a gothic bold typeface

Linotext was designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1901 and first appeared with the name Wedding Text with American Type Founders in Jersey City, where its metal forms were cut by hand. The font was so popular that its forms soon began appearing with other font foundries under different names, Elite Kanzlei with D. Stempel AG, Comtesse with C.F. Rühl, etc. Its ornamental forms are not considered very legible by today’s standards and Linotext should therefore be used for headlines and short texts in point sizes 12 or larger.

The Souvenir typeface was originally drawn by Morris Fuller Benton in 1914 as a single weight for the American Type Founders company. It was revived in 1967 by Photo-Lettering and optimized for phototypesetting equipment. ITC was formed in 1971 and, with the help of Photo-Lettering, introduced ITC Souvenir as one of its first font families. ITC Souvenir was designed by Ed Benguiat and comes in four weights, each with a matching italic. In 1983, Ned Bunnel's ITC Souvenir Monospaced was released; this is a monospace version of ITC Souvenir.

Commercial Script is a sophisticated copperplate script design. Its capitals are elaborate initials, and the lowercase letters join together in the style of real handwriting. Commercial Script's elegant refinement makes it a classic and ever-popular typeface. The spark behind this typeface comes from centries-old English Spencerian copperplate calligraphy. In 1985, the American typefoundry Barnhart Brothers & Spindler released a typeface in this style. This was redesigned by ATF's Morris Fuller Benton in 1906, and ATF released Commercial Script" in 1908. In 1994, Letraset' released this digital version of the typeface."

Academy was designed circa 1910 at the Berthold type foundry (St.-Petersburg). It was based on Sorbonne (H. Berthold, Berlin, 1905), which represented the American Type Founders rework Cheltenham of 1896 (designers Bertram G. Goodhue, Morris F. Benton) and Russian typefaces of the mid-18th century. A low-contrast text typeface with historical flavor. The modern digital version was designed at Poligrafmash type design bureau in 1989 by Lyubov Kuznetsova. Corrections and additions were done later in ParaType in early 2000th. Reworked version with Bold Italic style was released in 2009.

Commercial Script is a sophisticated copperplate script design. Its capitals are elaborate initials, and the lowercase letters join together in the style of real handwriting. Commercial Script's elegant refinement makes it a classic and ever-popular typeface. The spark behind this typeface comes from centries-old English Spencerian copperplate calligraphy. In 1985, the American typefoundry Barnhart Brothers & Spindler released a typeface in this style. This was redesigned by ATF's Morris Fuller Benton in 1906, and ATF released Commercial Script" in 1908. In 1994, Letraset' released this digital version of the typeface."

The Engraver’s Square Gothic—like its rounder cousin, the engraver’s sans serif, Sweet® Sans,has been one of the more widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its minimal forms, made without curves, were popularized long ago by bankers and others seeking a serious, established feel to their stationery. One might argue that the design is a possible precursor to Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic® typeface. Sweet® Square is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century remain both familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates, Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn Sweet Square in nine weights. The sources offered just uppercase, small caps, and figures, yet similar, condensed examples had a lowercase, making it possible to interpret a full character set for Sweet Square. Italics were also added to give the family greater versatility. The fonts are available as basic, “Standard” character sets, and as “Pro” character sets offering special characters, a variety of typographic features, and full support for Western and Central European languages. Sweet Square gives new life to an uncommon class of typeface: an early twentieth-century commercial invention that brings a singular verve to modern design. Its unique style is as useful as it is novel. Bank Gothic is a registered trademark of Grosse Pointe Group LLC.

