A style of die-cut cardboard letters and numbers used for signs, displays and show cards was the basis for Haute Couture JNL, an Art-Deco flavored typeface from Jeff Levine. A direct cousin to Signboard JNL, this font shares some similar characteristics in letterforms. Both styles of die-cut lettering were manufactured by a number of companies, and were most popular from the 1940s through the mid-1960s.

Three Day Pass JNL is another addition to the large collection of stencil fonts from Jeff Levine. This design was based on a 1980s clone of a popular lettering guide first sold in the 1950s. To the untrained eye, many of the stencil designs look the same - but there are subtle nuances in the shapes of the letters and numbers that makes each font unique and slightly different.

The first photo-typesetting machine in operation, the Uhertype, was introduced in 1925. It was a combination of manual phototypesetting machine and make-up machine. The machine’s typefaces were designed by Jan Tschichold. The patents on Uhertype were bought up at the time to prevent the invention of filmsetting spreading. Jan Tschichold has been very influenced by Gill Sans (1928) for this humanistic sans serif drawn in 1933/36 for Uhertype.

This reinterpretation of Caslon Rounded showcases one of the early attempts of type foundries to create a novelty ‘rounded’ typeface for general use. While the lettering might easily convey a more modern look of 1960s or 1970s pop typography, its roots definitely lay in the later part of the 19th Century and the heyday of wood type design. Wood Rounded JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Inspired by a retro Art Deco poster as well as many of the true classic Art Deco type designs of the 1930s and 1940s, Deco Revisited JNL is a bold, black, stencil-influenced design with no counters. Although being a contemporary design, its use in any retro project will truly evoke a feeling for the “streamline” era. Deco Revisited JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

From the pages of a small book entitled “A Portfolio of Alphabet Designs for Artists, Architects, Designers & Craftsmen” [Irene K. Ames, 1938] comes a bold Art Deco sans poster display face. The digital version is called Throughway JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions. [To note, throughway (or sometimes spelled thruway) is a popular term from the 1950s and 1960s for a major road or highway.]

A popular hobby in the 1950s and 1960s was creating your own wallets, belts and other items from leather do-it-yourself kits. Stamped or carved initials, names or phrases were often added to the leather with special tools and templates - many featuring a Western-styled alphabet with a hand-lettered look. Leathercrafter JNL recreates that same look in a digital font format, complete with the unusual and contrasting letter shapes.

The Federal Art Project of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) employed artists to create posters for various subjects including health, tourism, safety, patriotism, theater and the arts during the Great Depression years of the 1930s on through the early 1940s. One health-related poster had the word “against” in a thin Art Deco monoline which served as the basis for Wellness JNL, which is available in regular and oblique versions.

At one time, the Hampton Publishing Company of New York specialized in producing reading and activity books for children. The “Letters and Numbers Stencil Book” (probably from the late 1940s or early 1950s) was the basis for Kiddie Stencil JNL. This bold sans serif type style replicates the handmade steel rule dies used for cutting the stencil pages of the book, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

A period piece is something of or pertaining to a specific era or time. Anything evoking a knowledge or feeling of an era can be labeled as such. The aptly named type font Period Piece JNL reflects the hand lettering found on the cover of early 20th century vintage sheet music entitled "My Baby's Arms" (from the stage production of "Ziegfeld Follies of 1919"). Although strongly akin to the coming Art Deco movement in its lettering style, Period Piece JNL still contains a strong influence of the Art Nouveau era of the 1900s through the 1920s.

Inspired by the hand-painted paper signs typically seen in grocery stores during the 1920s to 1970s. This is now available in a digital format that still has the appearance and feel of hand-painted letters. Take a look at a few samples in the thumbnails to see what you can do with them. Local Groceries comes with a combination pairing font. It combines both regular and script fonts. Local Groceries is suitable for vintage and contemporary marketing, branding, merchandise, and packaging designs. Features: Uppercase & Lowercase Numerals & Punctuation Alternates and Ligatures Multilanguage Supports 60+ Latin based languages

Don’t let the name “Trippy Hippie JNL” fool you. Although the type design fits well with the 1960s-70s hippie movement and the “love generation”, the design is actually straight out of a page from a vintage German lettering textbook entitled “50 Alphabete fur Technikur und Fachschulen” (loosely translated to “50 Alphabets for Technicians and Specialized Schools”). The novelty, free form shapes and stroke weights of this hand lettered alphabet fits well in creating 1920s period pieces or for designing a retro-inspired rock and roll concert poster. Trippy Hippie JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Architype Konstrukt is a collection of avant-garde typefaces deriving mainly from the work of artists/designers of the inter-war years, whose ideals have helped to shape the design philosophies of the modernist movement in Europe. Due to their experimental nature character sets may be limited. Architype Aubette is based on Theo van Doesburg’s 1928 signage lettering for the Café Aubette in Strasbourg. A collaborative project with Jean and Sophie Arp, the design and decoration of the entire restaurant and leisure complex was one of the largest projects to exemplify 1920s avant-garde, and the theories of Dutch De Stijl.

