# Extreme Font Subsetting

Font subsetting is when you create a smaller version of a font with _some_ of the characters from an source font. **Extreme** font subsetting is like normal font subsetting but up a notch (or is it _down_ a notch?) - where _only a handful_ of characters are supported. 

Think of a logo. Instead of an image, you can use a font file where only the characters that make up the name of the company are present. That's pretty extreme as subsettings go, but it may be handy sometimes.

In this site for example, I've subset the web font *Special Elite* to only contain the characters "H, i, g, h, -, P, e, r, f, o, m, a, n, c, (space), W, b, F, t, s" which are enough to spell the site name "High-Performance Web Fonts" and the logo **HPWF**.

Here's how the characters look in the tool [wakamaifondue.com](https://wakamaifondue.com):

![20 characters](/i/posts/extreme-waka.png)

And the glyphs shown in [fontdrop.info](https://fontdrop.info):

![24 glyphs](/i/posts/extreme-drop.png)

As you can see characters are not the same as glyphs.

## A new font is born

So naturally, when I tried to use the same extremely subset font for any other H1 titles, I have missing characters:

![Ransom-like](/i/posts/ransom-cou.png)

For example my subset has no T, A, I, p, (, ) and so on. Probably a bit more obvious with *Menlo* fallback:

![Ransom-like](/i/posts/ransom-menlo.png)

But I kinda like it. Gives you that murdery ransom letter vibe. 

And so, by accident a new "font" is born: let's call it *Ransom*. A combination of extremely subset *Special Elite* and a fallback.

Good idea? I dunno. But certainly an option<i class="circle"><s></s></i>