Why I Made VXD Font and a Reusable Sketch Kit

When planning my programming lecture slides, I set a simple rule: keep the text sparse and let pictures carry the parts they can explain. Code and sentences still belong on screen when they are needed. The full narration can live in the speaker notes.

I wanted that approach to carry into the next lesson, too. That led me to request a dedicated handwriting font and a folder of reusable visual assets. VXD Font and the sketch kit began as a way to make consistent design choices across my teaching materials.

VXD Font Regular and Bold. This is a modified version of Gaegu by JIKJI SOFT. Both the original and derivative font software are licensed under SIL OFL 1.1.

The book that gave me a starting point

The direct visual reference was Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work!, which I was reading. I photographed pages with light lettering on a dark background, slightly uneven lines, and simple diagrams that showed how ideas connected. You can find the book on Kleon’s official website.

What caught my attention was how those pages explained things. A line could establish a sequence. A box could hold a concept. A short label could tell me how to read a drawing. The space around those elements was part of the appeal. I wanted to leave that kind of room in my programming lessons.

I asked AI to help apply that direction to my scripts. We used a charcoal background, #41433F, and warm ivory text, #F5F2E8. The aim was to keep the relationship or code currently being discussed on screen, with the longer explanation in the notes.

The different contributions deserve clear credit. The book inspired the sketch aesthetic. My programming scripts supplied the lecture content. The font was not extracted from the photographed lettering, and the lecture icons were not cropped from the book’s illustrations.

An example from the Korean data types lesson. In this API example, an omitted property means keep, null means delete, and a URL means replace. The fuller explanation is in the speaker notes. Lecture direction by VXD, produced with OpenAI Codex.

Handwriting I could use again

I wanted a handwritten appearance that would remain consistent when I changed a sentence or started another lesson. A font would let me edit the text directly and keep using the same letterforms. That was the reason for requesting a dedicated TTF.

VXD Font is a derivative of Gaegu, whose designer is listed as JIKJI SOFT in the original Google Fonts metadata.

The font was processed with FontTools. The work adjusted the width and height of the outlines, introduced small changes in tilt, and added subtle contour variation. Each glyph receives a consistent transformation, so typing it again produces the same shape. Regular and Bold versions were saved as TTF files, with WOFF2 versions for web previews.

VXD Font is the name I chose for use in my own work. The underlying letterforms come from Gaegu; I did not design a complete typeface from scratch. The original attribution and SIL Open Font License 1.1 remain with the files.

The current version supports 2,350 precomposed Hangul syllables, Latin letters, numbers, and basic punctuation. Its character coverage is limited. For longer code listings, a readable monospaced font is a better choice. VXD Font fits the titles and short explanations this kit was made for.

Giving the pictures a place to live

A picture inside a slide is not always easy to find when another script needs it. I asked for the icons and shapes to be collected separately so that I could return to them.

The initial collection contains 16 icons, including a computer, price tag, coupon, and clock, plus 12 annotation shapes such as underlines, arrows, and frames. The icons and decorative shapes were generated with OpenAI’s image generation tool. They were created together in sheets, separated into individual PNGs, and recorded in a file manifest.

The generated icon sheet for the VXD lecture kit. Made with OpenAI’s image generation tool; these images were not extracted from the book. The charcoal background is opaque.

There was a practical limitation along the way. The initial request called for transparency, but the generated images contained a visible checkerboard. The final assets were revised to use an opaque charcoal background that matched the slides. They work best on that background, and I would describe them as assets for this particular kit rather than universal icons.

The connecting lines and arrows used to explain relationships were kept as editable PowerPoint objects. That makes it possible to change a diagram’s structure when the next script calls for a different explanation.

Carrying the approach into another lesson

After the variables deck, I asked for the same style to be applied to the data types script. A lesson about missing values needs a different diagram from a lesson about payment results. The font, colours, and treatment of lines can still provide continuity between them.

The same lettering and line treatment used for a different concept. The Korean heading introduces separating success from failure. Lecture direction by VXD, produced with OpenAI Codex.

I wanted a setup I could return to when beginning another lesson. Keeping the fonts, assets, and source files together gives me fewer visual choices to repeat and more room to think about how to explain the next concept.

I have not measured whether the kit improves learning outcomes. The change I can point to is more practical: I can type the same letterforms again, find the same pictures again, and apply the same design decisions to another script.

Where this work comes from

In “Credit is always due.”, Kleon describes attribution as a way to help people find the original work. I want to leave that route open here as well.

• Visual inspiration: Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered, Workman Publishing, 2014. Official book page
• Original typeface: Gaegu by JIKJI SOFT. Copyright 2018 The Gaegu Project Authors. Original files and licence
• Derivative font: VXD Font, a modified version of Gaegu, retaining SIL OFL 1.1.
• Production: I set the lecture direction and supplied the scripts under VXD. OpenAI Codex assisted with font processing, slide construction, and asset organisation. The icons and decorative shapes were generated with OpenAI’s image generation tool. FontTools was used to process the font files.

The kit brings together a visual influence from a book, the work of an existing type designer, and decisions I made for my own lessons. Those connections belong in the story of why VXD Font and these assets look the way they do.