Having spent all of my teenage years in the 90s, it's no surprise that this very particular decade resonates so deeply in me. As a graphic designer, I still think the strongest visual languages of the last 50 years or so come from that time. Bold aggressive attitude is what most people remember from those designs. What they seem to forget—or, rather, to have completely ignored—is that some incredibly elegant and subtle styles emerged from those years. It still amazes me how they reflected so well the period in which they were conceived, taking style construction to the next level. Riff is a natural development of some of my thoughts about the 90s. Mixed with a very contemporary feel, it embodies several idiosyncrasies I absorbed over years of exposure to favorite design pieces, fonts, music, films and other cultural products that share the same spirit.

Biffo was designed by David Marshall and produced in 1964. The alphabet in handwritten style has the character of writing done with a broad tipped pen. The figures are round and flexible, even its vertical strokes have rounded edges, softening the look of the characters. The basic forms show parallels with a pear shape: generous in the lower third and thinning out as they move upward. Biffo is a unique, lively typeface perfect for personal correpondence and for communicating spontaneity. It is best for short and middle length texts as well as headlines.

Thrown from the pages of Spider-Man, Daredevil and Hulk comes BIFF BAM BOOM! Inspired by the Legendary Lettering Legerdemain of comics’ Silver Age, Biff Bam Boom is a font you can’t take a swing at without ending up with a broken nose. If you have any sense, duck and cover!

Introducing my new font named "Droptune". Dark riffs, strong rhythm, low frequencies - it's all about heavy music, and, I hope, about this typeface :)

Movie Night JNL was modeled from one of a number of ceramic home movie titling kits on the market that were popular during the 1950s and 1960s. The camera buff would set up the letters against a colored background and photograph clever titles to describe their 8mm home movies of vacations, sightseeing or their darling children (or grandchildren).

Sheet music for the 1939 song “On the Paraña” featured Art Deco hand lettering in a classic “thick and thin” style, with many stylized characters. The publisher of the song was the Theodore Presser Company of Philadelphia, so the name “Presswork” aptly fit this typographic design. Presswork JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions. For trivia buffs, the Paraña is a river in Brazil.

Inspired by that iconic sign in the Hollywood Hills, this font is a must for film buffs, movie lovers and designers who want to bring a bit of big screen glamour to their projects. It’s a caps only face, but by using the upper and lower case keys type can be set above or below the base line, thus creating the signature stagger effect. See also Jazz Age and Tea Dance by Studio K

Sheet music for the tune "Put Your Arms Around Me Honey" (from the 1937 film "Coney Island" starring Betty Grable, George Montgomery and Cesar Romero) has the song title hand lettered in a condensed Art Deco sans serif design. This became the basis for Deco Nights JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. For trivia buffs, the song was written by Junie McCree and Albert Von Tilzer and was first featured in the Broadway show "Madame Sherry" in 1910 and was revived for a second time in the 1949 Judy Garland -Van Johnson film "In the Good Old Summertime".

Taking its cue from the lettering of 1930s Dutch commercial artist Martin Meijer, Libertine is a script where expert calligraphy and total wrist control are on display. With strokes stopping and starting at very steep angles and extreme contrasts, every character is a high riff jolting from within a stunning epic that brands the message home. This is the rebel yell, the adrenaline of scripts. Libertine comes in three interchangeable fonts, each of which containing extended language support. The complete set comes with a fourth font that includes tons of alternates and ligatures and, more importantly, Libertine Pro, the 1160+ character behemoth that combines all four fonts for advanced typography environments, where automatic ligatures, stylistic alternates, and position-sensitive forms are seamlessly put to good use.

Glitter Girl is a naive but romantic and flirty face with fragments of tinsel in its hair. Here's a font with a fresh attitude dressed in frilly flowing flower child fabrics sparkling with sequins. If you're looking for a light feminine aesthetic to grace your chic fashionista blog or livejournal, give it a little Glitter Girl Gossip, a safe text with long legs that will treat your thoughts with a twinkle and a touch of magic. These chic, cozy, clean, warm and fuzzy fonts are BFF -- Best Fonts for Facebook statements you want to share with your social network!

