Alf Becker graced many issues of “Signs of the Times” (a trade magazine for the sign industry) with his innovative hand lettered alphabets for others to use as design inspirations. His 134th submission was titled “Post Card Type”, a condensed thick-and-thin stylized Art Deco design. This served as the inspiration for Tourist Postcard JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of S.T. Media Group and the American Sign Museum for providing the work image for this type revival.

Kanona JNL is modeled from one of the numerous alphabets created by the late Alf R. Becker for Signs of the Times magazine from the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to a wealth of source material provided by Tod Swormstedt of ST Media (and who is also the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio), Jeff Levine has been redrawing many of these alphabets and presenting them in digital form. The original variations in letter widths from Becker’s hand-painted alphabet have been left intact.

No: Jethro Bodine didn't design this typeface although, to look at it, you might be tempted to think so. Rather, the pattern was a product of the fertile imagination of famed lettering artist Alf Becker. The lowercase letters are the same as the uppercase, but angled differently so, if you want a randomized appearance, you can activate Contextual Alternates and the font will do the shift-key double-clutching needed. Both versions include the complete Unicode Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, with localization for Moldovan and Romanian.

“Tropical Type” was Alf Becker’s 148th submission to “Signs of the Times” magazine (a publication for the sign trade) where for years Becker would provide a monthly lettering design to inspire other sign writers. This particular design has more of a Far East flair to it, and was redrawn digitally as Travel East JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. Special thanks to Tod Swormstedt of the American Sign Museum and S.T. Media Group for providing the sample image from which the font was derived.

Alf Becker was a master sign painter and lettering stylist who created well over 100 alphabets for a monthly feature in the trade magazine "Sign of the Times" during the 1930s and 1940s. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST pubications for supplying the source material. One of these designs features a modernized version of Old English or "text" lettering making it more legible for sign and show card work. Doing away with extra curves and swashes, this type style is more calligraphic in nature than classic. Modern English JNL was modeled from Becker's original design, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Patriotica JNL was inspired by some hand lettering designed by the late Alf Becker for Signs of the Times® magazine. The alphabet was modified and the character set extended in this digital version. Special thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Publications, Inc. and the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati for providing a copy of the original lettering for use as a work model. Patriotica JNL is available as a complete font or in a set of two layers (stars layer and stripes layer) for creating two-color graphics. As always, keep in mind that there are some slight variations between drawing programs, so some adjustments may need to be made in the alignment of the layers.

The infield dirt is raked, the outfield grass is mowed and the baselines chalked. So grab a beer, smother a stadium dog with mustard and relish, take a seat on the bleachers and get ready -- that handsome devil SPILLS is back on the mound and ready for a comeback! It’s true, Manager [the person who coaches a baseball team is a ‘manager’ not a coach] John JG Roshell has coaxed the wily veteran out of retirement, and he’s returned to the field with the wisdom of extra years and the addition of five new pitches (fonts): Stadium, Dugout, Outfield, Infield, Pennant and Base. The stadium is packed to capacity and we're pretty sure the first time he’s at the plate, it’s gonna be strike-out city! [to continue the logic of the baseball pitching ace as font metaphor, the pitcher would hopefully prevent a home run not facilitate one.] See the families related to Spills: SpillProof .

Alf Becker graced the pages of "Signs of the Times" magazine month after month for decades, presenting attractive and unusual hand lettered alphabets as inspiration for other sign painters and show card writers. From straightforward text faces to novelty ideas, Becker's talent as a master sign crafter was constant in his work. Show Card Casual JNL is one example of what is referred to as a "one stroke" alphabet (utilizing a single brush stroke in each direction to form the letter or number). Its casual look and playful charm allow for a message to be presented in an informal format that is pleasing to the eye. The type design is available in both regular and oblique versions. Special thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Publications for providing the reference material.

Police JNL was modeled from one of the many fonts created by the late Alf Becker exclusively for Signs of the Times magazine during the 1930s through the 1950s. This was a bit of a difficult design to translate into a digital font file, because the individual characters did not follow a formal structure as to the width and length of the cast shadows or the letter shapes—such is the way of the hand-lettered alphabet. Special thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Publications (and curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati) for providing the archival material to work from in creating this font. Police JNL has a limited character set. The basic A-Z character is on the upper and lower case keys, along with numbers, some punctuation and the dollar and cents signs.

Storefront is what the prolific and talented American sign painters of the 1920s and 1930s would have created if they had access to the advanced lettering and type technologies we have today. Rooted in an incomplete Alf Becker alphabet sample, Storefront is my usual overdose on alternates and swashes, my eternal attempt at giving typesetting that ever-elusive handmade impression. Though the main shapes, especially the majuscules, are almost a standard recitation of the natural evolution of nineteenth century scripts, the additional variants available within the font provide a leap in time to what sign makers and packagers are doing today. I can honestly say that Storefront’s influences are probably less historic and more in line with my recent travels and frequent supermarket visits. It’s difficult to avoid current visual culture when you're constantly bombarded with it. Not that I try. I certainly welcome the overflow. I'm probably addicted to it by now. With a very cool aesthetic, plenty of alternates and swashes, extended Latin language support, Storefront is over a thousand glyphs for your branding, packaging, and sign making pleasure.

