Transcribed from letters designed by Jan van Krimpen for The Curwen Press at Plaistow, London, in 1925; printed on pages 49, 51 & 53 of A Specimen Book of Types and Ornaments in Use at The Curwen Press (1928). A setting at 120 pt is recommended to match the size of the original.

Samuel Welo was a sign painter who had published in the 1920s and again in 1960 his “Studio Handbook – Letter and Design for Artists and Advertisers”, prolifically hand lettering all of the type style examples within the pages of the publication. In 1930 Welo also published “Lettering - Practical and Foreign”. From this book comes a thick-and-thin hand lettered Art Deco alphabet – now available digitally as Sightseeing Tour JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

The German Standards Committee suggested the light Neuzeit-Grotesk’ font in 1970 for use in official signage, traffic directional systems, etc. The typeface had been designed by Wilhelm Pischner and appeared with the font foundry D. Stempel in 1928. The font Neuzeit Grotesk was once the standard in the print industry, as a timeless typeface with no real distinguishing features. Like other typefaces of the 1920s, DIN Neuzeit Grotesk reflects the philosophy of the times, Form is Function.’

A sheet music edition of an early 1900s song entitled "You Taught Me How to Love You, Now Teach Me to Forget" was hand lettered in a free-form Art Nouveau style that combined varying line widths and character shapes. This unrestricted style of lettering was popularly embraced and revived by the hippie counterculture of the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s through their rock concert posters, record album covers and tee shirt graphics. It is now available digitally as Nouveau Artiste JNL. As a side note, a 1940s reprint of the sheet music was done in a popular metal typeface, which was also redrawn digitally and available as Elite Resort JNL [in both regular and oblique versions].

A 1920s magazine featuring behind-the-scenes stories about the motion picture industry had its name [“Shadowland”] lettered in an Art Nouveau sans serif style. This has been recreated digitally as Movie Nouveau JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Designed by W.A. Parker in 1928, Modernistic is a headline face with a 1920s Art Deco appeal. Use the Modernistic font for posters and packaging.

Nouveau Era JNL was adapted from the title of a hand-lettered advertisement found on the back of a 1920s-1930s piece of vintage sheet music.

Samuel Welo was a sign painter who had published in the 1920s and again in 1960 editions of his “Studio Handbook – Letter and Design for Artists and Advertisers”. In-between, in 1930 Welo also published “Lettering - Practical and Foreign”. Within the pages is an Art Deco outline slab serif design using multiple thin lines to create an “incised” or “engraved” look within the characters. This intriguing type style is now available as Guest Invitation JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Hollywood Revue JNL gets its design inspiration and name from a vintage movie poster for "The Hollywood Revue of 1929". The letter style shows early Art Deco influences, yet the hand lettering was done in the late 1920s toward the end of the Art Nouveau period. MGM produced this early "talkie" all-star musical with a cast that included Jack Benny, John Gilbert, Conrad Nagel, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Polly Moran and many others. This is the motion picture where Cliff ("Ukelele Ike") Edwards introduced "Singin' in the Rain" (composed by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown). Years later, Freed was a producer at MGM and gathered up many of the songs he and Brown wrote during the 1920s to form the musical core of the 1952 Gene Kelly-Debbie Reynolds-Donald O'Conner musical "Singin' in the Rain".

At first glance, Transcendental JNL looks like a 1960s or 1970s-era "Hippie" type face, hence its "love generation" name. However, the actual inspiration comes from a piece of sheet music from the early 1900s with Art Nouveau influences. It is often proven that what goes around certainly does come around in art, fashion and lettering. Transcendental JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Josef Albers drew a stencil sanserif form at the Bauhaus in 1923 (published in 1926); Paul Renner and the Bauer design office made a similar design into a typeface in 1929, and rather confusingly included it in the Futura series. Many websites erroneously attribute the stencil design to Josef Albers, but there is no evidence that the two met or collaborated on Futura Black. In 1929 Josef Albers and Jan Tschichold corresponded on the “Transito” typeface (another very similar stencil typeface, while Paul Renner was working with Jan Tschichold.

Love songs are the perennials of music, outlasting all other popular fads and styles that come and go. The 1920s through the 1940s is considered by some to be the Golden Age of the American love song. Thousands upon thousands of copies of popular sheet music sold, and the cover lettering and art on many titles were from some of the finest illustrators of their time. Love Song JNL recreates the Art Deco-flavored design found on one such piece of sheet music from the 1930s.

A handsome German art deco design that fits in well with other types of the 1920s and 1930s. Originally without a lowercase, so we drew one for it, extending its usefulness.

Moving Van JNL is a classic sign painter's block Roman with angled [instead of rounded] corners and slab serifs. This style of lettering was most popular in the 1920s and 1930s.

Roundpoint Pen JNL is based on instructional lettering found in an old Speedball® Pen textbook. The effect of a round nib pen letter evokes the charm of the 1920s or 1930s.

Quite Animated JNL is based on hand-lettered Art Deco titling for a 1930 advertisement promoting a group of Columbia Pictures cartoons featuring George Herriman's "Krazy Kat". Available in regular and oblique versions.

RosarGrad is a simple but elegant calligraphic face with six style: plain, italic, medium, medium italic, bold, and bolditalic. It was inspired by hand lettering on a graduation picture from the late 1960s.

