Making Cursed Web Fonts Is the Kind of Silly Engineering We Need More Of

Most web typography today is desperately boring. We live in an era of sanitized sans-serifs, infinite geometric neutrality, and brands paying six figures for a logo that looks like every other tech startup on the block. The web used to be weird. It used to be hostile to readability in delightfully creative ways. That is why I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw a new Hacker News project called Bastardica, a tool designed specifically for minting cursed web fonts by smashing different typefaces together.

Instead of requiring some bloated desktop application or complex build scripts, this little utility runs entirely client-side using Pyodide and fontTools. You throw in a couple of OpenType files, mangle the scaling, adjust the Y-offsets, and export something genuinely unhinged. The magic happens via contextual ligatures. Browsers turn them on automatically, meaning your Frankenstein creation renders anywhere text is shaped – from Figma to production web apps – without needing a single line of messy CSS hacks.

There is a deep, underlying joy in building tools that serve no corporate master. The creator even tossed in some tactical advice for aspiring typography terrorists: use prime numbers for your character stride counts so your mixed-in glyphs collide less often, creating these bizarre, rhythmic visual hiccups across the page. Sure, you have to watch out for derivative work licensing if you plan on going commercial, but that minor legal hurdle is a small price to pay for absolute chaos.

Software development has grown way too serious. We spend our days obsessing over micro-optimizations, design systems, and frictionless user experiences that all blend into a grey, forgettable soup. We need more builders wasting an afternoon figuring out how to algorithmically hybridize Times New Roman with some jagged display face just because they can. Go break some letters. The internet will be better for it.