Seriguela is an ultra condensed sans serif typeface with a unique personality. It comes in normal and display versions, each with 9 weights, as well as italics and reverse italics totaling 54 fonts. Seriguela is flavor in motion and each part of its system works together to captivate you, combining emotion and usability, allowing you to create attractive and unique designs. Seriguela followed a very distinctive recipe to design its alphabet: it started with a grotesque base and applied movement and joy in a very original way. The blacker and more contrasted, the tastier. The contrast in its display version is one of the most important features of Seriguela: the unconventional relationship between thick and thin lines, as it does not strictly follow any historical model of contrast construction and makes it noticeable. Its high contrast is not present in every single character and it is often in the “wrong” places. The original charm of Seriguela is maintained throughout all its styles. With peculiar details: the verticality and its proportions, as well as terminals that resemble hooks in some curves, a characteristic that breaks with the vertical modular rhythm. Seriguela is a versatile font system, designed primarily for display uses with a need of visual impact.

Here I am, once again digging up 60-year sign lettering and trying to reconcile it with the typography of my own time. The truth is I've had this particular Alf Becker alphabet in my sights for a few years now. But in the typical way chaos shuffles the days, Buffet Script and Whomp won the battle for my attentions way back when, then Storefront beat the odds by a nose a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, revisiting Alf Becker’s work is always a breath of fresh air for me, not to mention the ego boost I get from confirming that I can still hack my way through the challenges, which is something I think people ask themselves about more often as they get older. You can never tell what may influence your work, or in this case remind you to dig it out of dust drawers and finally mould it into one of your own experiences. On my recent visits to the States and Canada, I noticed that quite a few high-end steak houses try their best to recreate an urban American 1930s atmosphere. This is quite evident in their menus, wall art, lighting, music, and so on. The ambience says your money is well spent here, because your food was originally choice-cut by a butcher who wears a suit, cooked by a chef who may be your neighbour 20 minutes from downtown, and delivered by a waitress who can do the Charleston when the lights dim and who just wouldn't mind laughing with you over drinks at the bar later. So Steak is just that, a face for menus and wall art in those places that see themselves in the kind of jazzy, noirish world where one-liners rule and exclamation points are part of a foreign language. As is usual with my lettering-inspired faces, there is very little left of the original Alf Becker alphabet. Of course, the challenges present in bringing typographic functionality to what is essentially pure hand lettering gives the spirit of the original art a hell of a rollercoaster ride. But I think that spirit survived the adventure, and may in fact be even somewhat magnified here. This font is over 850 glyphs. It’s loaded with ligatures, swashes, ending forms, alternates, ascender and descender variations, and extended Latin language support. Steak comes in 3 versions. According to your taste you can choose Barbecue, Braised or Smoked. It’s up to you!

Iconic Conjuring memories of chunky typefaces from the late-60s and early-70s, and named after the world’s greatest footballer of that and probably any other era, FS Pele is one of a set of Fontsmith fonts designed specifically for headlines and other prominent applications. “We wanted to create fonts that could be integral to the design of posters, album covers and magazines,” says Jason Smith. Welcome to FS Pele, iconic, like its namesake (though, perhaps, a little less nimble). Big Pele, little Pele There was only one Pele. But there are two sizes of FS Pele. FS Pele One, with the finer counters and details, adds considerable weight and style at large sizes, especially in big block headlines on posters. FS Pele Two’s thicker “slots” make it a better choice for smaller-sized text. A load of blocks FS Pele began as an exercise by Phil Garnham in turning squares into legible letters, via the least means necessary. The idea extended his ideas about logo-making, and the search for a stamp-like brand mark that lends authority, stability and instant identification. “The thought that the type was a 2D/3D jigsaw of slotted, architectural pieces was almost an after-thought. I wanted to create a strong, stacking, block aesthetic for the most contemporary poster design. “At the time there were a lot of designers creating their own versions of the same thing but I wanted to take the blocker forms to the next step, and infer a more legible text without sacrificing the idea.”

Iconic Conjuring memories of chunky typefaces from the late-60s and early-70s, and named after the world’s greatest footballer of that and probably any other era, FS Pele is one of a set of Fontsmith fonts designed specifically for headlines and other prominent applications. “We wanted to create fonts that could be integral to the design of posters, album covers and magazines,” says Jason Smith. Welcome to FS Pele, iconic, like its namesake (though, perhaps, a little less nimble). Big Pele, little Pele There was only one Pele. But there are two sizes of FS Pele. FS Pele One, with the finer counters and details, adds considerable weight and style at large sizes, especially in big block headlines on posters. FS Pele Two’s thicker “slots” make it a better choice for smaller-sized text. A load of blocks FS Pele began as an exercise by Phil Garnham in turning squares into legible letters, via the least means necessary. The idea extended his ideas about logo-making, and the search for a stamp-like brand mark that lends authority, stability and instant identification. “The thought that the type was a 2D/3D jigsaw of slotted, architectural pieces was almost an after-thought. I wanted to create a strong, stacking, block aesthetic for the most contemporary poster design. “At the time there were a lot of designers creating their own versions of the same thing but I wanted to take the blocker forms to the next step, and infer a more legible text without sacrificing the idea.”

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.