I think it’s awsome that he created every scene himself, makes the video completely unique, and more interesting, becuase everything is created to serve the contextual argument!
so hes not programming each item in the video is he? probably tracking the object and masking it on using something like blender. edit: just say the part where he made his own watch mockup. very cool that he can do both engineering, coding, 3d tracking, video editing and showing the design process
This was a fascinating look into segmented displays but I have to be honest, I could listen to you narrate just about anything along with that beautiful music.
I think the fundamental problem with trying to make a better display than the "double-square" is that, while the square does make compromises, we're so used to that look now that they don't even feel like compromises anymore.
Oh, I assure you, those digits *really* don't look right, and it is painfully obvious that they are compromises. And it's not just in how they look. Many digits in seven segment form differ from each other in only one segment, so it can be really hard to work out which number a display is showing, and there is a real risk that you might accidentally misread a digit. That problem is not so great with the rounded forms at the top at 1:31, or with 5x7-dot elements.
@@rosiefay7283 there are compromises and there are better ways to do it, but i think you missed the point that a lot of us are so used to the box 7 segment that visually it just doesn't look off anymore like the compromises are no longer aesthetic in nature because we've gotten so used to how they look, the accessibility compromises still exist (and are why i generally don't use it) but not the aesthetic compromises Like for me I'm so used to the 7 segment design that it looks entirely normal to me, the difference between normal and 7 segment numbers for me has become like uppercase vs lowercase or handwriting vs print, different looking but functionally equivalent forms I wouldn't recommend using the box 7 segment form because of its accessibility issues, but if you did even in handwriting i wouldn't question it
@@rosiefay7283 An advantage of a 7-segment "X" form is that while zero and four look weird, using a vertical-sided seven will result in every digit having at least two segments that are different from any other, and for forms which are bold or appear bold because of poor visual acuity (e.g. looking at an LED clock without glasses) the digit shapes are far more distinctive than is usually the case on double-box displays.
My 2-year old toddler absolutely loves numbers and has requested this video dozens of times. I think my son might literally have watched this video more times than anyone in else in the world.
I quite like this video. It inspired my 8 year old to try to come up with something better than the universal 7-segment display, and even though he won't be able to, it's a great thing for an 8 year old to think about.
It's probably the off-center horizontal line that has part of it going through the vertical one, or the diagonal line connecting those two. Alternatively, you can write 4 as LI ('+) which works better for 7 segment displays. (Adding a diagonal line on the top square would work too, but then you'd need more segments). This number doesn't work with circular squares either because of the horizontal line needing to be compromised. I like the 6-segment X display but the reverse y for a 4 just feels completely off. 7 on the other hand works because the diagonal line goes through the entire number from top right to bottom left. 4 is a weird number to write in displays nevertheless.
i don't know if that's just where i live but a lot of people write 4 exactly how it looks like on the original 7 segment design, so to me it didn't seem compromised at all, at least in the original design
Exactly. While I loved all the creativity here, they ALL suffered in either efficiency, aesthetics, or readability. The "classic crystal" shape is the best because it's the most readable, most consistent, AND most symmetrical. It's the best balance of aesthetics and readability.
I’ve once made a hexagon segmented display. It was for a game that was based on hexagons, and it worked pretty well. All numbers, letters, even capitals were doable, and I’m quite proud of it as well. The design was 12 segments, with each of the six sides being a segment, and lines from each corner of the outside to the center were segments.
The 7 segment double square has a hidden benefit. You can encode your numbers as a byte each, without any wastage (6 segment) or need for multiple bytes (with wastage in a lot of cases), so it fits nicely with digital logic.
I recently bought a alarm clock off Amazon and it has a 7 panel font to the numbers. It is my favorite font I've seen and didn't realize it at order. The middle panel is a capsule shape, top and bottom panels are curved shapes with 45° corner cuts (like a slice of a donut), and the 4 vertical panels have half round inner corners to accommodate the capsule shaped center but flat on the edge. It is so nice looking compared to what I've had on everything else. I never voiced these thoughts but here this video is in my recommended 🤣 thanks this video was awesome thanks!
This is a term I never knew existed on a topic people hardly ever think of. Yet it is so engaging and it’s rather thoughtful to not use stock footage. Goes that extra mile and adds experience value. It’s calming really.
Ok, the lack of stock footage alone makes you stand above the rest, but when I Shazam'd the music at 7:30 after noticing how incredible the bass line is, and saw that you also did that yourself, I was blown away. Throw in the mock ups, hand designing, photography, editing, etc, and I cannot imagine the labor that goes into these. Seriously, you are a freak of nature, man. Absolutely inspiring, and truly exceptional.
@@ali99_82 Yeah, it's unreal. Since my comment, I've actually put in a lot of work to get closer to this level in some upcoming things I'm doing. He raised the bar for me. Still a long way to go, but I've been inspired.
@@NautilusGuitars awesome, would be seeing your journey - I too wish to start producing such cinematic masterpieces but i put that to halt atm - maybe a project for the future Good luck
The sound (SFX, BGM and voice) and the visual in this video is so satisfying. Like, it's just an informative video BUT the production has gone above and beyond to make it look really, really good. I truly hope the algorithm keeps blessing you and your channel blows up.
As someone with 2 degrees in Graphic Design, I applaud you for tricking people into watching a near 15 minute long video about font creation. Nicely done. 😉
@@mgabrysSF I was young & naive and actually enjoyed graphic design while I was dumb enough to think that you could make a living doing it back then. So I figured if one degree would set you up for success, 2 would just up your odds. Little did I know, the vast majority of my graphic design knowledge would inevitably be used for making memes... 🤷
The other thing about seven-segment displays is seven segments with a decimal point perfectly represents 8 bits of data, which is exactly one byte. This makes the design extremely efficient not only in the front-end, but also the back-end.
Common shift registers are compatible with 7 segment displays with a dot. You would need a dot matrix display or multiplexers for the more complex fonts.
The enthusiastic but very measured speech, extreme passion for weird little gadgets, and noticeable Dutch accent really made me feel like I was back in my bilingual Dutch/English high school listening to my exceptionally nerdy gen-x economics, physics, or computer science teachers. This is a really specific kind of memory but you hit the exact same spot in my brain
There is a reason why 7 segment + a dot are the most common. It is because all the data can be stored in 8 bits meaning that a single byte can fully run a display, meaning that a single 8 bit shift register can drive a display. The same can be said for 16, 32 and 64 bit ones as well (64 being a 8x8 LED matrix). So definitely prefer some of those, even the 15 segment plus a dot would be a very good choice.
This video is a perfect example on how designers needlesly overcomplicate things because they lack the engineering understanding of how those things work.
@@DanSlotea i feel the point is being missed here. It's exploring a possibility space of what kinds of displays can be made with a variety of segments and if there's a way to make it look better and more readable with a modern lense. This isn't "overcomplication" it's trying a bunch of things out and seeing what comes out with an eye to what has been tried.
@@DanSlotea and not just how unnecessary it is but how it creates annoyance and confusion. It’s a kinda a fun vid but the entire time I’m just thinking ‘it was fine. It was like that for a reason. It still looks fine. Leave it alone’ - “I couldn’t come up with anything better than the double square” yeh, we know ..
This might just be the best produced video I have ever seen on UA-cam. It felt like one of those nature documentaries… but for technology. The imagery, the story, the music…. An absolute work of art! Bravo!
THIS is what UA-cam is for. Beatuiful, well-put-together videos about underrated topics. Wonderful job Posy, and I can't wait to see more of your fantastic videos. As a 14-year-old, you're one of my new favorite creators. Great job from the US!
This absolutely blew my mind. It's so nice to find in internet someone that connects so much with digital art like you do. I have a watch shop for mostly digital watches for around 4 years now, and now as a team we're desining our first digital watch, and believe me that on monday everyone is gonna watch this video. This is incredibly helpful and inspiring for me 🥲. When we're done i'm gonna ask your details to send you one for free. Also I try to be a youtuber myself, and really congratulations on your videos made with such elegance and good taste. Greetings from Santiago, Chile.
not nice < niais < nescius := not-skilled but you are; in -> on; have -> have had -> hav had; desining -> designing; monday -> Monday; youtubers -> UA-camrs
I love this channel because it frequently reminds me to see the beauty and ingenuity in things that I take so much for granted that I hardly even see them. Thanks, Posy. I still use your mouse cursors on both my computers.
