I'm interested in the problem of adapting non-Western scripts to the constraints of a monospaced terminal font. This generally means fitting each character to something like a 8x16 or 16x16 grid.

The limited flexibility of a small grid and the requirement of even character width can really pose a challenge. To get a feeling for how to manage different types of scripts, I have been working on a series of specimen fonts in which the Latin alphabet is cast in an exotic style.

I felt that the most elemental design would consist of just strait lines, so I chose runes as the model for the first font. Rather than modifying Latin letters to look runish, most of the characters are authentic runes that have been turned or squeezed a bit to look like Latin letters.

How would you evaluate the result as a text face? I know it's awful, but exactly why is it? When faced with a script of this sort, what can be done to make it more readable?

One thing I already learned is the need to have the horizonal extremes occur mostly at the same height, otherwise the letter-spacing is terrible.