Wade Sans Light was designed by Paul Hickson and Key Characters and appeared in the ITC library in 1990. The basic forms of the font are those of a constructed sans serif, as seen in the circular O and triangular A. The low x-height of the lower case letters make this font particularly reserved and graceful and the high ascenders give it a certain elegance. The high, wide capitals need a lot of space and dominate the overall look of this font. Wade Sans Light is reminiscent of the elegant cabarets of the 1920s and 30s.

Platinus Script Pro is the latest example of what has now become a Sudtipos tradition: Adapting conventional calligraphic methods from the last two centuries to produce modern digital scripts for the current one. This time the resulting font explores the evolution of invitation scripts from the classic commercial lettering of the 1930s to the ideas clearly visible in the greeting cards of the 1980s and 1990s. Most base characters are made up of a single stroke, with some of the strokes driven from the top down, and some from the bottom up, putting the emphasis on the casual but precise fluidity of the hand, an emphasis magnified by the expert use of loops and swashes everywhere. The Platinus Script Pro family comes in two weights, each loaded with alternates and Latin-based langauge support, for more than 570 characters per font. Platinus Script Pro is great for product packaging, as well book covers, menus and greeting cards.

A set of model sketches was designed by Arevik Shmavonyan in 2007 for ParaType. The font includes pictures of woman fashion dresses designed for real manufacturing. Fashion-plate font may be interesting to modern fashion magazines. Also these pictures may use as illustrations and for advertising matter.

Please Note: as this is a picture-only font, there are no latin alpha/numeric glyphs. Each wood type manufacturer had their own selection of original Logotypes or Catchwords designs. These are taken right from the original source material, an extremely rare 1910 catalog of an English wood type maker called Day & Collins in London. As the name says it, these words are intended to attract attention, to spice up posters, packaging or advertisement designs. I made these available for the digital age, leaving the original texture of printed wood type at the highest detail possible.

The lettering for Stencil Box JNL was found on the packaging of a children's toy stencil set circa the 1940s. Popular for years, Pencil Stencils were a series of "connect the line" stencils where a series of dashed lines were traced from the cutouts and the lines connected to complete pictures of animals or other subjects. Although the packaging itself was often updated to reflect the current times during the life of the product, it was this hand-lettered example of stencil-meets-Art Deco from the 40s that proved worthy of saving as a digital typeface.

Emil Rudolf Weiss’s 1920s Antiqua font family redrawn and redesigned for nowadays use.

Neo Neo is the work of British designer Timothy Donaldson, a type style straight out of a 1950s time capsule. It can be set in all caps or a mixture of capitals and lowercase. The casual, slightly condensed forms with their smooth, soft lines are reminiscent of highway diners and motel ads of the time and convey a bright, inviting mood.

Arioso was a part of the 1990 program Type before Gutenberg, which included the work of twelve contemporary font designers and represented styles from across the ages. The calligraphic style of Arioso stems from an early form of Old Face developed in the 14th and 15th centureis in Italy. It is a mixture of Roman capitals and Carolingian lower case.

Elegant settings perfect for framing gems, words, quotes, text and pictures. 72 characters.

Telegrafo was developed from a couple of words on a 1920s telegram from Argentina.

It seems that after the 1960s, very few display typefaces were being produced that had the desirability to transcend generations, as did many type designs of the past. In 1970, a local television station embraced a lettering style for its logo that was a cross between round point pen nib lettering and the modular, techno look complete with squared characters in a futuristic "space age" style. News Crew JNL was inspired by the few examples found of this particular font [in use by the station at the time] and was pretty much created from scratch in order to capture the 1970s era of experimental typography. It is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Chet was inspired by the lettering on the signs of American diners and gas stations in the 1950s and 60s. It is not a mere reprint of nostalgic signage letters, however. This typeface retains the boldness, uniqueness, and strength of this era, while adding a modern touch that makes it feel comfortable to use today. It is highly readable even from a distance, making it perfect for signs, posters, and website headers. Chet can also be used as a base for creating logotypes because of the unique forms of the a, n, and r. The typeface is named after Chet Baker, the jazz trumpeter who was active between the 1950s and 1970s.