The Engraver’s Square Gothic—like its rounder cousin, the engraver’s sans serif, Sweet® Sans,has been one of the more widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its minimal forms, made without curves, were popularized long ago by bankers and others seeking a serious, established feel to their stationery. One might argue that the design is a possible precursor to Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic® typeface. Sweet® Square is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century remain both familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates, Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn Sweet Square in nine weights. The sources offered just uppercase, small caps, and figures, yet similar, condensed examples had a lowercase, making it possible to interpret a full character set for Sweet Square. Italics were also added to give the family greater versatility. The fonts are available as basic, “/fonts/sweet/square/” character sets, and as “Pro” character sets offering special characters, a variety of typographic features, and full support for Western and Central European languages. Sweet Square gives new life to an uncommon class of typeface: an early twentieth-century commercial invention that brings a singular verve to modern design. Its unique style is as useful as it is novel. Bank Gothic is a registered trademark of Grosse Pointe Group LLC.

Blonde Fraktur is a free interpretation of the Gothic theme in Cyrillic. The font is neither Fraktur nor any other Gothic script from the formal point of view, but it makes text look like Gothic script, no matter which language is used. Blonde Fraktur was written with a quill by Alexandra Korolkova and prepared in digital form by Alexandra Pushkova. The font contains a set of alternatives and swashed variations. It suits well for advertising of beer, sausages, pubs and other places where Gothic scripts are commonly used.

A heavy unnamed Gothic typeface from the 1890 William H. Page Foundry woodtype specimen book provided the template for this bold, brash, no-nonsense face. It's designed to set tight, so your headlines will definitely get noticed. Named for a town in West Central Texas which is noted for being the home of the Buffalo Soliders in the late 1800s. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

a gothic drop caps typeface

Thick and thin gothic font

An advertisement in a 1936 issue of “The Film Daily” for the movie “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” had much of its copy set in an extrabold typeface similar to the Beton/Stymie/Karnac group of slabserif designs. This is now available digitally as Serif Formal JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Wedding Regular was originally designed by Morris Fuller Benton for ATF and released as Wedding Text in 1901. It is a lighter version of his ENGRAVER'S OLD ENGLISH of the same period. Wedding Regular is based on the Textura style of blackletter that continued in popularity in England into the 16th century, long after the Dutch, French and Italians had moved to a Roman model that expressed the Renaissance humanism of the period. Wedding Headline is a still lighter version of the regular text face, suitable for setting larger sizes while still preserving the delicacy of the decorative hairlines. Textura continues in use in England and the United States for newspaper mastheads, gift shop signs, wedding invitations and programs and other applications where a feeling of tradition is desired. I recently saw an 1980ish photo of a “Tubby Isaac” sign in London using textura. I believe Benton’s design captures that feeling without being heavy-handed and still remaining quite readable for eyes accustomed to Roman lettering. Both Wedding Regular and Wedding Headline convey a comfortable familiarity. These two fonts may be purchased together at an attractive discount or they may be purchased separately. The full character set may be found in the pdf file that you can download from the gallery section. The two monks (alt-0172 and alt-0177) are from a set of sixteenth century decorative initial letters by Gering and Renbolt. Please note that there are two different eszetts, the blackletter style at alt-0126 and the antiqua style at the alt-0223.

Sackers Roman is an engraver, all-capitals family for invitations and stationery. The letters have strong contrast between thin and thick strokes. See also Sackers Gothic, Sackers Square Gothic, Sackers Script, and Sackers Classic Roman.

Sackers Roman is an engraver, all-capitals family for invitations and stationery. The letters have strong contrast between thin and thick strokes. See also Sackers Gothic, Sackers Square Gothic, Sackers Script, and Sackers Classic Roman.

Sackers Roman is an engraver, all-capitals family for invitations and stationery. The letters have strong contrast between thin and thick strokes. See also Sackers Gothic, Sackers Square Gothic, Sackers Script, and Sackers Classic Roman.

Sackers Roman is an engraver, all-capitals family for invitations and stationery. The letters have strong contrast between thin and thick strokes. See also Sackers Gothic, Sackers Square Gothic, Sackers Script, and Sackers Classic Roman.