The train I was using as a student had a super fascinating display, which I analysed for hours. It was able to display digits as well as text, and consisted of equally designed segmented columns, which could be combined into variable width characters. For example, for a "1", "I" or "i" you needed one column, for a "M", "m", "W", etc. you needed five columns. Most of the other characters used three. I found the design choice behind this super interesting, and it made a quite versatile and readable display. (I cannot find any images of this online anywhere, sorry)
@@rextheroyalist6389 I'm not sure. In your example it looks like the columns are alternating between a soling column | and some smaller segments. The display I was describing was more like a matrix display, but some matrix squares were further segmented in "quarter circle + remainder" or "intersection of two quarter circles + remainder", in order to provide round edges for "m", "n", "0", etc. And every column was segmented the same, and then a variable number of columns was combined for every character
Dude, wow. This video just got randomly recommended to me by the algorithm overlord, and it’s SO GOOD. I also watched the Mouse Cursor one just now. Truly next level stuff. The fact that you’re not using stock is really under appreciated. And, as a professional designer myself, it’s seriously amazing to see the craft that went into both these numbers, and the (pixel-perfect!!1!) cursors you’ve created. Instant subscribe, keep it up! 👏
Just got it too and honestly I'm not complaining. This is right up my alley of interest. Also, this way of doing videos kinda reminds me of a mix between Lemmino and Ahoy
I love these kind of videos where people take something seemingly insignificant and let themselves get obsessed with it, exploring it to it's limits. it makes for a very interesting watch, the creator's passion really rubs off onto the viewer
3:03 just a _tiny_ note that shearing a typeface makes an oblique. An italic has a different feel, and is almost always manually designed to look more calligraphic than sheared.
I wonder whether the shear was invented as a means of using the decimal point of an upside-down display digit module as the top half of a colon (a very common trick in LED clocks).
@@flatfingertuning727 No idea, but you can bet an upside down display module was used plenty of times to conveniently display degrees Celsius after the numerical value by using the dot and a "C"...
@@jovetj i just think it's neat how all of those displays go about their functions slightly differently. Plus the video was well structured and educational. Even better, since I was working with a segmented display at the time lol
This brings back memories. I experimented making my own segment displays in LittleBigPlanet 2, mostly for aesthetics but also for ease of setup. I made my displays quite symmetrical and aligned to the level editor's grid. I quite liked my 8-segment display, which had an extra vertical line in the middle to make the 1 digit centered, though I also made quite a few designs that strayed a bit from real-world limitations.
It also has to be acknowledged that every state of a seven segment double square, if including a decimal place, can be stored using one byte of binary. One byte of binary has 8 digits (bits), and so each one can correspond to a segment with 1 being lit, and 0 being unlit. Very cool.
Yoo I'm really glad to see this video getting 200k views a day, this is like his first viral video. I've been binge watching your videos and I'm honestly surprised that you haven't gotten that many views for each video. I hope other people start binge watching as well and appreciate the effort you put into your past videos too.
this vid showed up on my feed today, i hit follow a couple minutes in without even looking at his page. one of the best finds ive made in a while, binge starts now.
its criminal this channel doesn't have more views. I'm not sure there's any one else putting this level of effort and creativity into their videos, thank you for continuing to make them. As a ui designer, you've helped me see displays in an entirely different way
Did you like it? Did you share with friends, frenemies, reddit, twitter etc? If no then stop bitching and do your part, if you think it deserves more views. Gah i hate these types of comments so much
@@silverblank1139 you're the idiot here. It's these and any comments that drive up viewer interaction numbers that promote a video in the UA-cam algorithm. Sharing it is great but nothing will blow up a video quicker than traits that make it favorable for the algorithm to promote. (comments being one)
Graphic designer here who had to make fonts, I feel this video real hard. Thinking about font anatomy and readability is really interesting, almost like a puzzle for efficiency and aesthetic. Thanks for making this.
Electrical engineering adjacent dude here, the complexities of designing, wiring, and controlling multiple 18 segment characters scares me. The 6 and 5 segment displays were pretty neat; one could have so many more characters and lines on a display, with fewer segments.
"No stock footage was used in the making of this video" That right there is the difference between a documentary content creator and a hack that reads a script over a bunch of recycled crap some editor was paid next to nothing to slap together in a week. Subscribed. Well done Posy
You are gate keeping content. Not everyone can just make whatever they want to talk about. Do you prefer people not talk about anything at all unless they make the original footage?
What if my documentary is about something that has already happened (either something historical or a recent event or incident)? Get in my time machine? What if my documentary entails a large variety of small products, devices, vehicles, etc.? Buy them all off Ebay and film every second of stock footage myself if I could have just bought the footage for like 5-10 bucks? What if my documentary is about something in another country? Should I ignore my Covid restrictons, scarce free time or lack of money and travel there? What if it is about multiple countries? What if it is about a uninhabitable environment, dangerous region, warzone, environmentally restricted area, corporate turf or government facility? What if I simply don't have the money or space to buy any of the devices this guy has? What if my video is about physics, biology, chemistry or anything else that is either dangerous, expensive or impossible to observe without an electron microscope? What if its about astronomy, can I rent the hubble telescope? What if its about a high-profile individual? Arrange a meeting? "Hey Xi Jinping, big fan, my name is MiFiWi and I just wanted to ask wether you plan on starting a trade war with the US or not" Or should I just pay 20 bucks to not have to worry about anything like that and focus on my script, if its understandable, well-written, informative, factually correct and provides a good overview and conclusion about its topic. Quick Edit: Don't get me wrong, I like this video and the fact that it doesn't have stock footage. But a lack of original footage shouldn't discredit the point or quality of a video, if everythign else is correct and if it wouldn't have been trivial to get original footage in the first place (for example, programming or minor tech videos and especially tutorials should still have original footage, because its required to follow the narration in that case)
جميل جداً، المقطع يعطي إلهاماً لحب تصميمات الأرقام والأحرف ويظهر كم من الممكن لها أن تكون متنوعة وإبداعية، واضح أنه لشخص يمتلك شغف حقيقي نحو عمله، شكراً لكم ❤
freeform looks very nice! My favorite one however is quite different, the Seamless at 4:38, it looks very modern, and it's most compromised number, the number 2 still looks fairly good and is decently recognizable.
When I was a kid I went to the supermarket and first saw a display like this showing also letters instead of only numbers. So I went home, got paper and pencil, and tried to imagine what all the letters of the alphabet would be like. It was practically a young kid trying to do reverse engineering. But was fun. It was very interesting to play with that, because it gives you a better idea of the importance of each segment. And you can play with the segment shapes for a better reuse.
I just stumbled across your channel and I want to say this: everything about your videos is amazing! The footage, the music, the humor, the script, the way you talk. High quality content. I never thought watching a bunch of videos about LCD displays or your first car could be that much fun. Please don't stop doing what you do!
Meanwhile, there are endless Top 10 and “science” channels out there that might as well have an opening message saying “Nothing but stock footage was used in the making of this video. Voice over was done using Text-to-Speech. All music is Royalty-free. Hell, we even ripped the general idea from other lazy channels. No talent was harmed in the making of this video, because no talent was involved. Please enjoy the ads.” Thank you for this brilliant video!
I can't say I've ever given much thought to segmented displays beyond interacting with the odd microwave or digital thermometer, but this was certainly was intriguing. Very cool designs, excellent presentation - thanks for sharing.
Why are these videos so good! Like holy moly, the cinematography, sound, music, voice over, subject matter... everything is just so polished and beautifully presented! I need more Posy in my life.
i used to think about segmented displays and how to maximise legibility and aesthetics while minimising cost and complexity. to say that i was gleeful when i got recommended this video would be an extreme understatement and i did not realise that the custom cursor video i loved so much was from the same creator. definitely one of the greatest and most underrated youtube channels i have ever come across. you earned a subscriber!
Segmented displays are largely obsolete. Normal computer displays with millions of colors and pixels, are far more versatile. However, then we have to draw segmented displays on normal computer graphic screens, for that retro pinball game look. Or for a 3-D model in your video game, of a digital clock. So then they are not quite obsolete after all.
I was going into this video expecting a run of the mill informative video about a niche subject, but this wasn't just very interesting for someone who used to dislike typeface and fonts in design school, but the video it self was so soothing to watch and is a work of art in its own right. Very well done!
I would have never been interested in something so random, but this video was made so well that I ended up watching the entire thing. This is great work.
10:59 - 11:12 this segment was definition of 'intuitive' for me. the scene appeared, i saw the diagram on the side, and when the lights began with the sound i immediately understood that one group of four lights as they indicated 10 different numbers. incredible work, honestly.
youtube has decied to bless me with this channel. your quality of editing, sound design, and everything else in production just screams a 100k channel aimed at really fancy designs of the FUTURE and yet here you are, just making what you want to make to a small crowd, with all of your passion and drive doing the talking. i cannot wait to see what else you create next, as this channel is one that ill stay subbed to
The 14-segment display is a fairly common alternative that modifies the 7-segment and seems to address a lot of its shortcomings. It is a lot of fun to see what's come up over the years. Though, at this point, going beyond the 7-segment will probably be filled with a matrix display as there is major considerations like cost and driver circuit complexity hold no advantage. It's a fun thought exercise though. It's similar to nixie tubes.
