Big, beautiful, fancy fonts are awesome for making huge first impressions on a user. They’re like wearing a bold-patterned coat or a brightly-colored dress–they instantly grab attention. But the itty-bitty details on a website design help “finish” the site, just like jewelry or shined shoes give an outfit a more polished and put-together look.

Today, we’ll be looking at several itty-bitty fonts, called “bitmap fonts,” that can help do all sorts of small decorative tasks around your website. Labeling link buttons, crafting social media graphics, doing copyright text or watermarks, and even making up parts of hovered navigation can all be done using one or more of the fonts I’ll cover today.

Bitmap fonts are generally best used at smaller sizes, so today’s previews will have two sizes of each font. The larger font is more to show you what the font looks like. Also, bitmap fonts are usually best used without anti-aliasing–the harder edge gives the bitmap font its shape.

With the exception of Baby Blocks, all fonts were tested with the text “crooked glasses” in lowercase letters.

Squarish & Space-Agey

Aansa	Bit 1 no custom preview available	Ernest
Hilogin	Micro N56

Small and Graceful

BF Mnemonik

Chixat 8

Venice Classic

Outlined/Shadowed Letters

Bit Out no custom preview available	Fipps	Half Life (un-outlined also available) no custom preview available
M04 Fatal Fury (un-outlined also available)

Fun, Blocky Effects

Baby Blocks (blocks appear for capital letters only)

V5 Bloques

Summary

I find that bitmap fonts are some of the best little tools in my font toolbox. Where other fonts are illegible at small sizes, bitmap fonts are perfectly legible; where other fonts would be too busy or too elaborate, bitmap fonts are just decorative enough without struggling to read them.

But what do you think? Might there be a place on your site for a few itty-bitty fonts?