Here is a boxy, extremely squared alternative to display designs like Eden or Glamour. In comparison, Centric Serif does not share the fragile and delicate nature of these old 1930s classics. Instead it is fairly robust with a splayed M and a simple flattop A. It is interesting to note that Centric Serif (unlike Centric Geo) sports serifs in exaggerated and curiously bizarre ways. Centric Serif is now available in the OpenType Std format. Some new stylistic alternates and historical forms have been added to this OpenType version. Advanced features work in current versions of Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

The “Trixy Toy Educator” was a 1930s-era set of letters and numbers (along with a few animal shapes) for teaching children, and was manufactured by the Durrel Company of Gardner, Massachusetts. Die cut from thick cardboard, the 40 piece set also included a rack to display the characters, presumably for little ones to practice the correct order of the alphabet and basic numerals or to spell simple words like ‘dog’ or ‘cat’. Whomever came up with the idea, they used the most rudimentary and unusual ‘type design’ shapes in the A-Z and 0-9, but they were just odd enough to inspire a digital type version of them. School Age JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Nevoclara is a Modern Vintage font with beautiful ligatures, with special alternative glyphs, and multilingual support. It is inspired by the decorative arts and architecture movement that originated in the 1920s and developed into a major style in the Western European United States during the 1930s. Nevoclara includes luxury glyphs that are made individually and carefully produced, the aim is to create a quality and elegance that is sleek and semi-modern that symbolizes the glory and sophistication of vintage. It combines modernist style with good craftsmanship. Nevoclara is perfect for your project and allows you to create designs, headlines, posters, logos, badges, t-shirts and many more that are beautiful. It is also best used for posts, logos, posters, certificates, labels and more.

Brosse is a family of slabserif faces which emphasise clarity and geometric cleanliness of line, in a 'Brave New World' sprit that harks back to the 1930s and possibly also to postwar rebuilding in the 1950s. Its clear legibility makes it ideal for poster work and titles, as well as for signage of any kind. Eight faces are offered, regular and italic, bold and bold italic, as well as a condensed face and a bold weight thereof. There are also two decorative forms- outline and embossed faces. All faces include a large character set and extensive Opentype features. A Demonstrater version of the regular face is also offered free of charge-this is fully licensed but has a signnificantly reduced character set.

Here is a boxy, extremely squared alternative to display designs like Eden or Glamour. In comparison, Centric Geo does not share the fragile and delicate nature of these old 1930s classics. Instead it is fairly robust with a splayed M and a simple flattop A. It is interesting to note that Centric Serif (unlike Centric Geo) sports serifs in exaggerated and curiously bizarre ways. Centric Geo is now available in the OpenType Std format. Some new stylistic alternates and historical forms have been added to this OpenType version. Advanced features work in current versions of Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

This workmanlike typeface is based on the Metro series, designed by William Addison Dwiggins in the 1930s for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. Its clean lines and balanced color make it suitable for text and headline work alike. Available in three weights, plus italics. All versions of this font contain the complete Unicode Latin A character complement, with support for the Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bosnian, Breton, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Finnish, Flemish, French, Frisian, German, Greenlandic, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Maltese, Maori, Moldavan, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Provençal, Rhaeto-Romanic, Romanian, Romany, Sámi, Samoan, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish and Welsh languages, as well as discretionary ligatures and extended fractions.

Newspeak is a display typeface based upon Soviet architectural forms from the Stalinist period (spanning the 1930s—'50s). Stalinist architecture is now considered unsightly and without aesthetic merit, yet it has a strange beauty, hinting at an unrealised utopia (while its function was to buttress a brutal dictatorship). Inspiration was also drawn from the Cyrillic alphabet which, to kids growing up in Western Europe in the '70s and '80s, was a cipher for an alternative way of living – Cyrillic letterforms represented the exotic, familiarity-twice-removed universe of Eastern Bloc states. When you visited a communist country you were confronted with unfamiliar typography that reinforced your sense of alienation and unease that there existed a real, if imperfect, working alternative to consumerism.

'Euclid. A New Type,' originally designed in the 1930s by modern American designer Alvin Lustig (1915-1955), has been revived as 'Lustig Elements' through a collaboration of designers Craig Welsh and Elaine Lustig Cohen. Only twelve letterforms from the original font design had been retained in archive material in the many decades since its initial development. Lustig Elements combines four simple, geometric shapes aligned to an underlying grid with letterform designs that hold true to the spirit of the original font. Lustig Elements initially came to life in 2015 as wood type cut at Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. The digital version expands on the basic character set with a pro expanded latin character set, small caps and even an Inline variation.

