A tessellation is a shape that can be used to completely fill the plane without overlaps or gaps. Simple examples are isosceles triangles, squares, and hexagons. Tessellation patterns are eye-catching and visually appealing, which is the reason that they have long been popular in a variety of decorative situations. The TessieStandingBirds family has two styles, a solid style that must have different colors when used alone and an outline style. They can be used separately or they can be used in layers with the outline style on top of the solid style. For rows to align properly, leading must be the same as point size.

Shapes that tessellate and also resemble real-world objects are often called Escher-like tessellations. This typeface contains Escher-like tessellations of birds. A number of years ago I decided to see how many of the 28 Heesch types of tessellations I could use to make birds standing on the backs of other birds. I found standing bird patterns for all 17 of the types that had either translated or glided edges. The TessieStandingBirds typefaces contain the standing-bird shapes that I discovered. At first glance they seem to be quite similar, but small differences matter in how they fit together. Most of the patterns require more than one character. The collateral sample file shows how pieces fit together to give tessellating patterns.