A disc jockey-only promotional sleeve for a 1964 [45 rpm] release of “Close to Me” and “Let Them Talk” by Dan Penn featured the song titles printed in a stencil typeface on the record sleeve. Closely resembling a stencil version of Franklin Gothic but with its own unique characteristics, this design has been reinterpreted as Turntable Stencil JNL and is available in both regular and oblique versions. For trivia buffs, Dan Penn is a singer-songwriter-record producer, often collaborating with Dewey Lindon “Spooner” Oldham; both closely associated with the late Rick Hall’s Fame recording studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. In 1964, Hall started the Fame record label, and for a time it was distributed by Vee-Jay Records of Chicago, the first major Black-owned record label in the United States. Penn’s release was only the second for the new label; Fame 6402.

Give your documents a sense of history. The study of the ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics has been an ongoing fascination by scholars and Egyptology buffs for literally centuries. The discovery of the Rosetta stone in 1799 provided an incredible breakthrough in deciphering the hieroglyphs, however there continues to be conflicting opinions on the literal translation of both the phonetic and ideographic symbols. As such, the interpretation provided in this manual represents an assembly of the most popular transcriptions. This series contains 62 assorted gods and deities as well as a few well known kings or pharaoh's from the New Dynasty. It is important to note that most of the gods and deities were represented in many different forms throughout the centuries and regions of Ancient Egypt, and these are but some of these representations. NOTE: this font comes with an interpretation guide in pdf format.

Capsule is a reverse-stress, high-contrast, rounded sans-serif font with two distinct personalities. An all-caps face, there are however variations of some letters in the lowercase slots. The lowercase variants are more playful, with more bulbous elements that riff on phototype faces like Amelia and Data 70, but all can work together and be mixed and matched to your heart's content. Capsule boasts a bunch of esoteric discretionary ligatures to play around with, and stylistic alternates for 4, 7 and £. The language support is extensive enough to set essays in most Latin-based languages, even though that's the last thing you should be doing with this font! Capsule should be set large. The fit is tight and the kerning is aggressive. It's not what you'd call a workhorse, but Capsule is an All-Caps you'll (see what I did there?!) want to use for impactful headlines, cutting edge logos and post-modern layouts.

Radona is a blast from the 80’s that's rader than rad. Radona is the typeface version of Synthwave, an electronic music subgenre that takes influence from the 1980s but builds on it, resulting in a construct that lives in the minds of both those who have experienced it and those who haven't. Radona expresses a nostalgia for 1980s culture, attempting to replicate and appreciate the era's vibe, but extends it further with something new. This sans family has plenty of 80's flavor, but with some fresh twists to push it to the limit. Radona is a geometric sans-serif typeface. Radona has a few quirky characteristics, but it has a generally neutral tone and structure that makes it ideal for usage in print, especially when a contemporary look is desired. It looks amazing in both body text and headlines. The geometric grotesques that were popular in the 1980s served as inspiration. It's a typeface that's been crafted for usage in a range of design fields, from branding to packaging, and it can be used in anything from interfaces to apps. Radona is an excellent typeface for use on websites and other digital applications. Radona comes with a wide variety of styles and a large selection of stylistic alternatives, ligatures, small caps and other special features. Along with parachute pants, synthesized guitar riffs, and VHS scanlines, Radona brings back the 1980’s.

