Tiny5 Duo

The same five-pixel letterforms as Tiny5 with their vertical stems two pixels wide, which is what passes for bold at this size.

Homebrew cask Direct download

What it does

Tiny5 Duo shares Tiny5’s character set, metrics and axes and differs in one thing: vertical stems are doubled. At five pixels tall there is no room for a conventional bold, so weight has to come from the stem count, and this is that — a heading face to set against Tiny5’s body copy, used for titles, labels and HUD elements.

The same sizing rule applies. Multiples of 8px, or 6pt steps, or the pixels stop being pixels.

Unlike its sibling, the cask installs the variable files — weight, width, roundness, bleed and jitter, with the italic as a second file — because that is what Google Fonts carries for it. There is no specimen page in the Google Fonts catalogue yet, so Homebrew or the upstream repository are the two ways in.

Both members are proportionally spaced, which rules out a terminal; Departure Mono is the pixel face for that.

Alternative to

Alternative	Type	Trade-off
Tiny5	Open source	One-pixel stems, for body copy rather than headings
A `wght` axis on a conventional pixel font	—	Fewer files, and mush at five pixels tall
Press Start 2P	Open source	Heavy by default, with no light companion to pair it with
Pixelify Sans	Open source	A real weight axis, at twice the height