 5×7 dot-matrix face with a true lowercase. Departure boards and scoreboards.

Download .zipTTF, WOFF2 and CSSBuy me a coffee ↗
Glyphs 107Styles 1Kerning noneUPM 800Cap 700x 500WOFF2 2.5 KBTTF 54.3 KBSizes 16 · 32 · 48 · 72 · 120Checksum BBFA
00Type tester

Try it

Next stop: 07 · on time

72 px · 9 px cells · click the text to edit it

01Construction

How it is built

Every cell is its own round dot, 0.84 of a cell across, so dots never touch and letters read as lamps on a board.

Most 5×7 faces skip lowercase. Pip 57 has a five-row x-height and two-row descenders, so g, j, p, q and y hang below the line. It is monospaced on a six-cell advance.

One cell is the font size divided by eight, so at 16, 32, 48, 72 and 120 px every edge lands on a whole pixel. The tester and the waterfall only offer those sizes.

PLATE 4.1 · CONSTRUCTION · PIP 57 g144 ON-CURVE · 144 OFF-CURVE · QUADRATIC
Baseline 0x-height 500Cap height 700Descender −2001234
  1. NodeAn on-curve point at (150, 492). 144 in this glyph.
  2. Cell100 units, an eighth of the em: 2 px at 16, 15 px at 120, never a fraction.
  3. Advance600 units wide: 8 of space on the left, 108 on the right.
  4. Descender dotg hangs two rows below the baseline: Pip 57 has a true lowercase, which most 5×7 faces skip.
Plate 4.1. Pip 57 g, drawn from the built font file: every square is a node and every ring a handle the outline really has.
02Spacing

How it fits

PLATE 4.2 · SPACING · PIP 57MONOSPACED
12
  1. Advance boxEvery glyph is 600 units wide: monospaced, so columns line up.
  2. Side bearingsN keeps 8 units of space on the left and 108 on the right. No kerning: the boxes do the spacing.
Plate 4.2. Pip 57 fitted by its advance boxes alone, drawn from the hmtx table.
03Waterfall

Every size it is drawn for

120 px · 15 px cellNext stop: 07 · on time
72 px · 9 px cellNext stop: 07 · on time
48 px · 6 px cellNext stop: 07 · on time
32 px · 4 px cellSphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
16 px · 2 px cellSphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
04Character set

All 109 characters

Char
g
Code point
U+0067
Glyph
g
Advance
600
LSB · RSB
8 · 108
Contours · points
18 · 288

Uppercase · 26

Lowercase · 26

Figures · 10

Punctuation and symbols · 47

05In use

Good at

Departure board32 px

SEA WALL 20:30

HARBOUR 20:45

Scoreboard48 px

HOME 3 · AWAY 1

06Download

Get Pip 57

TTF for desktops, WOFF2 for the web, or the zip with both, the licence and a readme. Free for anything, commercial included, under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Download .zip · 2 filesRegular · TTFRegular · WOFF2

Buy me a coffee ↗Optional. The fonts stay free.

CSS · put the .woff2 next to your stylesheet
@font-face {
  font-family: "Pip 57";
  src: url("Pip57-Regular.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-display: swap;
}

h1 { font-family: "Pip 57", sans-serif; font-size: 48px; /* 16 32 48 72 120 */ }