Duktus is a script typeface with a 1940’s flavour. It is a delicate script with letters not quite connected, having large, flourished capitals and small lowercase with long ascenders and descenders. It has a crisp, precise appearance, but is not rigidly formal. The design was inspired by the typeface Donatello by Wagner & Schmidt in 1935 and published by Società Nebiolo, Torino. Some other Influences: 1927 Trobadour by Wagner & Schmidt 1927 Liberty Script by Willard T. Sniffin 1933 Trafton Script by Howard Allen Trafton, 1937 Coronet designed by Robert Hunter Middleton Duktus fonts come with plenty of alternates small caps, old style numerals, ornaments and swashes. They include also CE language support.

Electric Eden is a strikingly retro font that oozes nostalgia and vintage vibes. This font is reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s, with its bold and vibrant curves that exude an electric energy. The font's name is derived from the famous rock festival of the 1970s, and its design is a tribute to that era. The letters have a hand-drawn feel, giving it a touch of personality and uniqueness. The Electric Eden font is perfect for designing posters, album covers, and other creative projects that require a bit of edginess and flair. With its vibrant colors and eye-catching design, this font is sure to transport you back in time to the heyday of rock and roll.

The Tempo font family was designed by R. Hunter Middleton and released between 1930 and 1931. The instant success of Futura in 1927 led to many similar designs, and Tempo is the version produced by the Ludlow foundry for large headlines in newpapers. Like Futura, Tempo font is basically geometric, but shows some humanistic influence. Tempo is popular for newspaper and commercial printing, and the heavy condensed font is excellent for headlines.

The distinguishing characteristics of this typeface were suggested by cover artwork for the May 1930 issue of Inland Printer: a combination of caps based on Breda Gotisch, released by H. Berthold AG in 1928, and a lowercase based on Goudy Text. The result is a remarkably elegant and retro-stylish blackletter face. Both versions of the font contain the complete Latin 1252 character set plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

Grand Central JNL is named for the most luxurious train depot in the nation—Grand Central Station in New York City. This multi-line Art Deco font is reminiscent of all of the glitz and glamour associated with Manhattan in the 1930s and 1940s. Modeled from Jeff Levine's Parkitecture JNL, its roots go back to the popular typeface best known as Eagle—a lettering design most associated with the NRA posters of the Depression era.

Gravure was designed by Morris F. Benton in 1927 for American Type Founders and was also released in 1929 by the London foundry of C. W. Shortt. This luminous face has a slightly naïve charm seldom found in incised typefaces. Ornamental and engaging, it’s a perfect choice for headlines with warmth and grace. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin and 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan) character sets.

Kauhuaatos is a writable picture font, ideal for scaring anybody by text or prints.

This is a picture font of Arts And Crafts style and Art Nouveau style ornaments.

ITC Bauhaus was designed by Edward Benguiat and Victor Caruso in 1975. They based it on a prototype face drawn by Herbert Bayer in 1925 while he was teaching at the Bauhaus School in Dessau, Germany. ITC Bauhaus has simple geometric shapes and monotone stroke weights. The rounded, open forms and quirky geometric gyrations of ITC Bauhaus will make contemporary graphic designs look both fun and stylish.

Bourget is a Display-Sans, which is inspired by the Art Déco Typo­graphy of the 1920´s, 1930´s years. It has a very characteristic and unique style by its thin line through every letter. The upright and italic versions have each 750+ Glyphs with Open Type Features, playful Ligatures and a lot of Alternates as Stylistic Sets. So there is a lot to discover and to play around with. Bourget is good to use for Branding, Signage, Packaging, Invitations, Advertising, Headlines, Displays, Magazines, Book titles or everything you want to use it for. Bourget has an extended character set to support 219 latin based languages in 212 countries and Pinyin.

A new font inspired by vintage hand-painted paper grocery store signs. The Doorbuster Collection is based on retro hand-painted paper signs primarily seen in grocery stores from the 1920s through the 1970s. We meticulously hand-drew each font, modeling the spacing and uneven baseline found in vintage sign painting. The purposely organic ascenders and descenders, along with a huge set of ligatures/contextual alternates to avoid the same letters repeating when paired, give it a real hand-lettered look. Doorbuster Script is perfect for both vintage-inspired and contemporary marketing, branding, and packaging designs. Check out a few of the samples included in the thumbnails above.

The XStellaStern group consists of five fonts of stars, star-like pictures, and derivatives of them.

Originally designed by Sol Hess as just a roman and italic for Lanston Monotype, circa 1920-23.

This family takes its inspiration from two early Art Deco faces from Germany. The Normal version is based on Dynamo, designed by K. Sommer for Ludwig & Mayer in 1930, while the Narrow version is based on Stadion, designed by Erhard Grundeis for Die Schriftguß AG in 1929. Their common design motifs epitomize the Age of Streamline. Both versions include the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, with localization for Lithuanian, Moldovan and Romanian.