Bex Script is a riff on traditional French script forms: the Bâtarde, the Ronde, and the Coulée. It has two versions: First, there’s La Belle, a straightforward, lovely interpretation of the script form, suitable for things like invitations, poetry and branding. La Belle’s evil twin is La Bête, a more whimsical (and considerably more hairy) version, great for anything that requires an elegant-but-beastly feel. Bex is surprisingly versatile! With three optional capital forms (Swash, Caps, and Small Caps) all taller than the x-height, Bex has a variety of voices. A full small cap set and a full set of Swash Caps, plus a large complement of alternates, initial forms, terminal forms, and ligatures makes it customizable and… well, FANCY! Additionally, both versions of Bex Script have a set of ten ornament glyphs. La Belle has a combination of fleurons on a culinary theme and symbols of France. La Bête has ten pseudoheraldic beasts that would feel at home at the top center of any whimsical letterhead. NOTE: A few years ago in Paris, I was lucky enough to stop at the Librairie Paul Jammes in St Germain-des-Prés, where I bought a turn-of-the-19th-century signature from a Type Specimen of the printer Joseph Gaspard Gillé. The irregularity of his script types — particularly the ones at smaller sizes, like the Cicéro — was very intriguing. They seemed to blend the Ronde with some elements of the Bâtarde and Coulée. And they, along with the work of French master penman Louis Rossignol, gave Bex Script its initial form.

English Monarchs is a unique font collection with accurate digital replicas of 84 signatures of English and British monarchs from Richard II through Elizabeth II, including many of the royal consorts. Also included in this font are the Stuart pretenders and Mary Queen of Scots and her consort. A must-have for autograph collectors, desktop publishers, history buffs, fans, or anyone who has ever dreamed of sending a letter, card, or e-mail "signed" as if by one of these famous nobles. This font behaves exactly like any other font. Each signature is mapped to a regular character on your keyboard. Open any Windows application, select the installed font, and type a letter, and the signature will appear at that point on the page. Painstaking craftsmanship and an incredible collection of hard-to-find signatures go into this one-of-a-kind font. Comes with a character map. This font includes signatures from the following noble figures: Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou, Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, Edward V, Richard III, Henry VII, Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr, Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I Tudor, Elizabeth I, James I, Charles I, Henrietta Maria of France, Oliver Cromwell, Richard Cromwell, Charles II, Catherine of Braganza, James II, William III, Mary II, Anne, Prince George of Denmark, George I, George II, George III, George IV, William IV, Victoria, Prince Albert, Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, Wallis Warfield Simpson, George VI, Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Princess Diana, Camilla Duchess of Cornwall, Prince James Edward Stuart, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Mary Queen of Scots, Henry Stuart Darnley, Francis II of France.

Hollywood Stars (Volume 1) is a unique collection of signatures of 92 famous Hollywood stars in a high-quality font. A must-have for autograph collectors, desktop publishers, lovers of the arts, history, movie buffs, fans, or anyone who has ever dreamed of sending a letter, card, or e-mail "signed" as if by one of these famous Hollywood celebrities. This font includes signatures from the following Hollywood personalities: Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Ben Stiller, Kate Beckinsale, Steve Buscemi, Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt, Paul Reiser, Angelina Jolie, George Kennedy, Larry King, Edward Norton, Mira Sorvino, Steven Spielberg, Kate Winslet, Daniel Day Lewis, Laura San Giacomo, Holly Hunter, Jane Fonda, Alan Alda, Robbin, Williams, Alan Rickman, Al Pacino, Drew Barrymore, Bob Newhart, Brooke Shields, Burt Reynolds, Keira Knightley, Cheryl Ladd, Basil Rathbone, Minnie Driver, Debra Messing, David Schwimmer, Clint Eastwood, David Hyde Pierce, Burgess Meredith, Donald Trump, Linda Evans, Tony Danza, Gene Wilder, Cameron Diaz, Judi Dench, George Clooney, Nicolas Cage, Timothy Hutton, Jennifer Garner, Jay Leno, Tony Curtis, Suzanne Somers, Connie Selleca, Donald Sutherland, Jack Klugman, Tony Randall, Matthew Perry, Jenna Elfman, Morgan Fairchild, Jack Nicholson, Chazz Palminteri, Dustin Hoffman, Anthony Hopkins, Walter Matthau, Larry Hagman, Lisa Kudrow, Bill Cosby, John Mahoney, Ray Liotta, Jon Voight, Christian Slater, Chris Cooper, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Drew Carey, Eli Wallach, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Amanda Seyfried, Danny DeVito, Gary Sinise, Mary Tyler Moore, Edward Asner, Will Rogers, Cuba Gooding Jr., Bela Lugosi, Charles Grodin, Victoria Principal, Winona Ryder, Tea Leoni, Matt Damon, Loni Anderson, Emma Thompson, Ed O'Neill, Karl Malden. This font behaves exactly like any other font. Each signature is mapped to a regular character on your keyboard. Open any Windows application, select the installed font, and type a letter, and the signature will appear at that point on the page. Painstaking craftsmanship and an incredible collection of hard-to-find signatures go into this one-of-a-kind font. Comes with a character map.

