# Typography-MNIST (TMNIST): an MNIST-Style Image Dataset to Categorize Glyphs and Font-Styles

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.08112 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08112/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 0 of its 3 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Feb 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Sensitivity Analysis for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23092/) (2025)
- [The Cognitive Type Project -- Mapping Typography to Cognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04087/) (2024)
- [Scaling Unsupervised Multi-Source Federated Domain Adaptation through Group-Wise Discrepancy Minimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.08150/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present Typography-MNIST (TMNIST), a dataset comprising of 565,292 MNIST-style grayscale images representing 1,812 unique glyphs in varied styles of 1,355 Google-fonts. The glyph-list contains common characters from over 150 of the modern and historical language scripts with symbol sets, and each font-style represents varying subsets of the total unique glyphs. The dataset has been developed as part of the CognitiveType project which aims to develop eye-tracking tools for real-time mapping of type to cognition and to create computational tools that allow for the easy design of typefaces with cognitive properties such as readability. The dataset and scripts to generate MNIST-style images for glyphs in different font styles are freely available at https://github.com/aiskunks/CognitiveType.