I still listen to the segments song almost every day I'm alive. I love it. I don't think I possess the ability to put into words how much I enjoy listening to it. You're my hero.
the 14 segment double square is by far my favorite one. All the numbers and letters are clearly readable, and it just looks.. really nice! The only drawback, as mentioned in the video, is it can't be made any bolder. But used in the right contexts I think it would really be great
4:37 This font actually looks really cool and (mostly) without any compromise at all! Even then, all that you would need to do for the 2 would be to cut in two more squares besides the middle segment. Then it would be perfect!
I wonder if the simplified way that many people physically write their 4s, myself included, originates from the double-square segmented display design. Secondly, I noticed that the “4” seemed to suffer the most from each of the different redesigns, perhaps because it uses many straight lines on displays that are created to accommodate for rounder numbers.
I (52, we had handwriting classes in school) have had innumerable complaints about my hand-written 4’s “looking like 9’s” despite making an effort to always make the 4 pointy and with its little crossbar sticking out, and my 9’s very curvy and contained (though without the bottom curve - I have never seen anyone actually write a 9 with anything but a straight/diagonal right side line). So I gave up and leave 4 very straight and open. Whether this says something about handwriting in general, my handwriting specifically, or people being influenced by segmented displays, I can’t say.
When I was a kid, I would stare at the scoreboard numbers whenever I watched my brother play basketball. I was fascinated by segmented design before I even knew what it was. This video really hit home for me.
I just subscribed!! Was shared with me by my son, who knows we’re both into all these subjects! I’m very grateful it was shared with me…otherwise I’d definitely be missing out! What a super great video! Looking very forward to all of this channel’s material!
By far my favorite segmented display designs are the 6-segment designs, the sharp based 5-segment, the 13-segment and 15-segment XO, and the 16 segment double square.
Just stumbled upon this channel and I have to say the production quality is far above the size of this channel. Well done. I thought your 13 segment design was actually quite nice to read, but the 5x3 matrix offers much greater flexibility as it can also make punctuation work for the most part. Going up to a 7x5 matrix seems like the ideal balance between complexity and readability to me, with our modern methods of making them, as the added resolution makes the question mark much easier to read.
The 8 segment alternative X is my personal favorite. It has such a sharp aesthetic. I would tweak the font to use different segments for some letters but it looks really cool.
2:58 That's the most common design? I've never seen it. Particularly the 4 with the shortened left stem looks very strange to me, I don't recall ever seeing that. In my experience the most common design, by far, is the simple, non-italicized one at 1:15.
I think he meant ‘if they actually wanted to pay the effort to design it’. They usually don’t do it, because nobody wants to pay the effort into seven segments
I also though that, then I looked at my Casio watch I have for years and it turned out to be this exact design. Wow, I actually never payed attention to it enough to see this altered design is used.
This brought some childhood memories when I got 7 segments electronic display then I was trying to figure out the pins combination to light up numbers 😃
When I was a kid, I was fascinated by any digital segment displays that I saw. If this was released at the time I was a kid, I probably would have watched this video over and over again. By the way, keep up the good work!
The "4" design looks compromised in nearly every single iteration of this. Maybe 4 is just a problematic number to draw. Would be interesting to see a design that specifically focuses on 4's shortcomings and catering specifically to that.
I think it depends on your idea of the "correct" way to write numbers mostly. My 4's and 9's especially look almost the same as they do in a traditional 7 segment display or "double box" design.
@@danteteeter6567 EDIT: Please read the rest of the discussion before replying. I'm getting notifications spammed with people correcting me on a statement I made that was, in fact, incorrect. It's discussed further down. I guess you're technically right, but there is a definitive, consistent way to write 4 that's taught to nearly every child in school, and it's pretty similar to the printed "4" in Arial font. By compromised, I really mean it's hard to read. I think you're be hard-pressed to explain how an X missing one of the legs looks like a 4 in a readable fashion to the majority of humans, or at least a handful of specifically picked humans.
@@elliejohnson2786 In my country people usually write 4's as in the segmented display, it's actually kinda rare to see someone writing a 4 like this: 4
I write my fours as a compromise between the Arial 4 and a seven segment one: the diagonal line is there, but the right vertical line doesn't go all the way up to meet it in the top corner.
What a fantastic excursion, I remember also being stuck in school just doodling different ways to make segmented designs. In particular I know it sounds almost trivial to do a 10-segment display, giving each digit its own segment… but that's just a nixie tube by a different name. Seven-segment displays will probably forever be stuck in my head as the quintessential '80s/'90s "dawn of the internet age" kind of æsthetic, and I like that kinda romanticized notion.
I just stumbled upon this in my recomendations. I love the amount of technical, visual and audio work you've done in this video. Honestly, I love the attention to detail you put into every single scene, from appropriate camera work to have the displays look good, the visual effects and editing making transitions professional, tiny details like the flurecents flickering, as well as the chroma key work, the design work itself, sound design that calls to the designs' application, and the background music that fits beautifully. You've got yourself a fan after a single video. I can't wait to see what you've got cooking.
I haven't seen such an creative and informative video about old designs of the 70's with weird abstract language, feelings and music in years, and I really love this kind of stuff. I will say that these type of channels are so rare on UA-cam these days and I'm glad that I found this channel, excellent work of design Posy!
My favourite part was just thinking of where I saw the different designs and realizing how common this is in my life, and yet I never thought about this. Maybe once when I was a kid. Great video, the quality and pacing is outstanding.
Glad you mentioned the 5x7 text displays, cause there's an interesting thing you can do, using 2 rows of such displays, to create a "big-font", by storing 8 custom characters that kinda work like potential segments for numbers and letters. With those 8 segments, most numbers and letters fit into a 3x2 space, but they don't really work like a traditional segment display, because those 8 custom characters can end up in any of the 3x2 spots.
Segmented displays go further back then Nixie tube, LCD, and LED technology, the original segmented displays were mechanical with moving shutters that would cover/uncover the segments. They're still used today for really big segmented displays (like sports stadiums and train station clocks) great video about the fontfaces of segmented displays though!
I remember those very well!! 😂 showing my age here but I’m always into the future of all these fascinating parts of technological development more than any other things.. s, you’ll still find me there as well! Thank you for that very important memory! It’s really very much a part of this all, truly!
I've seen 7-segment displays used to display fuel prices. Purely manual operation, using segments of the sign background colour to cover up any segments that aren't active. It was very difficult to read if you were close to the sign.
Oh! I remember a mechanical 7-segment design being used for the shot clock they put next to a swimming pool for speed practice, because it was hard to waterproof a display that large
Your videos are always a pleasure. Beautiful music and visuals throughout this whole thing. I love the XO display style, even if some letters aren't very legible. I can see why you saved it for last.
I’m amazed at the quality of the editing, the content and the narration. I’m not sure how easy or hard it was to make the mockups on watches, calculators, etc. But if you told me they were 100% real objects i’d believe you. I hope the fact that I got this on my recommendations means your channel is about to blow up!
No jokes: the visuals, the voice, the music... This was such an amazing curiosity trip. Made me member myself looking donalds duck and the mathematics as a child. Marterful work
Have to agree with most people here that this is a very interesting video to randomly be recommended! You're very underrated for this kind of quality and I hope you make more videos like this.
This is one of those topics that is way more interesting than it seems on the surface. Thank you! Edit: 11:15 we had these on our trains in the US too! I loved these displays because they were very aesthetic.
What I like about the 7 Segment double square is that it's so wide spread. You can easily get driver IC's specifically made for them and find ready to use code for microcontrollers, making it very easy to set up. they can also display Hexadezimal numbers aswell as a minus
12:38 The 3x5 matrix is very similar to what you get when trying to put 80 text columns on an old computer with 320 horizontal pixels. One pixel spacing leaves you with 3 pixels per character. You got 7 pixels vertically, though, because they usually had 200 vertical pixels displaying 25 lines. I think they would use 6 pixels for upper-case and the 7th for lower-case descenders (p, q, etc.). Systems with 320x200 displays usually had 40 column of text, though, because they used a blurry RF signal to a TV that rendered 80 columns illegible.