American Revolution is a unique collection of signatures of 84 key personalities from both sides of the American Revolutionary War, one of the supreme dramas in history. A must-have for autograph collectors, desktop publishers, history buffs, or anyone who has ever dreamed of sending a letter, card, or e-mail “signed” as if by one of these famous Revolionary War figures. This font includes signatures from the following American Revolutionary War personalities, from both sides: Ethan Allen, Charles T. Armand, John Armstrong, Benedict Arnold, Pudhomme de Borre, John Cadwalader, George Rogers Clark, George Clinton, James Clinton, Thomas Conway, William Davidson, Philippe du Coudray, The Chevalier Louis Lebegue dePresle Duportail, Chistopher Gadsden, Horatio Gates, Moses Hazen, John Glover, Mordecai Gist, Nathaniel Greene, William Heath, Edward Hand, John E. Howard, Robert Howe, Isaac Huger, William Irvine, Henry Knox, Baron Johann de Kalb, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Marquis de Lafayette, Charles Lee, Henry Lee, Andrew Lewis, William Maxwell, Benjamin Lincoln, Francis Marion, James Moore, Daniel Morgan, William Moultrie, Peter Muhlenberg, Alexander McDougall, Lewis Nicola, Lachlan McIntosh, John Nixon, Hugh Mercer, Samuel H. Parsons, Thomas Mifflin, John Paterson, Richard Montgomery, Andrew Pickens, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Enoch Poor, Count Casimir Pulaski, Israel Putnam, Joseph Reed, Elisha Sheldon, Arthur St. Clair, William Smallwood, Philip Schuyler, John Stark, Charles Scott, Adam Stephen, John Sullivan, Jethro Sumner, Thomas Sumter, James Varnum, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben, Lord Stirling, Artemas Ward, Joseph Warren, George Washington, Anthony Wayne, James Wilkinson, Otho H. Williams, John Paul Jones, William Woodford, David Wooster, John Burgoyne, Sir Guy Carleton, Charles Cornwallis, Sir Henry Clinton, Sir Thomas Gage, Richard, Earl Howe, Sir William Howe, Sir Banastre Tarleton. This font behaves exactly like any other font. Each signature is mapped to a regular character on your keyboard. Open any Windows application, select the installed font, and type a letter, and the signature will appear at that point on the page. Painstaking craftsmanship and an incredible collection of hard-to-find signatures go into this one-of-a-kind font. Comes with a character map.

