01
The hero
The name lit in amber on a black LED panel, the unlit grid around it, and four tags in cyan, green, magenta and red.
A dot-matrix LED font for the screens inside your game · v1.000
LUMADOTLUMADOT
Lumadot is the lettering of the screens a game world is full of: lap timers, stadium scoreboards, bus signs, ship terminals and phone status bars. Every character is made of round dots on a five-by-seven cell, and a second font lays the unlit dots behind them so the panel looks switched on.
Type tester
Try it with your own words
The lit dots are stacked over the Grid in the hero's amber, with a soft LED glow. Every row is a whole multiple of 10 px. Try the other colours, switch Effects off for flat dots, or the layers off for the lit dots alone.
30 px 3×
Best lap 1:24.37Best lap 1:24.37
40 px 4×
Best lap 1:24.37Best lap 1:24.37
60 px 6×
Best lap 1:24.37Best lap 1:24.37
80 px 8×
Best lap 1:24.37Best lap 1:24.37
This preview covers Basic Latin, the icons, the bars and the frame lines. The full font adds every accented letter.
Features
Made for game interfaces
A 5×7 dot-matrix LED font for race timers, scoreboards and terminals, with a Grid layer for the unlit dots, 40 display icons and progress-bar segments.
01
A real 5 × 7 matrix
Each character is built from round dots on the classic five-by-seven cell, with true descenders on g, j, p, q and y and accented capitals kept inside the cell.
02
The dots that aren't lit
Lumadot Grid fills every dot of every cell, spaces included. Set it under the text in a dim colour and the whole panel reads as one display.
03
Monospaced
Every character has the same width, so lap times, scores and countdowns never shift, and the two layers line up dot for dot.
04
40 display icons
Hearts, stars, batteries, signal bars, a race flag, a clock, a lock, media controls, arrows and more, drawn on the same dot grid as the letters.
05
Bars, meters and frames
Progress-bar segments that fill one dot column at a time, level meters that rise one row at a time, and single and double frame lines that join up across characters and lines.
06
A slashed zero
Turn on the slashed zero when a 0 and an O sit side by side, as they do in codes, gates and serial numbers.
Built-in icons
54 icons you can type
Each icon is a character in the font. Click one to copy it, then paste it into anything set in Lumadot.
Status
Device
Media & shapes
Progress bar
Level meter
Case study
How Lumadot was designed
Why I made it
Game worlds are full of small screens: the timer on a race car's wheel, the board over a stadium, the sign at a bus stop, the readout on a ship's console. They are often set in whatever pixel font is at hand, and they end up looking printed rather than lit.
I wanted a font that behaves like the hardware: dots on a fixed matrix, every character the same width, and the dark dots between letters visible the way they are on a real panel.
Lit dots and unlit dots
Lumadot is two fonts. Regular draws only the dots that are on. Grid draws every dot of the cell, under spaces too. Type a line in both, put Grid underneath in a dark version of the colour, and you get the full panel; change the two colours and the same screen turns amber, green, red, cyan, white or magenta.
Because the font is monospaced, the layers can't drift apart, and a timer counting down never nudges the text beside it.
Everything a display needs
The 40 icons at U+E000 to U+E027 cover what status screens show: batteries in four states, signal bars, a clock, a lock, a race flag, play, pause, stop and record, and arrows. Many of them also sit on their usual Unicode symbols, like ♥, ★, ✓, ⏸ and ⚙.
Above them are bar segments at U+E100 that fill one dot column at a time and meter steps at U+E111 that rise one row at a time, plus block elements and frame lines that join across characters, so a fuel gauge or a boxed menu is just more text. The grid is a tenth of an em, so it is pixel-perfect at every multiple of 10 px, and the engine pack has bitmap fonts at 30, 60 and 120 px.
In use
02
The Photoshop template
The editable hero layout from the download, with a glowing amber title and a green lap readout.
03
A racing HUD
Lap and position, a best lap time, a speedometer, a fuel bar with tyre meters, and a yellow-flag warning.
04
Character set
Capitals, lowercase with true descenders, figures, punctuation and the accented letters, 512 in all.
05
Layers and colours
Grid plus the lit dots makes the panel, then GAME OVER in amber, green, red, cyan, white and magenta.
06
Icons and blocks
The 40 display icons on a red panel, an HP and MP screen with bars and a double frame, and a cyan level meter.
07
Where it fits
A scoreboard, a sci-fi terminal, a bus sign, a music player and a phone status bar, each in its own colour.
What you get
Everything in the download
- Desktop fontsOTF for design apps, TTF for game engines and Windows, every layer.
- Web fontsWOFF2 for every layer, with unlimited web use.
- Game engine packBMFont bitmap fonts (.fnt, .xml and .png atlas) at 30, 60 and 120 px, for Godot, Unity, GameMaker, LibGDX, Phaser, MonoGame and Love2D.
- Photoshop templateAn editable hero layout with live type layers, layer effects and textures.
- README and licenseSetup tips for design apps, websites and game engines, and the full license.
License
Included with every purchase
- Games and apps, embedded for unlimited copies sold
- Logos, merch, videos, streams and print, with no limit on sales
- Installed on unlimited computers: yours, your team's and your company's
- Websites, with unlimited page views and traffic
Ask me first
- Products where customers type their own text in the font
- Resale in asset packs, templates or font collections
Please don't share or resell the font files. For anything the license doesn't cover, email me. idris.hadjoudj@gmail.com
FAQ
Before you buy
How do the two layers work?
Lumadot comes as two fonts, Regular and Grid, with the same widths. Type the same text in both, put Grid underneath in a dim colour and Regular on top in the bright one, aligned exactly. Regular also works alone when you only want the lit dots.
How do I get the glow from the pictures?
Add an outer glow or a blurred drop shadow in the lit colour to the Regular layer only, in your design app or engine. Keep it small: a tenth of the text size or less, so the dots stay round and separate.
How do I type the icons and bars?
The icons are at U+E000 to U+E027, the progress-bar segments at U+E100 to U+E106 and the meter steps at U+E111 to U+E117, so in code you write them as escapes such as \uE000. You can also copy any of them from the grid on this page.
Can I use Lumadot in a game I sell, or for its logo?
Yes. Commercial use is included for games, apps, logos, merch, videos, streams and print, with no limit on sales, and you can embed the fonts and bitmap fonts in games and apps for unlimited copies. Products where your customers type their own text, and resale in asset packs, need an extended license: just ask.
Does Lumadot work in Unity, Godot and GameMaker?
Yes. Use the TTF files in any engine that imports fonts, or the included game engine pack: BMFont bitmap fonts at 30, 60 and 120 px for Godot, Unity, GameMaker, LibGDX, Phaser, MonoGame and Love2D.
Can I use Lumadot on my website?
Yes. WOFF2 web fonts are included, and web use is unlimited, with no cap on page views or traffic.
Which languages does it support?
Each font has 512 characters, covering Western and Central European languages.
Is Lumadot part of a bundle?
Yes. Lumadot is in The Complete Font Collection, every font I've made in one download.
Give your game a voice in Lumadot.
Related reading
The thinking behind this
Longer write-ups on the craft this font draws on.
Typography for game UI: the part players read under pressure
Interface type is read in half a second, at speed, over moving artwork, by somebody who did not come to your game to read. Almost every rule that applies to a book works against you here, and the fixes are specific.
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Seven HUD mistakes that make players quit
Players rarely say "the HUD is bad". They say the game feels cluttered, or confusing, or cheap, and then they refund it. These are the seven causes I find most often, what each one is really costing you, and how to check your own game against them.
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