Pirulen

I released Pirulen on September 11, 2004. The design was my attempt to create a futuristic alternative to Bank Gothic. I wanted a font that shared its square proportions but avoided the turn-of-the-century engraving style that made Bank Gothic look more suited to old stock certificates than science fiction. The name came from a fire spell in the role-playing game Skies of Arcadia, spelled Pyrulen in the game; I changed it slightly for the font.

The initial release included a single regular style, which was offered as a free download. On May 9, 2012, I expanded it into a family of six weights with italics, all distributed as paid fonts. The original free style remained, but the additional styles were sold commercially. At first release, Pirulen included stylistic alternates such as a lambda-style A. Over time, frequent requests for a crossbarred A led me to add a barred version as well.

On June 25, 2021, I updated the family by removing outdated characters such as L with dot and E with breve, replacing reversed quotation marks, and correcting vertical metrics. A later update on February 10, 2024, fixed compatibility issues and standardized kerning.

Pirulen found some professional use; it was adopted for the title design of the 2021 arena shooter Lemnis Gate. Beyond that, I’ve seen it used mainly in science fiction and technology-themed projects.