Even my old Apple //e computer could do 7x8 pixels in 40 or 80 column mode, once I installed the Extended 80-column memory card. But the 3x5 was about what my TI-89 calculator uses in its dialog windows, although some characters just can not fit in such a narrow width. On the graphics screen, it used 6x7. Add an extra pixel for row separation. You might as well give up on weird segmented displays and go with the pixel matrix, once you are trying to display all 96 or 255 ASCII characters. When I was in Israel, riding the train, I think their destination signage used a pixel matrix to display Hebrew characters. I am trying to remember if it also displayed English? When I ran AppleWorks on my Apple //e, which required 80-column text, I at first used a "component monitor receiver" TV that actually had the yellow video input jack. It was readable, but my Dad must have thought it to be blurry, because he helped me to get one of those blah green-screen monitors, so I had both connected with a simple signal splitter adapter. Still need the color TV for video games, as monochrome is so blah. Of course the Apple //e didn't really do color all that well, because memory and video RAM was so small and expensive back in "the good ol' days" of computers. Seems to me that trying to do more than 7 segments is silly. Just do the normal pixel matrix then. Modern computers have almost largely given up on the old text column displays, and most everything is now GUI using the photo-realistic graphics display. Which also is a pixel matrix. What a concept. I can see actual underlined text without it turning green. The old text column displays simply could not do something so simple as _italics_ nor *boldface* and especially not -strike-through.- Couldn't do proportional text either. Graphics does it all, and today's computers are easily fast enough to draw so many pixels required and even to anti-alias them.
@@haha-windows11laptopgo-brrrrrr What? Was my explanation too technical? I used ResEdit on my old Macintosh to create an Apple // font. I thought Courier was ugly, but there were no other non-proportional fonts, and those are great for programming, so that nested program loops can be indented to look great, using spaces to indent. Proportional fonts are great, but not for that, because the columns do not line up anymore. ResEdit allowed me to create a bit-mapped font, and I didn't bother to define it other than for just one size, since I wasn't using any other font size. Sadly, though, I didn't take my project nearly as far as I wanted to. ResEdit is short for Resource Editor. I also used ResEdit to create another screen-saver. I made a copy of a screen-saver that deals playing cards onto the screen, and changed the name, replaced all the resources, and without doing one line of code, I had a new another screen-saver that dealt my rectangular pieces of computer artwork onto the screen. Too bad modern computers can't run it though.
I've also invented 6-segment digits in my childhood, though my "9" was different: the bottom half is inverted if compared to yours. Thus, it can be separated from the rotated "6".
I love it when I stumble upon a channel I can vibe with and it has a nice production value as this one. I've never messed with 7 segments display design because they're already so varied that it feels like everything has already been invented or there's an alternative with a few more segments that covers whatever one might need, but I do remember once going down a rabbit hole trying to figure out how to make a pixel font as small and minimalistic as possible that still retained some semblance of style and I think I ended up concluding that 3 x 5 was the sweet spot as well, even if designing with 4 x 4 was more fun due to the challenge of not having two full squares in the traditional sense.
One of the coolest videos I've seen. The difference in segments used to be something that got me fascinated as a kid and it's incredibly satisfying to see someone do an intriguing retrospective on this aesthetic.
05:01 in the double square 2 and 5 upside down are the same, so you can see if them are upside down if the device using them is upside down, the problems are 25 and 52 since they both upside down are in reverse plus 69 and 96 are palindromes so upside down theyre still the same, and in normal fonts 9 is not always a normal 9. Sometimes its like a lowercase q, opposite happens with 6, 6 is almost never a lowercase b.
This is incredibly well produced! The sound design was I credible, I literally felt like I was floating watching this. Keep up the great work! I’ll be following this channel for sure
This whole video is wild- one of the few that has truly been able to keep my attention lately. Really well done- amazing you didn't use any stock footage.
I really really like the 35 segment No Compromise design. If I created it I would be quite pleased with myself. Very aesthetically pleasing, and ofc functional
The fact that this video used no stock footage hasn't been appreciated enough - that's absolutely incredible
I think it’s awsome that he created every scene himself, makes the video completely unique, and more interesting, becuase everything is created to serve the contextual argument!
so hes not programming each item in the video is he? probably tracking the object and masking it on using something like blender.
edit: just say the part where he made his own watch mockup. very cool that he can do both engineering, coding, 3d tracking, video editing and showing the design process
Read my name😇
if you havent already, subscribe!
i think the background music in the video is also made by him which is cool and makes this video truly original
This was a fascinating look into segmented displays but I have to be honest, I could listen to you narrate just about anything along with that beautiful music.
Dr. Fox effect lol
I couldn’t nail it down at first but it might be the Dutch accent. He has such a nice sounding voice
Good to know...
Most people sound bad with a Dutch accent when they speak English. But this guy nails it.
@@PosyMusic incoming smut reading livestream
I think the fundamental problem with trying to make a better display than the "double-square" is that, while the square does make compromises, we're so used to that look now that they don't even feel like compromises anymore.
Oh, I assure you, those digits *really* don't look right, and it is painfully obvious that they are compromises. And it's not just in how they look. Many digits in seven segment form differ from each other in only one segment, so it can be really hard to work out which number a display is showing, and there is a real risk that you might accidentally misread a digit. That problem is not so great with the rounded forms at the top at 1:31, or with 5x7-dot elements.
Two squares
Perfectly balanced
@@rosiefay7283 there are compromises and there are better ways to do it, but i think you missed the point that a lot of us are so used to the box 7 segment that visually it just doesn't look off anymore
like the compromises are no longer aesthetic in nature because we've gotten so used to how they look, the accessibility compromises still exist (and are why i generally don't use it) but not the aesthetic compromises
Like for me I'm so used to the 7 segment design that it looks entirely normal to me, the difference between normal and 7 segment numbers for me has become like uppercase vs lowercase or handwriting vs print, different looking but functionally equivalent forms
I wouldn't recommend using the box 7 segment form because of its accessibility issues, but if you did even in handwriting i wouldn't question it
I mean only 2 and 4 looks different than the usual way we write them...
@@rosiefay7283 An advantage of a 7-segment "X" form is that while zero and four look weird, using a vertical-sided seven will result in every digit having at least two segments that are different from any other, and for forms which are bold or appear bold because of poor visual acuity (e.g. looking at an LED clock without glasses) the digit shapes are far more distinctive than is usually the case on double-box displays.
My 2-year old toddler absolutely loves numbers and has requested this video dozens of times. I think my son might literally have watched this video more times than anyone in else in the world.
I'm 7.5 and like number
@@jjscott5535 GET OFF UA-cam AND GET ON WHEN YOU'RE 10
@@jjscott5535…Did you just leak your age?
@@jjscott5535 drake gonna come after you bro
@@jjscott5535Hide away, hide away, hide away from me 🗣️🔥🔥🔥💯💯‼️‼️‼️🥶🥶🥶
I quite like this video. It inspired my 8 year old to try to come up with something better than the universal 7-segment display, and even though he won't be able to, it's a great thing for an 8 year old to think about.
Why is it so on brand that you are in the comment section of this video LOL - Nerd UA-cam is a small world I suppose
love u NJB
@@newscotia I don't.
Love your channel.
@@Ben-ed4wx yeah, bc you’re cringe
is it just me or does "4" always suffer the most in alternative designs? if doesn't feel complete most of the time
It's probably the off-center horizontal line that has part of it going through the vertical one, or the diagonal line connecting those two.
Alternatively, you can write 4 as LI ('+) which works better for 7 segment displays. (Adding a diagonal line on the top square would work too, but then you'd need more segments).
This number doesn't work with circular squares either because of the horizontal line needing to be compromised. I like the 6-segment X display but the reverse y for a 4 just feels completely off. 7 on the other hand works because the diagonal line goes through the entire number from top right to bottom left.
4 is a weird number to write in displays nevertheless.
how about we just remove the 4 from the number alphabet. seems like an easy solution
@Thomas Sylvester That's just how I write my fours lol.
i don't know if that's just where i live but a lot of people write 4 exactly how it looks like on the original 7 segment design, so to me it didn't seem compromised at all, at least in the original design
With messy handwriting, the open-top 4 is a lot easier to tell apart from a 9. In my book it is a superior version for handwriting.
Honestly, the seven segment double square display is a perfect balance between less segments and more readability
If it ain't broken don't fix it
Exactly. While I loved all the creativity here, they ALL suffered in either efficiency, aesthetics, or readability. The "classic crystal" shape is the best because it's the most readable, most consistent, AND most symmetrical. It's the best balance of aesthetics and readability.
@@JamesR624 you’re just used to it
Pardon my ignorance, but what would be the benefit to having less segments?
@@coleco Less power consumption (not in any meaningful amount), less processing power (also not by any meaningful amount)
We humans just like smol
I’ve once made a hexagon segmented display. It was for a game that was based on hexagons, and it worked pretty well. All numbers, letters, even capitals were doable, and I’m quite proud of it as well. The design was 12 segments, with each of the six sides being a segment, and lines from each corner of the outside to the center were segments.
ooh i would like to see that
Do you have a picture or example? That sounds cool
Cool, wanted to see the game too
Hexagons are the Bestagons
70th liker
The 7 segment double square has a hidden benefit. You can encode your numbers as a byte each, without any wastage (6 segment) or need for multiple bytes (with wastage in a lot of cases), so it fits nicely with digital logic.