Gloriance is a classic serif font adapted from the art deco style, a visual style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. This font is characterized by bold geometric shapes, a symmetrical design, and a sense of modernity and glamour. Gloriance is designed to have a distinctive classic impression with the presence of decorative elements such as extended lines, neat and tidy decorative shapes and types. These decorative elements can add a sense of sophistication and luxury to text. With a wide selection of alternates and ligatures, you can create a variety of styles and play with this unique fonts. This typeface is perfect for an elegant logo, jewelry stuff, packaging, magazine design, fashion brand, classic stuff, poster, flyer, wedding invitation, quotes, or simply as a stylish text overlay to any background image.

Willard T. Sniffin designed this extra condensed art deco typeface for American Type Founders in 1932. Low-waisted capital letters curve in stunning geometric fashion next to large, oversized lowercase letters. The heart of this classic design is undeniably 1930s but it also looks just fine in contemporary situations. Many of the original alternate characters plus a few new ones have been included in this complete digital version. Newport Classic with Alternates is also available as an OpenType font. This version now contains small caps, lining and oldstyle figures, prebuilt fractions, stylistic alternates, word ornaments and a wide assortment of f-ligatures. These advanced features currently work in Adobe Creative Suite InDesign and Illustrator. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

Willard T. Sniffin deserves the credit for this charming little stationery and greeting card typeface developed for American Type Founders in 1930. Capital letters show an occasional hint of ornamentation and lowercase letters are of the linking variety. The original set of exquisite alternate characters (A,B,G,T,V, W, o, s) has been included in this digital version. Adonis Old Style is ideal where a 1920s or 30s script-like lettering look is required. Adonis Old Style with Alternates is also available in the OpenType Std format. Some new characters have been added to this OpenType version. Advanced features currently work in Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress 7. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

Mirabel is based on the handwriting of Beverly Bouwsma (Philip's mother), which she developed in the 1930s in, as she puts it, an act of teenage rebellion. In the 1960s, Philip gave her a broad-edged Osmiroid fountain pen which she took to immediately and has used ever since, along with the computer fonts he made from her script. Since Beverly Bouwsma mixed loops and straight ascenders, two interchangeable fonts have emerged, a formal package that sacrifices some flamboyance for classical balance and legibility, but retains the quality of the writing and celebrates the personality of its creator. The Mirabel fonts are available in all popular font formats, and the character sets cover a wide range of codepages, including Central and Eastern European languages, Esperanto, Turkish, Baltic, Celtic/Welsh.

Anyone old enough to remember either the radio or television version of “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” pictures Ozzie Nelson as the easygoing father figure who never seemed to have a real job – he was always hanging around the house. In truth, the handsome young Ozzie was a bandleader in the 1930s and 1940s and ended up marrying his ‘girl singer’, Harriet Hilliard. A piece of sheet music from 1933 for “You Have Taken My Heart” was one of the songs Nelson featured with his Columbia Broadcasting System Orchestra. The title was hand lettered in what can only be described as a slightly eccentric Art Deco Sans serif. Redrawn and cleaned up to reflect more uniform stroke weights, Bandshell JNL is now available in both regular and oblique versions.

"To us it ain't vandalism. It's just letting the people know: We grew up here. This is our neighborhood. And as they pass by they know where we're at." – Los Angeles gang member Graffiti is equivalent to local news, its intended purpose is to inform general populace where gang members are, where they operate, as far as territory lines, and which neighborhoods are at war. Gang Graffiti can be used for: – Marking territory with graffiti. – It's a form of gang advertisement. – Letting people know who's in the gang, living, dead, or in prison. – Which neighborhoods they are at war with. – Who are their allies. Graffiti has along history, specifically Los Angeles gang graffiti, which has has been around since the 1930s. South Central typeface includes uppercase letters, numbers, and select punctuation glyphs.

