Commodore 64 keycap lettering rebuilt as a font with all 63 PETSCII legends

A developer publishing as szabadkai has released a typeface that recreates the lettering printed on classic Commodore 64 keycaps, reconstructed from photographs of original hardware. The project, named c64-keyboard-font and hosted on GitHub, surfaced on the Hacker News front page, and ships as TTF and OTF desktop fonts, a webfont, and a complete package containing an interactive specimen.

Once installed, the face appears under the name C64 Keyboard. The intent is to borrow the look of the machine's physical keys rather than its on-screen character set.

What the font contains

According to the project's GitHub page, the typeface covers uppercase letters, numbers, punctuation, arrows and the pound sign, along with selected accented letters, Hungarian characters among them. It also provides function-key labels from f1 to f12 and the classic C64 key legends. Lowercase input renders as uppercase, a deliberate choice: the font reproduces the printed key legends, not the C64's screen bitmap font.

PETSCII front legends mapped by key

The most unusual inclusion is the full set of 63 PETSCII graphic front legends, arranged by key in an interactive preview. Opening preview.html from the complete package lets you click a special-key or PETSCII button to insert that symbol into a built-in type tester, then copy the result into another application. Left-side legends correspond to Commodore-plus-key combinations, right-side legends to Shift plus the key in uppercase/graphics mode, and the pi symbol on the up-arrow key also responds to the Commodore modifier. The preview handles the underlying character codes automatically, although copied symbols will only display correctly on machines where the font itself is installed.

Reconstruction, not tracing

The GitHub page is explicit that the shapes are smooth geometric reconstructions rather than exact photo traces. Glyph identities and key assignments were taken from the Ultimate Commodore 64 Reference, while frame thickness, curves and print proportions were inferred from a keyboard photograph supplied with the project; the original photographs are not distributed. The pi symbol is left unframed to match the physical key.

The current release is version 1.107, and anyone running an earlier build is advised to replace it and restart applications that still show the old font. Editable outlines sit in a glyphs directory, with build tooling in a scripts directory, so the reconstruction can be adjusted by others. The project describes itself as an independent, unofficial effort.

Why it matters

The Commodore 64's visual identity is usually recycled through its screen charset, which has been redrawn countless times. The keycap lettering is a rarer target, and it is a different artifact: the typography owners physically touched, with its own proportions and quirks. A faithful, web-ready version gives game developers, retro-themed web designers and documentation writers access to that specific look, and the bundled webfont means it can drop straight into browser projects. The by-key mapping of every PETSCII front legend is also practical reference material for emulator overlays, custom keyboards and homebrew hardware. It is a small, tightly scoped tool, but a well-documented one, and its editable outlines leave room for the community to refine it.