The text of the comic is written entirely in upper case with very little punctuation other than the occasional hyphen or exclamation point.
Chris Dlugosz initially started Pixel in 2002 as a response to sprite comics, which were proliferating at the time.
Dlugosz was primarily inspired by Calvin and Hobbes, which he described as "the sole reason [he] was not afraid to occasionally get rhetorical or philosophical in some of [his] own strips."
Dlugosz was introduced to the webcomic format by Penny Arcade, which he also listed as an influence.
His visual style, however, is entirely different, as the world of Pixel is populated with anthropomorphic geometric shapes.
[1] When creating a Pixel strip, Dlugosz always starts with the script, as he finds that text has "the annoying tendency to cover up much of your art."
Although pixels can die, they are instantly reborn as infants, usually to a parent of a similar colour.
Infants are smaller than adult pixels, with rounded corners which quickly sharpen.
In the comic, vectors are displayed with control boxes and a central anchor point similar to those used in graphics editors such as Photoshop.
Plasmas are similar to pixels in size, shape, and reproductivity, although their corners are rounded like those of an infant.