Why would a seven segment not have spare data in a byte?
What happens to the last bit?
@@valentinfinozzi9358 y'know how 7-segment displays will often have a period/dot/colon? that's what the 8th bit is is used for
I recently bought a alarm clock off Amazon and it has a 7 panel font to the numbers. It is my favorite font I've seen and didn't realize it at order. The middle panel is a capsule shape, top and bottom panels are curved shapes with 45° corner cuts (like a slice of a donut), and the 4 vertical panels have half round inner corners to accommodate the capsule shaped center but flat on the edge. It is so nice looking compared to what I've had on everything else. I never voiced these thoughts but here this video is in my recommended 🤣 thanks this video was awesome thanks!
@@mcsquared5005 You should link the product.
I’m gonna need that in English please
This is a term I never knew existed on a topic people hardly ever think of. Yet it is so engaging and it’s rather thoughtful to not use stock footage. Goes that extra mile and adds experience value. It’s calming really.
Ok, the lack of stock footage alone makes you stand above the rest, but when I Shazam'd the music at 7:30 after noticing how incredible the bass line is, and saw that you also did that yourself, I was blown away. Throw in the mock ups, hand designing, photography, editing, etc, and I cannot imagine the labor that goes into these.
Seriously, you are a freak of nature, man. Absolutely inspiring, and truly exceptional.
He is a one man army - director, producer, cinematographer, conposer and musician
@@ali99_82 Yeah, it's unreal. Since my comment, I've actually put in a lot of work to get closer to this level in some upcoming things I'm doing. He raised the bar for me. Still a long way to go, but I've been inspired.
@@NautilusGuitars awesome, would be seeing your journey - I too wish to start producing such cinematic masterpieces but i put that to halt atm - maybe a project for the future
Good luck
And his voice is kinda relaxing too
How incredible is my 6 segment display is 1 is a / 4 is a y 6 has a baseline at the top 7 is just a top o with one missing piece and 0 is a o
11:38 the transition from the beeping to the music was AMAZING!
The transition is actually creepy and funny at the same time if you ask me. 😆
@@zaidmaaita3759 well he made all the music himself its genius if imo
yeah it sure was :)
@@zaidmaaita3759not creepy at all 😅
The sound (SFX, BGM and voice) and the visual in this video is so satisfying. Like, it's just an informative video BUT the production has gone above and beyond to make it look really, really good. I truly hope the algorithm keeps blessing you and your channel blows up.
I can't agree more - and the channel is thankfully growing like crazy (20k subs in 24h)
As someone with 2 degrees in Graphic Design, I applaud you for tricking people into watching a near 15 minute long video about font creation. Nicely done. 😉
Hehe its the voice and all the effort that he put in that really makes it worth the watch! :)
I don't understand. How's he tricking?
you don't have to trick me to watch that. I love design!
Hang on - why 2? Wasn't one punishment enough? (I've got one - and that's plenty)
@@mgabrysSF I was young & naive and actually enjoyed graphic design while I was dumb enough to think that you could make a living doing it back then. So I figured if one degree would set you up for success, 2 would just up your odds. Little did I know, the vast majority of my graphic design knowledge would inevitably be used for making memes... 🤷
The other thing about seven-segment displays is seven segments with a decimal point perfectly represents 8 bits of data, which is exactly one byte. This makes the design extremely efficient not only in the front-end, but also the back-end.
Wow
Hey, the more you learn!
And exactly why a 3x5 matrix with a decimal point is the best alternate design, being two bytes to display anything you wish.
Common shift registers are compatible with 7 segment displays with a dot. You would need a dot matrix display or multiplexers for the more complex fonts.
The enthusiastic but very measured speech, extreme passion for weird little gadgets, and noticeable Dutch accent really made me feel like I was back in my bilingual Dutch/English high school listening to my exceptionally nerdy gen-x economics, physics, or computer science teachers. This is a really specific kind of memory but you hit the exact same spot in my brain
There is a reason why 7 segment + a dot are the most common. It is because all the data can be stored in 8 bits meaning that a single byte can fully run a display, meaning that a single 8 bit shift register can drive a display. The same can be said for 16, 32 and 64 bit ones as well (64 being a 8x8 LED matrix). So definitely prefer some of those, even the 15 segment plus a dot would be a very good choice.
This video is a perfect example on how designers needlesly overcomplicate things because they lack the engineering understanding of how those things work.
@@DanSlotea i feel the point is being missed here. It's exploring a possibility space of what kinds of displays can be made with a variety of segments and if there's a way to make it look better and more readable with a modern lense.
This isn't "overcomplication" it's trying a bunch of things out and seeing what comes out with an eye to what has been tried.
@@DanSlotea and not just how unnecessary it is but how it creates annoyance and confusion. It’s a kinda a fun vid but the entire time I’m just thinking ‘it was fine. It was like that for a reason. It still looks fine. Leave it alone’ - “I couldn’t come up with anything better than the double square” yeh, we know ..
Thank you, finally someone said it
You seem like you know what you're talking about
This might just be the best produced video I have ever seen on UA-cam. It felt like one of those nature documentaries… but for technology. The imagery, the story, the music…. An absolute work of art! Bravo!
The music was made by himself
It’s incredible! He also releases his music on popular streaming platforms!
The sound design on this is just insane, amazing work
i hope to do foley like this one day
boop beep beep beep
And the half-cut fart at the end
I love the sound 7 segment displays don't usually make, so much that I made one make sound: ua-cam.com/video/c9DK-8ekHgk/v-deo.html
It feels like i'm hearing the Stanley Parable narrator talk about displays
4 just can’t seem to catch a break
11:38 oml i love the transition from beeping to the actual song in the album, i love this man's care for detail
THIS is what UA-cam is for. Beatuiful, well-put-together videos about underrated topics. Wonderful job Posy, and I can't wait to see more of your fantastic videos. As a 14-year-old, you're one of my new favorite creators. Great job from the US!
agreed.
-i cannot escape from the scratchers-
I think he is older than 14 years old...
@@kenthchen Scratch does not have an age limit, Scratchers can be of any age.
@@cst1229 Agreed.
This absolutely blew my mind. It's so nice to find in internet someone that connects so much with digital art like you do. I have a watch shop for mostly digital watches for around 4 years now, and now as a team we're desining our first digital watch, and believe me that on monday everyone is gonna watch this video. This is incredibly helpful and inspiring for me 🥲. When we're done i'm gonna ask your details to send you one for free. Also I try to be a youtuber myself, and really congratulations on your videos made with such elegance and good taste. Greetings from Santiago, Chile.
Yay, im not the only person that loves segmented display so much
A digital watch shop sounds amazing
I wish we had one like yours in California!
not nice < niais < nescius := not-skilled but you are; in -> on; have -> have had -> hav had; desining -> designing; monday -> Monday; youtubers -> UA-camrs
What type of display will the watch receive? Also, how does a small team design a watch like that🤔
@@CloroxBleach0 shall
I love this channel because it frequently reminds me to see the beauty and ingenuity in things that I take so much for granted that I hardly even see them.
Thanks, Posy. I still use your mouse cursors on both my computers.
The train I was using as a student had a super fascinating display, which I analysed for hours. It was able to display digits as well as text, and consisted of equally designed segmented columns, which could be combined into variable width characters. For example, for a "1", "I" or "i" you needed one column, for a "M", "m", "W", etc. you needed five columns. Most of the other characters used three. I found the design choice behind this super interesting, and it made a quite versatile and readable display. (I cannot find any images of this online anywhere, sorry)
was it something like this:
|,, | |"|"| | |'-,| |"| |,, (reads: LIMINAL)
@@rextheroyalist6389 Oo that's nice
“oder”
@@rextheroyalist6389 I'm not sure. In your example it looks like the columns are alternating between a soling column | and some smaller segments.
The display I was describing was more like a matrix display, but some matrix squares were further segmented in "quarter circle + remainder" or "intersection of two quarter circles + remainder", in order to provide round edges for "m", "n", "0", etc.
And every column was segmented the same, and then a variable number of columns was combined for every character
@@Strikingeight you beat me *oder* is or I’m assuming user is German and if so I find it very comical to actually see this come out in text 😭
Dude, wow. This video just got randomly recommended to me by the algorithm overlord, and it’s SO GOOD. I also watched the Mouse Cursor one just now. Truly next level stuff. The fact that you’re not using stock is really under appreciated. And, as a professional designer myself, it’s seriously amazing to see the craft that went into both these numbers, and the (pixel-perfect!!1!) cursors you’ve created.
