In Germany (maybe also Austria?), that font is probably best known from the logo of major computer magazine/site CHIP (https://www.chip.de/). Although, for some unfathomable reason, the C in the "dead test font" doesn't have the characteristic "thickening" in the lower vertical part, although the G has it...
daneel_w•May 24, 2026
And so many variant typefaces of the same graphical language were seen in a million products during the home computer boom of the late 70s and early 80s. Iconic.
kevin_thibedeau•May 24, 2026
It's a copy of the Westminster font from the 60s which was an adaption of the visual style of MICR digits and symbols to a full symbology (without being machine readable). It was a meme for computerbilia of the era that now seems quaint.
scotty79•May 24, 2026
The other thing that caught my eye is that M has the thickening on the opposite side to N. I thought it was for easier recognition of similar letters (same with A and R, O and Q), but U and V have the thickening on the same side. Maybe C vs G is the reason why C doesn't have the thickening.
ikari_pl•May 24, 2026
This is basically the MICR font: Magnetic Ink (!) Character Recognition. Amazing idea.
Good ol' It's A Computer (tm) font. A good while back I've been using Westminster in every piece of UI I wrote for myself. Maybe I should start doing that again.
jansan•May 24, 2026
Here is an interesting first hand account about the history of Westminster. Interestingly the creator himself does not seem to know why the (IMO rather unfitting) name Westminster was chosen:
Seeing typos like 'resulation' is now a nice hint that a human wrote the article.
Nice exploration, bit of quirky fun.
phrotoma•May 24, 2026
> Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of wherever.
masswerk•May 24, 2026
Every hand-knotted carpet has some error per design, since only Allah is perfect.
But, I guess, "resulation" may be a bit blotchy for a sign of humbleness. :-)
robocat•May 24, 2026
> some error per design
A single minimum error by design would obviously be perfection. And it appears to be a myth story anyways - in truth Islamic carpet weavers do aim for perfection.
I've always thought it would be a catch-22 gotcha rule. Dieties presumably choose to either (A) care about rules or (B) not care about rules. An ambiguous rule is dangerous - especially if intent was what mattered?
(You're welcome anyway. And yes, I think, it's the sort of quirky article, an LLM can't come up with.)
benj111•May 24, 2026
Don't say that, or else Ai will start inserting typos.
Chaosvex•May 24, 2026
Oh, I'm sure there are people that already do it intentionally.
ikari_pl•May 24, 2026
As a perfectionist, I twitched ;-)
bitwize•May 24, 2026
I love the "MICR line"-like appearance, fonts of which type were heavily used in the 1970s and 1980s to indicate "computer/technology stuff".
jansan•May 24, 2026
I am pretty sure that I saw that font on a C64 before. Paradroid used a very similar font for the logo, but the game itself uses a different font (Paradrew).
daneel_w•May 24, 2026
There are a hundred variants of it used in various software for the C64, the Amiga, the anything.
I was recently exploring fonts of the next decade from old Mac system 6-9 era on my still in progress personal blog site https://hankdoes.ai/design-system/
Thank you author for the font and the lovely dive into computing and type history!
7 Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recogni...
https://www.mercerdesign.com/true-story-westminster-font/
Nice exploration, bit of quirky fun.
But, I guess, "resulation" may be a bit blotchy for a sign of humbleness. :-)
A single minimum error by design would obviously be perfection. And it appears to be a myth story anyways - in truth Islamic carpet weavers do aim for perfection.
I've always thought it would be a catch-22 gotcha rule. Dieties presumably choose to either (A) care about rules or (B) not care about rules. An ambiguous rule is dangerous - especially if intent was what mattered?
The Japanese wabi-sabi is the core behind an equivalent folklore story I heard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi
(You're welcome anyway. And yes, I think, it's the sort of quirky article, an LLM can't come up with.)
Thank you author for the font and the lovely dive into computing and type history!