I love geometric sans serifs, their crispness and rationality. Le Havre taps into this style, but for a while, I've wanted to create a font recalling the printed Futura of the 1940s, which seems to have an elusive quality all its own. After seeing an old manual on a World War II ship, I developed a plan for "Le Havre Metal" but chose to shelve the project due to Le Havre's small x-height. That's where Steagal comes in. When Robbie de Villiers and I began the Chatype project in early 2012 (a project which led one publication to label me the Edward Johnston of Chattanooga!), we started closely studying the vernacular lettering of Chattanooga. During that time, I also visited Switzerland, where I saw how designers were using a new, handmade aesthetic with a geometric base. I was motivated to make a new face combining some of these same influences. The primary inspiration for the new design came from the hand-lettering of sign painters in the United States, circa 1930s through 1950s. My Chatype research turned up a poster from the Tennessee Valley Authority in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which exhibited a number of quirks from the unique hand and style of one of these sign artists. Completing the first draft of Steagal, however, I found that the face appeared somewhat European in character. I turned then to the work of Morris Fuller Benton for a distinctly American take and discovered a number of features that would help define Steagal as a "1930s American" vernacular typeface--features I later learned also inspired Morris Fuller Benton's Eagle. The overall development of Steagal was surprisingly difficult, knowing when to deliberately distort optical artifacts and when to keep them in place. Part of type design is correcting optical illusions, and I found myself absentmindedly adjusting the optical effects. In the end, though, I was able to draw inspiration from period signs, inscriptions, period posters, and architecture while retaining just enough of the naive sensibility. Steagal has softened edges, which simulate brush strokes and retain the feeling of the human hand. The standard version has unique quirks that are not too intrusive. Overshoots have almost been eliminated, and joins have minimal corrections. The rounded forms are mathematically perfect, geometric figures without optical corrections. As a variation to the standard, the “Rough” version stands as the "bad signpainter" version with plenty of character. Steagal Regular comes in five weights and is packed with OpenType features. Steagal includes three Art Deco Alternate sets, optically compensated rounded forms, a monospaced variant, and numerous other features. In all, there are over 200 alternate characters. To see these features in action, please see the informative .pdf brochure. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe Creative suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. Steagal also includes support for all Western European languages. Steagal is a great way to subtly draw attention to your work. Its unique quirks grab the eye with a authority that few typefaces possess. Embrace its vernacular, hand-brushed look, and see what this geometric sans serif can do for you.

Based on Morris Fuller Benton's 1905 oeuvre American Extra Condensed, this titling face packs a lot of information into very little horizontal space. Its champfered corners give the font an industrial feel which remains fresh even after more than a century. Both versions include the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, with localization for Lithuanian, Moldovan and Romanian.

Best Bet JNL is a hybrid approach in reinterpreting the classic display font Beton. Using examples of the condensed version found on old sheet music, redesigning a few additional characters and melding them with slightly condensed versions of numbers from the standard weight, Best Bet JNL offers an interesting new version to an old favorite.

Zawlbuk is a type inspired by Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura. The Letters are drawn using a flat nib pen on a paper, scanned and drawn into a vector format.

Arch Creek JNL is Jeff Levine's all-caps re-interpretation of a classic typeface of the past; Beton. Clean lines and slab serifs make this design a wonderful display face for attention-getting headlines. The beautiful watercolor print used in the font flag is by a good friend of Jeff's - Miami artist Michael George, and is used by permission.

Halliday JNL was redrawn from impressions made by a rubber stamp sign printing set, thus providing the slight imperfection of line widths that gives a hand-made approach to the typeface. The lettering style is based on Beton Open Condensed, a clean and popular slab serif used for decades in print display titling and rubber stamp manufacture.

