Whomp takes its inspiration from the work of an American master in sign painting and alphabet manipulation: Alf Becker . In 1932, Becker began designing a series of alphabets to be published in Signs of the Times magazine at the rate of one alphabet per month. Nine years later, 100 of those alphabets were compiled in one book that became an enormous success among sign painters. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, many Alf Becker alphabets were digitized with blurbs that falsely credit an “Alf Becker typeface”. Alf Becker was not really a typeface kind of guy. He was more of a calligrapher and sign painter. His alphabets were either incomplete or full of variations on different letters, and didn't become typefaces until the digital era. This particular Becker alphabet was quite incomplete. In fact, it wasn't a showing of an alphabet, but words on a poster. Alejandro Paul took the challenge of drawing, digitizing, restructuring, and finally building a complete usable typeface from that partial alphabet. He then extended his pleasure by once again playing with the wonderful possibilities of OpenType. Whomp comes with more than 100 alternates, tons of swashy endings and ligatures, all built into the font and accessible through OpenType palettes in programs that support such features. This is the in-your-face kind of font that stands among other Becker-based alphabets as paying most homage to the vision of this great American artist who saw letters as live ever-changing beings. Whomp is right at home when used on packaging, signage, posters, and entertainment related products.

Goudy Handtooled was done in 1922 and is a shaded version of Goudy Bold. Some authorities credit the design to Charles A. Becker and others to Morris Fuller Benton and Wadsworth Packer.

Alf R. Becker was a noted sign painter, designer and the creator of hundreds of unique alphabets which were published in the trade magazine Signs of the Times during the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media [and who is also the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati], Jeff Levine received some reference material on Becker's work. Becker displayed many of his type styles within decorative panels—a popular trend in the days when signs were hand-lettered. Using the reference material as a guide, Jeff has re-drawn twenty-six sign panels for adaptation to digital print work. While the designs in themselves are not thoroughly unique to Alf Becker, he has left behind some tangible examples of how sign painters embellished their lettering work. With the use of complementary colors and tones, these panels—joined with vintage lettering - classically recreate the warm and attractive advertising of years ago.

Download PDF Specimen See Blacker and Blacker Sans , the perfect matching companions of Blackest. Blackest is an inverse contrast wedge serif typeface family, designed by Francesco Canovaro and Andrea Tartarelli as a development of the Blacker typeface designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini. The classical skeleton and sharp edges of the original have been kept while bringing the contrast of the typeface in the realm of the so called “italian” or reverse-contrast typefaces. The result is a typeface family that manages to be quirky but classical, and playful without losing elegance. With its exuberance and six weights of eye-catching proportions, Blackest is perfect for display use: editorial & magazine design, poster design and logo development - but to allow its usage as a for typesetting of longer texts a text variant in two weights has been developed, with less contrast, looser spacing, and high readability. Blackest features an extended character set that covers over 220 languages using the Latin alphabet, as well as Russian Cyrillic. Open type features include small caps, positional figures, alternate letter forms, stylistic sets, arrows and extra punctuation and discretionary ligatures.

Mocombo JNL is a slightly modified version of one of the numerous alphabets created by the late Alf R. Becker for Signs of the Times Magazine during the period of the 1930s through the 1950s. Tod Swormstedt of ST Media—who is also the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio—supplied Jeff Levine a wealth of source material from which this font is derived. The angular style of this typeface was originally referred to as “German Poster Lettering” by Becker, but it can represent many styles from 1940s night clubs to African safaris and just about anything in-between.

In digitizing this old font, we took great liberties with the design, removing some jarring elements. The result reads much more smoothly than the original, retaining the overall character of the original. Hope you don't mind, Mr. Beeler.

Crystasea, a Dawn Seeker Display Serif Font with Stunning 4 weight Style. Very suitable for magazine, headline, website, ads, product package and all type of design project you have. Features: OpenType support Multilingual support (15 languages) PUA Encoded

Karin's free reinterpretation of the early Renaissance Lombardic tradition, in two different versions. In the upper case the fill is blacker and has a straight pattern with diamond elements; in the lower case the fill is thinner with more white space and has a wavy pattern with rounded elements.

A surprisingly modern looking condensed sans serif issued by Mackellar, Smiths & Jordan foundry in 1887. Its narrow width makes it useful for long copy headlines. Designed by the freelance type cutter Charles Beeler who did many fonts for Mackellar.

Lettering artist Alf Becker suggested that this typeface was suitable for postcard work, and we agree (although it's suitable for a great many other uses, as well). It packs a lot of information in a limited amount of horizontal space.

Alf Becker called this offering "Rounded Modern Bold." The geometric forms, strong contrasts and unexpected turns of this serious Art Deco typeface command attention. Both versions of the font include the 1252 Latin and 1250 CE character sets (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Sign and Design JNL is a casual brush alphabet modeled after an Alf R. Becker design that appeared in Signs of the Times Magazine. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media and the American Sign Museum for providing the reference material to make this font.

Legendary lettering artist Alf Becker called his original offering “Aristocrat”; this version is a little less pretentious, but still suitably snooty. Graceful and elegant, but with a few amusing turns. Both versions of this font contain the complete Latin 1252 and Central European 1250 character sets.

Film Noir JNL is a classic Art Deco Alphabet from the brush of the late master sign painter Alf R. Becker, and appeared in Signs of the Times Magazine. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media and the American Sign Museum for providing the reference material to make this font.

Charles Beeler Jr. designed this in 1895 for Mackellar, Smiths and Jordan, which was part of the American Type Founders combine. The font had a short life because five years later ATF began an "off with the old, on with the new" program, and this font was an early victim.

Hexide JNL was modeled and modified from an original design created by the late sign artist Alf R. Becker for Signs of the Times® Magazine. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Publications, Inc. and the American Sign Museum of Cincinnati, Ohio for providing the reference material used to make this font.

Beginning in January, 1932, Becker, at the request of then-editor E. Thomas Kelly, supplied SIGNS of the Times magazine’s new Art and Design section with an alphabet a month, a project predicted to last only two years. Misjudging the popularity of the “series”, it instead ran for 27 years, ending finally two months before Becker’s death in 1959, for a grand total of 320 alphabets, a nearly perfect, uninterrupted run. In late 1941, almost ten years after the first alphabet was published, 100 of those alphabets were compiled and published in bookform under the title, “100 Alphabets”, by Alf R. Becker. And so, as published in August, 1937, The Fontry presents the truly "modern" version of Becker’s 187th alphabet, Moderne Caps, complete with OpenType features and Central European language support.