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Config 2024: In defense of an old pixel [video] (youtube.com)
55 points by msephton on July 5, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 11 comments


My god, those slides are incredible!

For those who don't know Marcin was in charge of Google Doodles for a very long time.

I wouldn't be surprised if he built his own CRT emulation for this talk. Maybe even did some of those pixel-moving transitions in code. I wonder if the rest was in After Effects? I _think_ a lot of that was beyond what Figma Slides can do (though I haven't tried yet).

edit: oh, indeed the web app is live still even! https://config.aresluna.org/


Agreed, this is a delightful presentation. I know it’s great because didn’t think pixel fonts was an interesting subject: I think of them as an unfortunate transitional technology. But this talk was fascinating.


Those animations are definitely impressive. It would be interesting to know how they were done.


Actual topic is "Pixel fonts are a much richer, much more approachable, and an ever-relevant canvas for creativity. I want you to fall in love with pixel fonts the way I keep falling in love with them, over and over again."


These are my favorite kind of talks. The kind of things that have that child like joy of discovering what you consider the simplest things about the world. The excellent presentation style very much helps.

A great youtube channel for things like this is Posy - https://www.youtube.com/@PosyMusic


I love it when people go all out to give a great presentation. A lot of talks at Config end up being an advertisement for the presenter's company, thinly-veiled resume fodder, uninspiring and without much insight to offer. This one was clearly a labor of love by a talented person.


Pixel fonts make sense if you have a low or fixed resolution screen, but doesn't really work with the devices we have today.

Also, CRTs have other properties which make them awesome, but that is another story.


Pixel fonts can also be enlarged by integer multiples to bring their sharpness and contrast to higher resolution displays. Simple 2y to make them feel like the old 640x200 displays on a 1080p monitor, if you're on 4k use 2x and 4y.


Yeah, but as he says in the video it doesn't really make sense if you are not on the same pixel grid. It is kind of implicit in the design on pixel fonts.


> CRTs have other properties which make them awesome

Hardware anti-aliasing?


Low latency, deep blacks (iirc)




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