Electrostatic JNL was inspired by the 1930s lettering for radio station WMCA in New York City. It was found as part of an ad for the station in a 1932 radio broadcasting trade magazine. WMCA went on the air Feb. 6, 1925. According to Wikipedia, the "MCA" call letters stood for the Hotel McAlpin, where the station's original studio and transmitter were located. "W" is the call sign prefix for all broadcast stations East of the Mississippi River; with the exception of KDKA (Pittsburgh), which was the nation's first commercial radio station. This bold novelty typeface with lightning bolds intersecting the characters can be used to represent anything from electricity to stormy days; power generators to brute force and so forth. Electrostatic JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

This delicate condensed typeface evokes a distant 1930s style with its pointed and sloping capital letters. The splayed capital M gives the design a very a definite retro flavor. But deco quickly becomes modern day with the use of slab serifs. The thick body of Kingsbury Condensed is neatly anchored to long thin serifs giving the face an unusual and at the same time contemporary appearance. Great for book covers and large capital letter assignments where a modern revivalist look is appropriate. Kingsbury Condensed Book is also available in the OpenType Std format. Some new characters have been added to this OpenType version. Advanced features currently work in Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress 7. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

Joost Schmidt?s (1893?1948) name is undoubtedly connected with monolinear condensed letters of geometric appearance ? his unfinished draft of a stencil alphabet, constructed on grid paper in 1930, is much lesser known. These modular shapes simply consist of half circles, quarter circles and square strokes with half-round terminals. From just six original letterforms (a, b, c, d, e, g), Flavia Zimbardi completed Schmidt?s draft and extended it to a full character set for contemporary use, adding upper case letters and different figure sets including old-style. Joschmi overcomes legibility issues usually associated with this stencil style, with special attention to the design of white space. Zimbardi lends the face even more character by carefully adding round terminals in subtle spots of the alphabet, accessible through stylistic sets.

Houschka Rounded Alt is a carbon copy of the Houschka Rounded family with one key difference: the rounded signature glyphs A & W on the default positions swap places with their straight alternates. Houschka was named after Georg Houschka, a sadly defunct confectioner’s shop in Salzburg, Austria, which had a wonderful 1930s frontage and distinctively rounded letterforms in the sign above the door. OpenType features include CE, Baltic, Turkish & Cyrillic language support plus small caps, 3 stylistic sets, contextual alternates, ligatures and 4 sets of numerals. Houschka Rounded Alt is a clean and legible modern sans serif typeface which shares the humanist qualities of Gill Sans and Johnston but retains a uniquely charming character of its own. The monolinear structure, rounded terminals and rolling curves give Houschka Rounded Alt a soft and friendly appearance.

Neon Rounded is a rounded monoline typeface inspired by retro neon light bulbs often used in signage. Neon bulbs were first seen back in 1910 in Paris. They later became popular in 1930s New York, especially on Broadway and the Las Vegas strip. Although Neon Rounded was designed with eye-catching signs in mind, its possible usage is vast. Clothing brands, road signs, logos and advertising. The heavier weights lend themselves to children's books and toys, while the lighter weights provide a more modern, futuristic feel. The typeface contains lower and uppercases in five weights: Light, Regular, Medium, Semi-bold and Bold. There are also alternatives for most letters and all numbers. The glyph set includes all languages covered in Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement and Latin Extended-A scripts.

Born on May 8, 1892 in Reno Nevada, Lewis Franklin (“Lew” ) Hymers left an indelible mark as a caricaturist, cartoonist and graphic artist. At the age of twenty [in 1912] he worked for the San Francisco Chronicle. During World War I he worked for the Washington Post. He even was employed for a time by Walt Disney as an animator - but most of his life was spent in either Tujunga, California or his birthplace of Reno, Nevada as a self-employed illustrator. Hymers inked a feature for the Nevada State Journal called “Seen About Town”, which was published during the 1930s and 1940s. In this panel, he caricaturized many of the familiar faces around Reno. He also designed signs, logos, post cards and numerous other commercial illustrations for clients, but what has endeared him to a number of fans was his vast library of stock cuts (the predecessor to paper and electronic clip art) which feature his humorous characters in various professions and life situations. So popular is his work amongst those “in the know” that a clip art book collection of over seven hundred of his drawings that was issued by Dover Publications [but long out of print] commands asking prices ranging from just under $15 to well over $100 for a single copy. Lew Hymers passed away on February 5, 1953 just a few months shy of his 61st birthday. Although his artwork depicts the 1930s and 1940s lifestyles, equipment and conveniences, more than sixty years after his death they stand up amazingly well as cheerful pieces of nostalgia. The twenty-seven images (and some variants) in Hymers JNL were painstakingly re-drawn from scans of one of his catalogs and is but just a tiny fraction of the hundreds upon hundreds of illustrations from the pen of this prolific artist.