American Authors is a unique collection of signatures of 75 famous American authors, poets, writers, and novelists. A must-have for autograph collectors, desktop publishers, history buffs, fans, or anyone who has ever dreamed of sending a letter, card, or e-mail "signed" as if by one of these famous literary figures. This font includes signatures from the following literary figures: Joel Barlow, Charles Brockden Brown, J. Fenimore Cooper, Stephen Crane, Richard H. Dana Jr., Theodore Dreiser, W.C. Bryan, Timothy Dwight, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Faulkner, Eugene Field, Philip Freneau, Robert Frost, Hamlin Garland, Alexander Hamilton, Bret Harte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lafcadio Hearn, Ernest Hemingway, W.D. Howells, Henry James, John P. Kennedy, Washington Irving, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Julia Ward Howe, Francis Scott Key, Sidney Lanier, James Russell Lowell, Edgar Lee Masters, Cotton Mather, Herman Melville, George John Nathan, Henry W. Longfellow, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eugene O'Neill, Thomas Paine, Edgar Allan Poe, J.K. Paulding, Sydney Porter (aka O. Henry), Carl Sandburg, Samuel Sewall, John Howard Payne, W.H. Prescott, W. Gilmore Simms, Captain John Smith, Gertrude Stein, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Trumbull, Daniel Webster, Noah Webster, Samuel L. Clemens (aka Mark Twain), John G. Whittier, Thomas Wolfe, Henry D. Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Jacqueline Susann, Louisa May Alcott, Wystan Hugh Auden, Pearl Buck, Edgar Rice Burroughs, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Erle Stanley Gardner, Horace Greeley, Zane Grey, Sinclair Lewis, Jack London, Norman Mailer, Ogden Nash, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Pound, John Steinbeck, Leon Uris, Thornton Wilder. This font behaves exactly like any other font. Each signature is mapped to a regular character on your keyboard. Open any Windows application, select the installed font, and type a letter, and the signature will appear at that point on the page. Painstaking craftsmanship and an incredible collection of hard-to-find signatures go into this one-of-a-kind font. Comes with a character map. Article abstract: American Authors is a unique collection of signatures of 75 famous American authors, poets, writers, and novelists in a high-quality font.

After doing this for so many years, one would think my fascination with the old history of writing would have mellowed out by now. The truth is that alongside being a calligraphy history buff, I'm a pop technology freak. Maybe even keener on the tech thing, since I just can't seem to get enough new gadgets. And after working with type technologies for so many years, I'm starting to think that writing and design technologies as we now know them, being about 2.5 post-computer generations, keep becoming more and more detached from what the very old humanity arts/tasks they essentially want to facilitate. In a world where command-z is a frequently used key combination, it’s difficult to justify expecting a Morris-made book or a Zaner-drawn sentence, but accidental artistic “mutations” become welcome, marketable features. When fluid pens were introduced, their liquid saturation influenced type design to a great extent almost overnight an influence professional designers tend to play down. Now round stroke endings are a common sight, and the saturation is so clean and measured, unlike any liquid-paper relationship possible in reality. Some designers even illustrate their work by overlaying perfect circles at stroke ends, in order to illustrate how “geometric” their work was. Because if it’s measured with precise geometry, it’s got to be meaningful design. And once in a while, by a total freak accident, the now-cherished mutations prove to have existed long before the technology that caused them. Rolling Pen was cued by just such a thing: A rounded, circular, roll-flowing calligraphy from the late nineteenth century seemingly one of those experimental takes on what inspired Business Penmanship, another font of mine. Looking at it now it certainly seems to be friendlier, more legible, and maybe even more practical and easier to execute than the standard business penmanship of those days, but I guess friendliness and simplicity were at odds with the stiff manner business liked to present itself back then, so that kind of thing remained buried in the professional penman’s oddities drawer. It would be quite a few years before all this curviness and rounding were thought of as symbolic of graceful movement, which brought such a flow closer to the idea of fine art. Even though in this case the accidental mutation just happens to not be a mutation after all, the whole technology-transforms-application argument still applies here. I'm almost sure “business” will be the last thing on people’s minds when they use this font today. One extreme example of that level of disconnect between origin and current application is shown here, with the so-called business penmanship strutting around in gloss and neon. Rolling Pen is another cup of mine that runneth over with alternates, swashes, ligatures, and other techy perks. To explore its full potential, please use it in a program that supports OpenType features for advanced typography. Enjoy the new Rolling Pen designed by Ale Paul with Neon’s visual poetry by Tomás García.