An original typeface designed for ParaType in 2004 by Armenian designer Manvel Shmavonyan. Based on the lettering created in 1970s by outstanding Armenian type designer Henrik Mnatsakanyan (1923-2001) of the same name. In Armenian 'Bardi' means 'Poplar'. Extra compressed decorative stenciled typeface. Its letterforms resemble many Neo-Classicism extra compressed faces and magazine lettering of the 1950s-60s. For use in advertising and display typography especially in magazine headlines and logos.

A new font inspired by vintage hand-painted paper 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 Plug is perfect for both vintage-inspired and contemporary marketing, branding, and packaging designs. It's a classic workhorse font from the 1950s thru 1970s. Check out a few of the samples included in the thumbnails to see what can be done with it.

Ebbets JNL is a variant of Jeff Levine's Base Runner JNL, with more of a 1930s-1940s feel.

Sheet music for the 1910 composition "Good-By Betty Brown" has its title hand lettered in a thick and thin, condensed sans serif design reminiscent of lettering found in later comic strips and books of the 1930s and 1940s. Transcending both the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles, Funny Papers JNL gets its name from the slang reference Americans of the early 20th Century gave the Sunday comics pages in their local newspapers, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Zagolovochnaya was based on the letterforms of Zagolovochnaya gazetnaya (Newspaper Display) type family of Polygraphmash in 1962 by Iraida Chepil et al. The face was a revival of Cyrillic version of Caslon designed in the late 1930s. The artworks of Zagolovochnaya gazetnaya were redrawn by Isay Slutsker (1924-2002) in the late 1990s. In spite of its name the font is useful both for display and text matter. The digital version was developed for ParaType in 2002 by Manvel Shmavonyan.

Ching Mang is a cartoon character created by Hajime Kawakami for a magazine in Japan in the 1980s. This picture font features various expressions of this fun creature. It features solid and outline variations for multi-color overlay effects in layout.

A picture of some cast metal letters in a 1950s architectural signage catalog was the basis for Window Dressing JNL. The clean, simple lines as well as the unusual letter form of the B and R inspired this digital interpretation.

First presented by the Bauer Type Foundry in 1928, Futura is commonly considered the major typeface development to come out of the Constructivist orientation of the Bauhaus.movement in Germany. Paul Renner (type designer, painter, author and teacher) sketched the original drawings and based them loosely on the simple forms of circle, triangle and square. The design office at Bauer assisted him in turning these geometric forms into a sturdy, functioning type family, and over time, Renner made changes to make the Futura fonts even more legible. Its long ascenders and descenders benefit from generous line spacing. The range of weights and styles make it a versatile family. Futura is timelessly modern; in 1928 it was striking, tasteful, radical - and today it continues to be a popular typographic choice to express strength, elegance, and conceptual clarity. The PL Futura Maxi font family was created by Victor Caruso in 1960 to add more display weights to Paul Renner's 1927 Futura family. Typefaces in the same style like Futura are: Avenir, Metromedium, Neuzeit Grotesk,

A piece of sheet music for “Broken Blossoms” circa the 1920s or early 1930s has its cover title hand lettered in a wide thick-and-thin Art Deco design. This is now available as Flower Shop JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

The model for Bensonhurst JNL was a 1930s-era hand-lettered WPA (Works Project Administration) poster for the play "Hell Bent For Heaven". Although the basic style is a classic Art Deco "thick and thin" format, the design (in certain characters) starts to take on the feel of a 1970s revival style. With this in mind, Bensonhurst JNL is a bit of a hybrid between the 1930s and the 1970s.

Although the early 1900s through the 1920s seemed to be the "Golden Age" of ridiculously long novelty song titles, it appears that even the decade of the 1940s had its fair share as well. Song Merchant JNL was modeled from the hand lettered [but exhausting] title of the sheet music for "Princess Poo-Poo-Ly Has Plenty Pa-Pa-Ya (and she Loves to Give it Away)". Despite the obvious double-entendre inferences of the title, the square block letters with rounded corners make for a useful headline font (even if the source material it was drawn from is quite forgettable). Available in regular and oblique versions.

Inspired by the typefaces used for company insignia on aircraft in the 1930's and 1940's, Streamliner is light, friendly and open.

The look and feel of pen lettering is captured in this nostalgically-styled font from Jeff Levine. Add a touch of the 1920's or 1930's to your projects with Pendraw JNL to evoke the look of old-time show cards and signs.

Linotype Bix Plain, from Argentinian designer Victor Luis Garcia, is part of the Take Type Library, chosen from the entries of the 1999 International Digital Type Design Contest for inclusion on the Take Type 3 CD. The font is composed exclusively of capital letters. The figures have constructed basic forms and show the influence of the advertisement types of the 1920s, with all their well-mannered details. The lower sections of the graceful letters are white and set against a black background, the upper sections are black on white. This makes the overall picture look as though written on stripes and gives the delicate letter stability. The nostalgic-modern Linotype Bix Pleain is best for headlines in point sizes of 18 or larger.

Cardboard Cutouts JNL is a blocky sans serif font re-drawn from some old "kiddie" stencils from the 1950s or 1960s acquired by Jeff Levine.

The range of subtle differences in the many different sized lettering stencils of the 1940s and 1950s allows for a wonderful library of authentic-looking stencil fonts. Storage JNL is another Roman (serif) type design by Jeff Levine and modeled from a 1950s stencil set.

Figuratika with its cut out letters is a bold geometric Art Deco inspired stencil font with a retro 1920 1930 feeling. It was designed as a display font and is best for shorter texts, titles, logos, posters etc. Figuratika has multilingual support for most European languages.