Instant subscribe, keep it up! 👏
Just got it too and honestly I'm not complaining. This is right up my alley of interest.
Also, this way of doing videos kinda reminds me of a mix between Lemmino and Ahoy
I love these kind of videos where people take something seemingly insignificant and let themselves get obsessed with it, exploring it to it's limits. it makes for a very interesting watch, the creator's passion really rubs off onto the viewer
Reinventing the segmented display is possibly the most literal form of _digital_ art possible.
right cause is not just making something look nice, it's also about working with limitations
@@sakesaurus well that and its literal digits you working with.
Either that, or finger painting ....
3:03 just a _tiny_ note that shearing a typeface makes an oblique. An italic has a different feel, and is almost always manually designed to look more calligraphic than sheared.
I wonder whether the shear was invented as a means of using the decimal point of an upside-down display digit module as the top half of a colon (a very common trick in LED clocks).
@@flatfingertuning727 No idea, but you can bet an upside down display module was used plenty of times to conveniently display degrees Celsius after the numerical value by using the dot and a "C"...
Yep. But it's rare to find a non-oblique display in some places.
I did not expect to be so invested and awed by this, but wow, there's a lot to learn and love about segmented displays.
I must be the only one that did not enjoy this video.
@@jovetj i just think it's neat how all of those displays go about their functions slightly differently. Plus the video was well structured and educational. Even better, since I was working with a segmented display at the time lol
@@Goras147 and also _2:17_ thicker
This brings back memories. I experimented making my own segment displays in LittleBigPlanet 2, mostly for aesthetics but also for ease of setup. I made my displays quite symmetrical and aligned to the level editor's grid. I quite liked my 8-segment display, which had an extra vertical line in the middle to make the 1 digit centered, though I also made quite a few designs that strayed a bit from real-world limitations.
It also has to be acknowledged that every state of a seven segment double square, if including a decimal place, can be stored using one byte of binary.
One byte of binary has 8 digits (bits), and so each one can correspond to a segment with 1 being lit, and 0 being unlit.
Very cool.
That's true. I came here to comment about your profile picture though lol, it's amazing
@@leoshork lol thanks
The next most common segmented display after the 7-segment double square I'd say is the 16-segment double square.
Yoo I'm really glad to see this video getting 200k views a day, this is like his first viral video. I've been binge watching your videos and I'm honestly surprised that you haven't gotten that many views for each video. I hope other people start binge watching as well and appreciate the effort you put into your past videos too.
@@CrafterGab_ Cringe
woah, I didn't expect you here
this vid showed up on my feed today, i hit follow a couple minutes in without even looking at his page. one of the best finds ive made in a while, binge starts now.
wahoo groovy how did you get verified i didn't see you in 5 years
GROOVY!
What an amazing video. Keep it up.
Hello Barji
Hi
b- barji?
Bargy
what are you doing here???
I keep getting this video recommended over and over again like twice everyday for 2 weeks and i can't complain at all
its criminal this channel doesn't have more views. I'm not sure there's any one else putting this level of effort and creativity into their videos, thank you for continuing to make them. As a ui designer, you've helped me see displays in an entirely different way
Well I’d say that this video has reached a decent amount of views now
@@alessandrodona4296 well deserved!
This vids blowing up in the algorithm so let's see
Did you like it? Did you share with friends, frenemies, reddit, twitter etc? If no then stop bitching and do your part, if you think it deserves more views.
Gah i hate these types of comments so much
@@silverblank1139 you're the idiot here. It's these and any comments that drive up viewer interaction numbers that promote a video in the UA-cam algorithm. Sharing it is great but nothing will blow up a video quicker than traits that make it favorable for the algorithm to promote. (comments being one)
Graphic designer here who had to make fonts, I feel this video real hard. Thinking about font anatomy and readability is really interesting, almost like a puzzle for efficiency and aesthetic. Thanks for making this.
Electrical engineering adjacent dude here, the complexities of designing, wiring, and controlling multiple 18 segment characters scares me. The 6 and 5 segment displays were pretty neat; one could have so many more characters and lines on a display, with fewer segments.
"No stock footage was used in the making of this video"
That right there is the difference between a documentary content creator and a hack that reads a script over a bunch of recycled crap some editor was paid next to nothing to slap together in a week.
Subscribed.
Well done Posy
Geez. Not everyone can go and film what they want to talk about.
@@DanJuega real
You are gate keeping content. Not everyone can just make whatever they want to talk about. Do you prefer people not talk about anything at all unless they make the original footage?
What if my documentary is about something that has already happened (either something historical or a recent event or incident)? Get in my time machine?
What if my documentary entails a large variety of small products, devices, vehicles, etc.? Buy them all off Ebay and film every second of stock footage myself if I could have just bought the footage for like 5-10 bucks?
What if my documentary is about something in another country? Should I ignore my Covid restrictons, scarce free time or lack of money and travel there? What if it is about multiple countries? What if it is about a uninhabitable environment, dangerous region, warzone, environmentally restricted area, corporate turf or government facility?
What if I simply don't have the money or space to buy any of the devices this guy has?
What if my video is about physics, biology, chemistry or anything else that is either dangerous, expensive or impossible to observe without an electron microscope? What if its about astronomy, can I rent the hubble telescope?
What if its about a high-profile individual? Arrange a meeting? "Hey Xi Jinping, big fan, my name is MiFiWi and I just wanted to ask wether you plan on starting a trade war with the US or not"
Or should I just pay 20 bucks to not have to worry about anything like that and focus on my script, if its understandable, well-written, informative, factually correct and provides a good overview and conclusion about its topic.
Quick Edit: Don't get me wrong, I like this video and the fact that it doesn't have stock footage. But a lack of original footage shouldn't discredit the point or quality of a video, if everythign else is correct and if it wouldn't have been trivial to get original footage in the first place (for example, programming or minor tech videos and especially tutorials should still have original footage, because its required to follow the narration in that case)
@@mifiwi3438 EXACTLY
جميل جداً، المقطع يعطي إلهاماً لحب تصميمات الأرقام والأحرف ويظهر كم من الممكن لها أن تكون متنوعة وإبداعية، واضح أنه لشخص يمتلك شغف حقيقي نحو عمله، شكراً لكم ❤
My favourite is "Freeform" at 9:59. It looks organic. And I like the single-story zero, it emphasises that it's a special number.
it would look real cool on a vfd
@@a.kjfhkziujsfdgbskjxfyhgfl2332 a volunteer fire department?
@@tech6hutch Vacuum Fluorescent Display
An example can be seen at 14 seconds into the video.
freeform looks very nice! My favorite one however is quite different, the Seamless at 4:38, it looks very modern, and it's most compromised number, the number 2 still looks fairly good and is decently recognizable.
if somehow screen can be made as an ellipse it'd be even better.
When I was a kid I went to the supermarket and first saw a display like this showing also letters instead of only numbers.
So I went home, got paper and pencil, and tried to imagine what all the letters of the alphabet would be like.
It was practically a young kid trying to do reverse engineering. But was fun.
It was very interesting to play with that, because it gives you a better idea of the importance of each segment. And you can play with the segment shapes for a better reuse.
I own a 6 segment display
"Let's call this design TheDoubleSquare"
I feel honored to be a design in this video
What about triple Square
I just stumbled across your channel and I want to say this: everything about your videos is amazing! The footage, the music, the humor, the script, the way you talk. High quality content. I never thought watching a bunch of videos about LCD displays or your first car could be that much fun. Please don't stop doing what you do!
the charm of his videos and his enthusiasm on the smallest details in life, ive forgotten the video's name entirely, and i managed to find it again :)
Posy I’ve been subscribed to you for years and I’m still astonished your channel hasn’t taken off. You make awesome videos.
Algorithm has chosen him now
It's time ! He jumped like 5 thousand subscribers since yesterday. Wowzers.
his time has finally come
sweet, i hope he grows to a huge size
@@wodrainer it’s now around 20k extra subscribers at this point
Meanwhile, there are endless Top 10 and “science” channels out there that might as well have an opening message saying “Nothing but stock footage was used in the making of this video. Voice over was done using Text-to-Speech. All music is Royalty-free. Hell, we even ripped the general idea from other lazy channels. No talent was harmed in the making of this video, because no talent was involved. Please enjoy the ads.”
Thank you for this brilliant video!
I can't say I've ever given much thought to segmented displays beyond interacting with the odd microwave or digital thermometer, but this was certainly was intriguing.
Very cool designs, excellent presentation - thanks for sharing.
yeah clicked on this video not sure what to expect, then found my self wondering why i had never question any of this myself
Why are these videos so good! Like holy moly, the cinematography, sound, music, voice over, subject matter... everything is just so polished and beautifully presented! I need more Posy in my life.
