Fonts in the pixel era were limited by the early screen resolution of computers. In the early arcade games of 70-80s, in order to present the words as much as possible on the low resolution screen, designers tried to rebuild the font on daily printed materials in the 8 multiple 8 grid and make it to readable.
At the beginning, when designing fonts for games, designers followed the previous font design guidelines on the screen. Some details, such as horizontal strokes are normally thicker than vertical strokes and basic fonts align rules are applied to pixel fonts. Designers used pixels to realize serif, bold, italic and even handwriting typeface in the limited grid space. In the early 1980s, with the prevailing of arcade games, designers created fonts to match the visuals and personality for each game. On the basis of readability, they began to create freely and adding the features of street graffiti letters to make the effects such as gradient, three-dimensional, shadow and so on.
Pixel art was derived from the popularity of pixel fonts and pixel games. Artists began to use pixel art form to remix other artistic styles to start their own creation. Although after the 1990s, with the significant improvement of screen resolution and rendering technology, pixel art gradually lost its competitiveness and faded out of the mainstream view. However, pixel art and pixel font remain as a retro and nostalgic art style and independent art form, and have become the creative choice of countless designers and artists who are constantly creating remix of world famous paintings in the form of pixel art.