The typefaces Largo Mager (Light) and Largo Halbfett (Medium) were cast for the first time in 1937 by Ludwig & Mayer based on the designs by Hans Wagner. One weight Largo Licht (Outline) was added in 1956. All fonts were only configured with capitals. The digital version of Largo has pointed serifs and not the slightly rounded ones seen in the hot metal versions which gives the typeface a more elegant note. Largo is often used for fine printing jobs as business cards or formal invitations, or in the fashion and cosmetics fields. Hans Wagner was born in Munich in 1894 and died in 1977 in Altenburg where he had worked as a painter, graphic designer and book designer. In addition to the Largo typeface, he developed, among others, the Altenburger Gotisch (1928), the Welt-Antiqua (1931-1934) and the Wolfram (1930).

The successful Gill Sans® was designed by the English artist and type designer Eric Gill and issued by Monotype in 1928 to 1930. The roots of Gill Sans can be traced to the typeface that Gill's teacher, Edward Johnston, designed for the signage of the London Underground Railway in 1918. Gill´s alphabet is more classical in proportion and contains what have become known as his signature flared capital R and eyeglass lowercase g. Gill Sans is a humanist sans serif with some geometric touches in its structures. It also has a distinctly British feel. Legible and modern though sometimes cheerfully idiosyncratic, the lighter weights work for text, and the bolder weights make for compelling display typography. Gill Sans is also available as Value Pack for Macintosh, PC or as Hybrid CD with both platforms.

Dubrove is a wedge serif typeface inspired by Moravian (Czech) type designs of the 1930-50s. The character font is expressive: free, daring and graceful, delicious and attractive. Here are more than 1100 glyphs, all 102 European languages, all Ancient Slavic Alphabet (49 characters), Latin and Slavic small capitals and OpenType features with many solutions. Dubrove has several stylistic sets, historical forms, localized forms of several languages, interest contextual ligatures and many other delicacies. In the Dubrove typeface several stylistic sets of Slavonic lowercase letters are made. In addition to font basic style (in fact it is close to the natural lowercase character) is a traditional [ss02] set (postpreliminary, the Soviet Union, when most copy lowercase letters are uppercase) and lowercase the natural character [ss03], the style of which, in particular, is often used in the Bulgarian script.

Here is a profoundly delicate and graceful design that has its roots in art deco fashion. This elegant typeface is based on an old 1930s lettering style popularized by Carl Holmes in his wonderful book on the subject. Somewhat condensed with a very tall lowercase, Panorama carries itself beautifully. It is similar to such classics as Stellar and Optima with stems flaring slightly at the ends. Panorama has a great number of alternate capital, small capital, and lowercase characters including two sets of alternate figures. Panorama, Panorama Alts, and Panorama SC are also available in the OpenType Std format. Some new characters have been added to these OpenType versions. Advanced features currently work in Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress 7. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

The successful Gill Sans® was designed by the English artist and type designer Eric Gill and issued by Monotype in 1928 to 1930. The roots of Gill Sans can be traced to the typeface that Gill's teacher, Edward Johnston, designed for the signage of the London Underground Railway in 1918. Gill´s alphabet is more classical in proportion and contains what have become known as his signature flared capital R and eyeglass lowercase g. Gill Sans is a humanist sans serif with some geometric touches in its structures. It also has a distinctly British feel. Legible and modern though sometimes cheerfully idiosyncratic, the lighter weights work for text, and the bolder weights make for compelling display typography. Gill Sans is also available as Value Pack for Macintosh, PC or as Hybrid CD with both platforms.

The successful Gill Sans® was designed by the English artist and type designer Eric Gill and issued by Monotype in 1928 to 1930. The roots of Gill Sans can be traced to the typeface that Gill's teacher, Edward Johnston, designed for the signage of the London Underground Railway in 1918. Gill´s alphabet is more classical in proportion and contains what have become known as his signature flared capital R and eyeglass lowercase g. Gill Sans is a humanist sans serif with some geometric touches in its structures. It also has a distinctly British feel. Legible and modern though sometimes cheerfully idiosyncratic, the lighter weights work for text, and the bolder weights make for compelling display typography. Gill Sans is also available as Value Pack for Macintosh, PC or as Hybrid CD with both platforms.