Everything about this video is a joy to watch. The sound effects, the music and the slick visuals are all incredible.
i used to think about segmented displays and how to maximise legibility and aesthetics while minimising cost and complexity. to say that i was gleeful when i got recommended this video would be an extreme understatement and i did not realise that the custom cursor video i loved so much was from the same creator. definitely one of the greatest and most underrated youtube channels i have ever come across. you earned a subscriber!
Segmented displays are largely obsolete. Normal computer displays with millions of colors and pixels, are far more versatile. However, then we have to draw segmented displays on normal computer graphic screens, for that retro pinball game look. Or for a 3-D model in your video game, of a digital clock. So then they are not quite obsolete after all.
Brilliant work, hope your channel blows up soon
🐝
I agree (also i found you)
thanks beanie woman
i scroll down and end up finding Xploshi of all channels in the comment section
UA-cam: were wishing people to blow up is considered a good and nice thing to say.
I was going into this video expecting a run of the mill informative video about a niche subject, but this wasn't just very interesting for someone who used to dislike typeface and fonts in design school, but the video it self was so soothing to watch and is a work of art in its own right. Very well done!
I would have never been interested in something so random, but this video was made so well that I ended up watching the entire thing. This is great work.
4:25 please nind/mind the gap
?
@@jannezekielnitura5827 "mind"
10:59 - 11:12
this segment was definition of 'intuitive' for me. the scene appeared, i saw the diagram on the side, and when the lights began with the sound i immediately understood that one group of four lights as they indicated 10 different numbers. incredible work, honestly.
😑
@@noddlecak3279 🤡
youtube has decied to bless me with this channel. your quality of editing, sound design, and everything else in production just screams a 100k channel aimed at really fancy designs of the FUTURE and yet here you are, just making what you want to make to a small crowd, with all of your passion and drive doing the talking. i cannot wait to see what else you create next, as this channel is one that ill stay subbed to
truly one of the greatest videos on UA-cam I've ever seen. i come back to this whenever I'm having a tough time and need to calm down. love ❤️
The 14-segment display is a fairly common alternative that modifies the 7-segment and seems to address a lot of its shortcomings. It is a lot of fun to see what's come up over the years. Though, at this point, going beyond the 7-segment will probably be filled with a matrix display as there is major considerations like cost and driver circuit complexity hold no advantage. It's a fun thought exercise though. It's similar to nixie tubes.
I still listen to the segments song almost every day I'm alive. I love it. I don't think I possess the ability to put into words how much I enjoy listening to it. You're my hero.
A CLOSE second is teh VFD song.
This man, after seven years has finally been blessed by the algorithm, and I can't think of anyone else who deserves it more
the 14 segment double square is by far my favorite one. All the numbers and letters are clearly readable, and it just looks.. really nice! The only drawback, as mentioned in the video, is it can't be made any bolder. But used in the right contexts I think it would really be great
The Waldorf School system uses this font as a rough blueprint for their logos
4:37 This font actually looks really cool and (mostly) without any compromise at all! Even then, all that you would need to do for the 2 would be to cut in two more squares besides the middle segment. Then it would be perfect!
I wonder if the simplified way that many people physically write their 4s, myself included, originates from the double-square segmented display design.
Secondly, I noticed that the “4” seemed to suffer the most from each of the different redesigns, perhaps because it uses many straight lines on displays that are created to accommodate for rounder numbers.
Yeah! I don’t cap the 4s when I write anymore, it’s fascinating that it happened in my brain subconsciously
how about we just remove the 4 from the number alphabet. seems like an easy solution
@@TheManinBlack9054 You could probably make anything the new 4 and people would get used to it in a few decades or so.
4 is just too perfect for double squares I guess.
I (52, we had handwriting classes in school) have had innumerable complaints about my hand-written 4’s “looking like 9’s” despite making an effort to always make the 4 pointy and with its little crossbar sticking out, and my 9’s very curvy and contained (though without the bottom curve - I have never seen anyone actually write a 9 with anything but a straight/diagonal right side line). So I gave up and leave 4 very straight and open. Whether this says something about handwriting in general, my handwriting specifically, or people being influenced by segmented displays, I can’t say.
When I was a kid, I would stare at the scoreboard numbers whenever I watched my brother play basketball. I was fascinated by segmented design before I even knew what it was.
This video really hit home for me.
I hereby declare Posy to be the most highly rated, under subscribed science/tech/art UA-cam channel. When I grow up I want to make content like you.
I just subscribed!! Was shared with me by my son, who knows we’re both into all these subjects! I’m very grateful it was shared with me…otherwise I’d definitely be missing out! What a super great video! Looking very forward to all of this channel’s material!
By far my favorite segmented display designs are the 6-segment designs, the sharp based 5-segment, the 13-segment and 15-segment XO, and the 16 segment double square.
🥁🥁🥁🥁
*guitar*
"she's in love with the concept"
While I love how creative people can get with these displays I personally like the 7 segment double square and 9 segment double square best
Just stumbled upon this channel and I have to say the production quality is far above the size of this channel. Well done. I thought your 13 segment design was actually quite nice to read, but the 5x3 matrix offers much greater flexibility as it can also make punctuation work for the most part. Going up to a 7x5 matrix seems like the ideal balance between complexity and readability to me, with our modern methods of making them, as the added resolution makes the question mark much easier to read.
The 8 segment alternative X is my personal favorite. It has such a sharp aesthetic. I would tweak the font to use different segments for some letters but it looks really cool.
2:58 That's the most common design? I've never seen it. Particularly the 4 with the shortened left stem looks very strange to me, I don't recall ever seeing that. In my experience the most common design, by far, is the simple, non-italicized one at 1:15.
I think he meant ‘if they actually wanted to pay the effort to design it’. They usually don’t do it, because nobody wants to pay the effort into seven segments
uneven divisions are not always done. also, (from my small sample size) appliances usually have italicized numbers (e.g. microwave)
I think they meant the double square was the most common, although it may have certain variations.
I also though that, then I looked at my Casio watch I have for years and it turned out to be this exact design. Wow, I actually never payed attention to it enough to see this altered design is used.
I think it's common actually, you just don't realize bc no one pays close attention
this is genuinely one of my favorite videos oat
This brought some childhood memories when I got 7 segments electronic display then I was trying to figure out the pins combination to light up numbers 😃
The editing is really superb here, I love how you make the displays look so real
When I was a kid, I was fascinated by any digital segment displays that I saw. If this was released at the time I was a kid, I probably would have watched this video over and over again. By the way, keep up the good work!
My two month old son wrote his dissertation on this video. Thanks for the upload!
The "4" design looks compromised in nearly every single iteration of this. Maybe 4 is just a problematic number to draw. Would be interesting to see a design that specifically focuses on 4's shortcomings and catering specifically to that.
I think it depends on your idea of the "correct" way to write numbers mostly. My 4's and 9's especially look almost the same as they do in a traditional 7 segment display or "double box" design.
@@danteteeter6567
EDIT: Please read the rest of the discussion before replying. I'm getting notifications spammed with people correcting me on a statement I made that was, in fact, incorrect. It's discussed further down.
I guess you're technically right, but there is a definitive, consistent way to write 4 that's taught to nearly every child in school, and it's pretty similar to the printed "4" in Arial font.
By compromised, I really mean it's hard to read. I think you're be hard-pressed to explain how an X missing one of the legs looks like a 4 in a readable fashion to the majority of humans, or at least a handful of specifically picked humans.
@@elliejohnson2786 There isn't a consistent, definitive way to teach anything. Look up how the french write the cursive "e". It's actually quite cute.
@@elliejohnson2786 In my country people usually write 4's as in the segmented display, it's actually kinda rare to see someone writing a 4 like this: 4
I write my fours as a compromise between the Arial 4 and a seven segment one: the diagonal line is there, but the right vertical line doesn't go all the way up to meet it in the top corner.
What a fantastic excursion, I remember also being stuck in school just doodling different ways to make segmented designs. In particular I know it sounds almost trivial to do a 10-segment display, giving each digit its own segment… but that's just a nixie tube by a different name.
Seven-segment displays will probably forever be stuck in my head as the quintessential '80s/'90s "dawn of the internet age" kind of æsthetic, and I like that kinda romanticized notion.
I also used to do tons of doodles like these in school. Thought I was the only one, haha!
Totally agree!!
I just stumbled upon this in my recomendations. I love the amount of technical, visual and audio work you've done in this video. Honestly, I love the attention to detail you put into every single scene, from appropriate camera work to have the displays look good, the visual effects and editing making transitions professional, tiny details like the flurecents flickering, as well as the chroma key work, the design work itself, sound design that calls to the designs' application, and the background music that fits beautifully. You've got yourself a fan after a single video. I can't wait to see what you've got cooking.
why is this kinda soothing?, the voice, the sounds, the quick transitions.
