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This question is the opposite of what was asked here: Does anyone know of any font families that 6, 9, 8, 0 look the same upside down as right side up?

I'm searching for fonts where the numbers 6 and 9 are very different, i.e. can be easily identified even when upside down.

In most fonts I've checked 6 and upside-down 9 are visually similar, and 9 and upside-down 6 are similar too.

In a Mac, the font Desdemona have some curly parts on the 6 that makes it different from the 9.

enter image description here

Any other suggestions?

I want to use it in a dice game design where I can't use pips for numbers and I don't want to add small marks to point to the bottom part of the digits.

thanks Rafael

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I don't have a font suggestion for you, but I want to challenge the idea.

The problem with 6 and 9 on a dice isn't that they look the same as each other—the problem is that a 6 or 9 could be seen as either, so your 6 will still look like a 9 when rotated 180 degrees, and your 9 will still look like a 6 when rotated 180 degrees, even though they are different from each other.

This is why they are normally differentiated by a line underneath, a dot, or something similar—to indicate the correct orientation, not only differentiate the glyphs.

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  • Thanks for the suggestion. I found some glyphs on the Web (some on those old-fashioned "computer" fonts) in which the 6 has a thick base and the 9 doesn't. Even so they are very similar when rotated.
    – Rafael Santos
    May 17, 2016 at 20:58
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I decided to answer my own question. @Copilot suggested some fonts, and @Cai suggested that I ought to use dots or lines to indicate the correct orientation.

After browsing some other fonts by their images (see below) I decided that the ones that sort of differentiate between the digits were not different enough or were too ugly (personal preferences).

I've also considered using "06" and "09" but even for dices with values under 20 these could be read as "90" or "60".

I will design two set of dice: one with the pips and one with the numbers with small dots to indicate orientation.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Ugly Font 1

Ugly Font 2

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I have gone through my installed fonts using Character Map and these are the ones I found: Alex Brush; Amatic; ColdSpaghetti; Darlin; Galeforce; Heather; Holiday Springs; Orbit-B; Patrick Hand; Permanent Marker; Rock Salt; Sandscript; Script; Segoe Print; Segoe Script; Sue Ellen Francisco; Undercurrent; Youngsook

The only ones from that list I would bother with: in order of preference: Patrick Hand, very nice had written look; Orbit BT, squarish futuristic but very clear; Segoe Script, nice hand-written look; Segoe Print, nice hand-written look; Alex Brush, nice script type but a bit faint; Permanent Marker, hand-written look, but a bit heavy.

Patrick Hand will do fine for my CAD dimensions but there is an unfortunate lack of a formal type font among my fonts, which is quite disappointing.

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    As one may not have those fonts installed, would you mind adding images? (Or since your list is quite exhaustive, perhaps only for the ones with the largest differences. Just to get the general idea.)
    – Jongware
    Dec 10, 2016 at 19:54
  • Patrick Hand is absolutely perfect for my needs. It is neither weird, illegible, nor expensive like Time Machine Bold or Westminster. Infact, it is available on google fonts here. Although the letters are a bit funky, I think the numbers alone are professional-enough, so I use unicode-range: U+0030-0039; in the @font-face to only use the numbers. It works great. Thank you for presenting this font.
    – Jack G
    Jul 14, 2019 at 15:27
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Wow, that's surprisingly hard! Some script fonts do - Segoe Script and on a Mac Klee, Nanum Pen Script, Wawati. A geometric sans-serif might, but I don't know of one that does.

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  • Some of these fonts have slightly different six and nines, but not clearly different -- Klee is the best looking one IMO, with a curved 6 and a straight 9. I think I will just use vector illustrations instead of the glyphs, and add a dot or line under the 6.
    – Rafael Santos
    May 17, 2016 at 18:42
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What about approaching this creatively and using:

  • 3+3 instead of 6
  • 3*3 instead of 9

Especially when you make the signs + and * to be visually very different.

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    Thanks for the suggestion. Just for fun, I did some dice with the Japanese characters for the numbers. Not everyone could read it, of course...
    – Rafael Santos
    Feb 10 at 14:45

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