The successful Gill Sans® was designed by the English artist and type designer Eric Gill and issued by Monotype in 1928 to 1930. The roots of Gill Sans can be traced to the typeface that Gill's teacher, Edward Johnston, designed for the signage of the London Underground Railway in 1918. Gill´s alphabet is more classical in proportion and contains what have become known as his signature flared capital R and eyeglass lowercase g. Gill Sans is a humanist sans serif with some geometric touches in its structures. It also has a distinctly British feel. Legible and modern though sometimes cheerfully idiosyncratic, the lighter weights work for text, and the bolder weights make for compelling display typography. Gill Sans is also available as Value Pack for Macintosh, PC or as Hybrid CD with both platforms.

The successful Gill Sans® was designed by the English artist and type designer Eric Gill and issued by Monotype in 1928 to 1930. The roots of Gill Sans can be traced to the typeface that Gill's teacher, Edward Johnston, designed for the signage of the London Underground Railway in 1918. Gill´s alphabet is more classical in proportion and contains what have become known as his signature flared capital R and eyeglass lowercase g. Gill Sans is a humanist sans serif with some geometric touches in its structures. It also has a distinctly British feel. Legible and modern though sometimes cheerfully idiosyncratic, the lighter weights work for text, and the bolder weights make for compelling display typography. Gill Sans is also available as Value Pack for Macintosh, PC or as Hybrid CD with both platforms.

The font is based on an alphabet from a mid1920s art deco book. The original seemed to have tapering strokes but it was too small to be sure; I made all strokes parallel & orthogonal and slightly modified the original in a number of other ways to bring it into the 21st Century. The designers of the original were Paul Carlyle and Guy Oring. Nocturne has all the elegance of the Deco fonts of the 1930s. It recalls the romantic, sophisticated Zeitgeist of the early 20th century, that nostalgic time "between the wars". Nocturne comes in two styles: Nocturne Regular, which uses the Art Deco convention of small x height, and long ascenders. This style is perfect for headers, posters, labels etc. Nocturne Book, which, with its higher x height and slightly wider characters, is extremely legible and suitable for small size text.

The successful Gill Sans® was designed by the English artist and type designer Eric Gill and issued by Monotype in 1928 to 1930. The roots of Gill Sans can be traced to the typeface that Gill's teacher, Edward Johnston, designed for the signage of the London Underground Railway in 1918. Gill´s alphabet is more classical in proportion and contains what have become known as his signature flared capital R and eyeglass lowercase g. Gill Sans is a humanist sans serif with some geometric touches in its structures. It also has a distinctly British feel. Legible and modern though sometimes cheerfully idiosyncratic, the lighter weights work for text, and the bolder weights make for compelling display typography. Gill Sans is also available as Value Pack for Macintosh, PC or as Hybrid CD with both platforms.

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.

Le Havre is a geometric sans serif inspired by the golden era of the passenger ship, when getting to your destination was a delight in and of itself. Compressed capitals, a low x-height and geometric construction give this art deco inspired sans a unique look that looks to the past for inspiration, but is a new contemporary design usable in a wide range of graphic settings. Le Havre features eighteen art deco titling alternates, ligatures and old style figures. Le Havre is named for the port where many a famous luxury cruise liner was launched in the 1930s. One of the best examples of art deco luxury cruise liner advertising can seen in the famous poster advertising the SS Normandie by the French designer Adolphe Mouron Cassandre. In 2009 the Le Havre series was updated with a new thin weight and Le Havre Rounded.

Dignus was inspired in two clever and famous typefaces: Bank Gothic and Microgramma. Bank Gothic designed by Morris Fuller Benton for ATF in 1930. Microgramma typeface designed by Alessandro Butti and Aldo Novarese for Nebiolo in 1952. Those typefaces were based on a stable rectangular shape with rounded corners, denoting the constructivist heritage and technological spirit of '50. We'd intended to review that typographic scenery with our contemporary point of view, aiming to obtain the formal synthesis of the signs and increase its legibility. Dignus fonts support Central, Eastern and Western European languages. Each font comes with full OpenType features like: standard and discretional ligatures, swashes, stylistic alternates, old style numerals, Tabular figures, numerators, denominators, scientific superior - inferiors, Case sensitive forms and vectors. The Dignus fonts include 7 weights, from Thin to ExtraBlack. The family is completed with condensed and expanded version all with their corresponding italics.