I haven't seen such an creative and informative video about old designs of the 70's with weird abstract language, feelings and music in years, and I really love this kind of stuff. I will say that these type of channels are so rare on UA-cam these days and I'm glad that I found this channel, excellent work of design Posy!
Really like the X and XO designs but as a programmer the 3x5 matrix was the winner in my mind. for sheer usefulness and appearance of all characters.
Almost
Reason: 0 and O, 5 and S are identical
You can design those differences away. For example, chop off the top-left pixel of the O to make the zero.
My favourite part was just thinking of where I saw the different designs and realizing how common this is in my life, and yet I never thought about this. Maybe once when I was a kid.
Great video, the quality and pacing is outstanding.
Glad you mentioned the 5x7 text displays, cause there's an interesting thing you can do, using 2 rows of such displays, to create a "big-font", by storing 8 custom characters that kinda work like potential segments for numbers and letters. With those 8 segments, most numbers and letters fit into a 3x2 space, but they don't really work like a traditional segment display, because those 8 custom characters can end up in any of the 3x2 spots.
Segmented displays go further back then Nixie tube, LCD, and LED technology, the original segmented displays were mechanical with moving shutters that would cover/uncover the segments. They're still used today for really big segmented displays (like sports stadiums and train station clocks) great video about the fontfaces of segmented displays though!
I remember those very well!! 😂 showing my age here but I’m always into the future of all these fascinating parts of technological development more than any other things.. s, you’ll still find me there as well! Thank you for that very important memory! It’s really very much a part of this all, truly!
I've seen 7-segment displays used to display fuel prices. Purely manual operation, using segments of the sign background colour to cover up any segments that aren't active. It was very difficult to read if you were close to the sign.
Oh! I remember a mechanical 7-segment design being used for the shot clock they put next to a swimming pool for speed practice, because it was hard to waterproof a display that large
Your videos are always a pleasure. Beautiful music and visuals throughout this whole thing.
I love the XO display style, even if some letters aren't very legible. I can see why you saved it for last.
I’m amazed at the quality of the editing, the content and the narration. I’m not sure how easy or hard it was to make the mockups on watches, calculators, etc. But if you told me they were 100% real objects i’d believe you. I hope the fact that I got this on my recommendations means your channel is about to blow up!
And you are spot on! 20k subs in last 24h
@@Kombivar Looks like it! Quality deserves attention :D
Btw if you haven’t yet, I’d recommend to check out the LCD videos!
@@jafogx Sure I did, my jaw dropped to the floor.
No jokes: the visuals, the voice, the music... This was such an amazing curiosity trip. Made me member myself looking donalds duck and the mathematics as a child.
Marterful work
Have to agree with most people here that this is a very interesting video to randomly be recommended! You're very underrated for this kind of quality and I hope you make more videos like this.
This is one of those topics that is way more interesting than it seems on the surface.
Thank you!
Edit: 11:15 we had these on our trains in the US too! I loved these displays because they were very aesthetic.
This was mind blowing, we see these displays everywhere without thinking about it, and it's truly fascinating how much there is to it.
Most of my appliances have imaginary segments. The 1970's Copal flip clock just works.
New subscriber and great vid!
What I like about the 7 Segment double square is that it's so wide spread. You can easily get driver IC's specifically made for them and find ready to use code for microcontrollers, making it very easy to set up. they can also display Hexadezimal numbers aswell as a minus
12:38 The 3x5 matrix is very similar to what you get when trying to put 80 text columns on an old computer with 320 horizontal pixels. One pixel spacing leaves you with 3 pixels per character. You got 7 pixels vertically, though, because they usually had 200 vertical pixels displaying 25 lines. I think they would use 6 pixels for upper-case and the 7th for lower-case descenders (p, q, etc.). Systems with 320x200 displays usually had 40 column of text, though, because they used a blurry RF signal to a TV that rendered 80 columns illegible.
Even my old Apple //e computer could do 7x8 pixels in 40 or 80 column mode, once I installed the Extended 80-column memory card. But the 3x5 was about what my TI-89 calculator uses in its dialog windows, although some characters just can not fit in such a narrow width. On the graphics screen, it used 6x7. Add an extra pixel for row separation. You might as well give up on weird segmented displays and go with the pixel matrix, once you are trying to display all 96 or 255 ASCII characters. When I was in Israel, riding the train, I think their destination signage used a pixel matrix to display Hebrew characters. I am trying to remember if it also displayed English?
When I ran AppleWorks on my Apple //e, which required 80-column text, I at first used a "component monitor receiver" TV that actually had the yellow video input jack. It was readable, but my Dad must have thought it to be blurry, because he helped me to get one of those blah green-screen monitors, so I had both connected with a simple signal splitter adapter. Still need the color TV for video games, as monochrome is so blah. Of course the Apple //e didn't really do color all that well, because memory and video RAM was so small and expensive back in "the good ol' days" of computers.
Seems to me that trying to do more than 7 segments is silly. Just do the normal pixel matrix then. Modern computers have almost largely given up on the old text column displays, and most everything is now GUI using the photo-realistic graphics display. Which also is a pixel matrix. What a concept. I can see actual underlined text without it turning green. The old text column displays simply could not do something so simple as _italics_ nor *boldface* and especially not -strike-through.- Couldn't do proportional text either. Graphics does it all, and today's computers are easily fast enough to draw so many pixels required and even to anti-alias them.
@@yosefmacgruber1920OH GOD UA-cam MERGED WITH WIKIPEDIA
@@haha-windows11laptopgo-brrrrrr
What? Was my explanation too technical?
I used ResEdit on my old Macintosh to create an Apple // font. I thought Courier was ugly, but there were no other non-proportional fonts, and those are great for programming, so that nested program loops can be indented to look great, using spaces to indent. Proportional fonts are great, but not for that, because the columns do not line up anymore. ResEdit allowed me to create a bit-mapped font, and I didn't bother to define it other than for just one size, since I wasn't using any other font size. Sadly, though, I didn't take my project nearly as far as I wanted to.
ResEdit is short for Resource Editor.
I also used ResEdit to create another screen-saver. I made a copy of a screen-saver that deals playing cards onto the screen, and changed the name, replaced all the resources, and without doing one line of code, I had a new another screen-saver that dealt my rectangular pieces of computer artwork onto the screen. Too bad modern computers can't run it though.
These high quality videos on topics that I wouldn't usually care about are exactly what I want in my recommendations.
That was awesome!! The showcasing of the different designs and the flickering between variations was gorgeous.
I've also invented 6-segment digits in my childhood, though my "9" was different: the bottom half is inverted if compared to yours. Thus, it can be separated from the rotated "6".
n i c e
Can you give a pic of it ❓i wanna see it. Paste a pic link
@@3s-sahajselfstudy
0 - Δ
1 - /
2 - Z
3- Σ (mirror horizontally)
4 - У
5 - horizontally mirrored Z
6 - σ
7 - 180 deg. rotated L
8 - hourglass made of triangles
9 - 180 deg. rotatated δ
I love it when I stumble upon a channel I can vibe with and it has a nice production value as this one.
I've never messed with 7 segments display design because they're already so varied that it feels like everything has already been invented or there's an alternative with a few more segments that covers whatever one might need, but I do remember once going down a rabbit hole trying to figure out how to make a pixel font as small and minimalistic as possible that still retained some semblance of style and I think I ended up concluding that 3 x 5 was the sweet spot as well, even if designing with 4 x 4 was more fun due to the challenge of not having two full squares in the traditional sense.
One of the coolest videos I've seen. The difference in segments used to be something that got me fascinated as a kid and it's incredibly satisfying to see someone do an intriguing retrospective on this aesthetic.
HEADHUNTERS 🙏🙏
05:01 in the double square 2 and 5 upside down are the same, so you can see if them are upside down if the device using them is upside down, the problems are 25 and 52 since they both upside down are in reverse plus 69 and 96 are palindromes so upside down theyre still the same, and in normal fonts 9 is not always a normal 9. Sometimes its like a lowercase q, opposite happens with 6, 6 is almost never a lowercase b.
This is incredibly well produced! The sound design was I credible, I literally felt like I was floating watching this. Keep up the great work! I’ll be following this channel for sure
This whole video is wild- one of the few that has truly been able to keep my attention lately. Really well done- amazing you didn't use any stock footage.
I really really like the 35 segment No Compromise design. If I created it I would be quite pleased with myself. Very aesthetically pleasing, and ofc functional
11:36 That transition to the music gave me goosebumps. Well done!