A British boxing film from 1953 called “The Square Ring” had its titles and credits hand lettered in a slab serif type style commonly referred to as “Egyptian”. Other familiar type fonts which share this influence are Karnak, Stymie and Beton. Sporting Event JNL was modeled from the film’s titles and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The ITC Franklin™ typeface design marks the next phase in the evolution of one of the most important American gothic typefaces. Morris Fuller Benton drew the original design in 1902 for American Type Founders (ATF); it was the first significant modernization of a nineteenth-century grotesque. Named in honor of Benjamin Franklin, the design not only became a best seller, it also served as a model for several other sans serif typefaces that followed it. Originally issued in just one weight, the ATF Franklin Gothic family was expanded over several years to include an italic, a condensed, a condensed shaded, an extra condensed and, finally, a wide. No light or intermediate weights were ever created for the metal type family. In 1980, under license from American Type Founders, ITC commissioned Victor Caruso to create four new weights in roman and italic - book, medium, demi and heavy - while preserving the characteristics of the original ATF design. This series was followed in 1991 by a suite of twelve condensed and compressed designs drawn by David Berlow. ITC Franklin Gothic was originally released as two designs: one for display type and one for text. However, in early digital interpretations, a combined text and display solution meant the same fonts were used to set type in any size, from tiny six-point text to billboard-size letters. The problem was that the typeface design was almost always compromised and this hampered its performance at any size. David Berlow, president of Font Bureau, approached ITC with a proposal to solve this problem that would be mutually beneficial. Font Bureau would rework the ITC Franklin Gothic family, enlarge and separate it into distinct text and display designs, then offer it as part of its library as well. ITC saw the obvious value in the collaboration, and work began in early 2004. The project was supposed to end with the release of new text and display designs the following year. But, like so many design projects, the ITC Franklin venture became more extensive, more complicated and more time consuming than originally intended. The 22-font ITC Franklin Gothic family has now grown to 48 designs and is called simply ITC Franklin. The new designs range from the very willowy Thin to the robust Ultra -- with Light, Medium, Bold and Black weights in between. Each weight is also available in Narrow, Condensed and Compressed variants, and each design has a complementary Italic. In addition to a suite of new biform characters (lowercase characters drawn with the height and weight of capitals), the new ITC Franklin Pro fonts also offer an extended character set that supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages. ITC Franklin Text is currently under development.

Glitzy is a caps-only font with extreme contrast. It was inspired by Art Deco typefaces, especially Broadway by Morris Fuller Benton, but Glitzy is not an attempt to reproduce that typeface. The letters on the lower-case keys differ slightly from the letters on the upper-case keys. The large black interiors invite decoration and the family includes four faces with interior decoration. These four faces with interior decoration can be used in layers with the base font to add color to lettering. (OakPark is a another attempt to do high-contrast lettering with an Art Deco feel.)

File Clerk JNL was based on Cushing, a typeface found within the pages of the 1901-02 Pettingill & Co. (Boston) specimen book, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

A classic late nineteenth-century face from the Dickinson Type Foundry of Boston. Both versions of this font support the Latin 1262, Central European 1250, Turkish 1254 and Baltic 1257 codepages.

Adso was born out of a research that studied the possibility of reintroducing Gothic writing in our contemporary world. Inspired by Textura, Adso was decidedly freed of all those little details that make Blackletter faces appear foreign or even displeasing to the contemporary reader’s eyes. Nevertheless, the basic features of Gothic color were preserved: verticality, modularity, and darkness. Adso is a gothic font for today’s age, highly readable and open to all fields of expression.

Inspired by Henry W. Troy, BLAQ is a new version of Trojan Text not available as font. Is an ornamental blackletter alphabet. Works great in headlines and other ‘masculine’ like design settings. The Victorian Gothic or Neo-Gothic is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England. Its popularity grew rapidly in the early nineteenth century. The revived Gothic style was not limited to architecture. We recommend to combine Blaq with: Turquoise Nautica

Morris Fuller Benton’s Eagle, designed for ATF in 1934, which did yeoman-like duty on many WPA posters of the time. This version, unicase as was the original, has been designed to set tight, so that it creates dense and commanding headlines. All versions of this font include the Unicode 1250 Central European character set in addition to the standard Unicode 1252 Latin set.

In 1994, John Benson designed Alexa, Caliban and Balzano, three typefaces with a similar style. Characteristic of all of them is their calligraphic touch and the likeness to handwriting. Alexa shows a hint of a broad tipped pen style and its legible figures are reserved yet lively. Alexa is best for short and midsized texts as well as headlines and gives texts a personal, classic look.