Mountain is a digital revival and extension of Teutonia, an old metal typeface released by the Roos & Junge type foundry (Offenbach am Main, Germany) in 1902. Teutonia’s design was popular during both the Art Nouveau and the Constructivist eras, where similar letterforms could be seen as far away as the Soviet Union. Although it slipped under the radar during the 1930s and 40s, this style feels extremely contemporary today. Mountain’s underlying geometric feeling is reminiscent of pixels and grids, suiting it for application with music and art, as well as history. Yet this typeface is not as static as it seems at first glance; playful diagonals—like those seen on the capitals D, L, P, and W—enliven the otherwise stern horizontal and vertical motion. Teutonia was a simple upper and lowercase display type. Mountain adds upon these by adding small caps and obliqued italic companions, rounding out this typographic toolkit.

ITC Wisteria was designed by Michael Stacey, a Florida-based artist and graphic designer. An ardent collector and recycler of vintage graphic design and typography, Stacey is especially intrigued by the lettering styles of sign painters and show-card lettering artists from the days when most display typography was hand-rendered. ITC Wisteria is one such style, taken from the 1930s, which he has updated for digital imaging. His goal was to retain the loose, casual feel of handlettering, while imparting what he calls “the crisp finish of current precision typography.” Like the plant it was named after, ITC Wisteria is both rugged and beautiful. The design is a constructed brush script that successfully melds the strength and dynamism of strong character shapes with the grace of script letterforms. The split-brush strokes, although obviously constructed, also impart a sense of immediacy to the design.

Aviator, also known as Ventura Slim, is based on an old 1930s lettering style popularized by Carl Holmes in his wonderful book on the subject. Angular and at the same time aerodynamic, this low-waisted typeface is great for tight-fitting headlines and other condensed titling situations. You may find it equally useful in developing company logos with a truly retro look. This resurrected digital version of Aviator comes with a convenient and stylish set of alternate characters and small figures. Now enjoy your flight! Aviator is now available in the OpenType Std format. Some new characters have been added to this OpenType version including stylistic alternates and historical forms. These advanced features work in current versions of Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

Archie is a wide attention-grabber based on a simple geometric alphabet drawn in the early 1930s by Dutch calligrapher and lettering artist Martin Meijer. This digital family expands considerably on the original letters, adding biform shapes, small caps, italics across the board, and support for many Latin-based languages. Archie's eye-catching forms are meant for clear, seamless and strong message delivery. In its upright styles, strong vertical strokes emphasize the sense of confidence and importance, and in its italics, that emphasis is further affirmed by a natural sense of urgency. This kind of alphabet is perfect for display typography aiming at the glance-and-go crowd. When used properly and placed prominently, no eye can escape it. The basic Archie family is comprised of six basic fonts, while the Pro set combines all three uprights in one font and all three italics in another.

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.

The Charles Bluemlein Script Collection is an intriguing reminder of the heady days of hand lettering and calligraphy in the United States. From the early 1930s through World War II, there were about 200 professional hand letterers working in New York City alone. This occupation saw its demise with the advent of photo lettering, and after digital typography, became virtually extinct. The odd way in which the Bluemlein scripts were assembled and created - by collecting different signatures and then building complete alphabets from them - is a fascinating calligraphic adventure. Because the set of constructed designs looked nothing like the original signatures, fictitious names were assigned to the new script typefaces. The typeface styles were then showcased in Higgins Ink catalogs. Alejandro Paul and Sudtipos bring the Bluemlein scripts back to life in a set of expanded digital versions, reflecting the demands of today’s designer. Extreme care has been taken to render the original scripts authentically, keeping the fictitious names originally assigned to them by Bluemlein.

Based on a Monotype 1930s condensed poster typeface, Placard Next is bursting with personality. Unexpected details appear throughout the design, from its wedged diagonals and single storey a to its round tittles – which would more ordinarily be square, and mechanical. The warmth and quirkiness of its character really shines through when set at larger sizes, making this a typeface for posters, headlines, and anywhere else designers need to make a statement. Designer Malou Verlomme has paid particular attention to the typeface's 'word images', further amping up its impact, and added some vintage flavor with Placard Next Round. As well as a striking display typeface, Placard Next's four widths and six weights – hairline to bold - mean it's a versatile design, that can be adapted for use in almost any environment. The complete family contains 48 fonts: 24 in Placard Next and 24 in Placard Next Round. It includes a large multilingual character set.