By the late 1920s, lettering and design had already begun to feel the influences of what would become the Art Deco Movement. The sheet music for the 1927 song "Without You Sweetheart" had its title hand lettered in a block style letter with rounded corners – with the exception of the 'S' and 'R' in "Sweetheart"; reflecting design elements of both styles. For consistency, those letters were changed to fit the rest of the design, and the result is the digital font College Nouveau JNL, available in both regular and oblique versions.

The vast resource of hand lettered vintage sheet music titles offers many interesting and unique variations on even the simplest styles of lettering. A simple thick-and-thin serif design circa the 1920s-1930s evokes a reminiscence of the Art Nouveau period combined with a touch of what was to come during the Art Deco era. Most charming is the fact this lettering is free of the formal rules and constraints of metal type, where designers are generally forced into conformity with uniform stroke widths, serif placements and character shapes.

The Teapot Dome scandal was a 1920s bribery scandal involving Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall. Fall leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming [along with some California reserves] at low rates with no competitive bidding. The San Francisco Examiner for Feb. 20, 1924 ran the two line headline “U.S. Senator Named as Oil Stock Speculator; Whitney to Face Quiz Today on Slush Fund”. The headline was set in a condensed, slightly squared sans serif typeface. This is now available as Special Edition JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Block-style typefaces make excellent sports-themed fonts, and Stadium JNL is no exception-- but this lettering style is also filled with nostalgia for decades past. Modeled from one of the many classic designs found in the Speedball® Lettering Textbook, this style of alphabet was quite popular in signage of the 1920s and 1930s. Stadium JNL fills the bill either way-- a font that is just as much at home on a gridiron or baseball diamond, or as lettering for a garage, warehouse or attention-getting ad copy.

Designed by Les Usherwood. Argus is a flared serif font family. Its analog form was designed by Les Usherwood (Typsettra) in the 1980’s, and Paul Hickson (P&P Hickson) and Steve Jackaman (ITF) designed the digital version exclusively for the Red Rooster Collection in 1992. Argus is an expressive, graceful typeface that was inspired by Baroque typography. Its diamond-shaped punctuation shares similarities with other glyphic typefaces, such as Arthur Baker’s ‘Baker Signet.’ The font family gives a beautiful gravitas to any project, whether it be packaging, motion picture, or magazines.

Black Drum is a rare revival typewriter face, made digital from analog samples gathered with great care by Coniglio Type. A time and place; type and life. Black Drum is contemporary designer type, made from the struck steel hammers of an Art Deco Period san serif face transferred from a mechanical 1926 custom editor Royal Portable typewriter. Anna Conroy of Type Heritage, LLC, Philadelphia comments on Black Drum and its new place in time today: “Wow! nice lookin’ face Joseph! —Perfect, somewhere between Cable; [Rudolph Koch, 1927] (which was about the first transatlantic telegraph cable) with its raised x-height; and Futura [Paul Renner, 1928]. Yup, it has that great “Monopoly Game” question mark -- and all on a period-piece typewriter! You should have no trouble grafting that sorely needed Euro symbol.” –And he very well did! Author: Joseph Coniglio Producer: Coniglio Type MyFonts debut: October 2021

Unique and decorative signage for many drive-ins, motels, food stores and other businesses of the 1940s had what was referred to as “privilege signs” provided by one of the major cola brands. Consisting of the brand’s emblem on a decorative panel, the remainder of the sign would carry the desired message of the storekeeper (such as “Drive-In”) in prismatic, embossed metal letters. Inspired by the Art Deco sans serif style of those vintage signs, Privilege Sign Two JNL recreates the type design in both regular and oblique versions. The typefaces are solid black, but adding a selected color and a prismatic effect from your favorite graphics program can reproduce the look and feel of those old businesses. This is a companion font to Privilege Sign JNL, which recreates the condensed sans serif lettering of other privilege signs from the 1950s and early 1960s.

Peter Behrens’ renowned art nouveau type from 1902 – with ornaments. Newly revised and neatly digitalized by Ingo Zimmermann In 1902, Peter Behrens (1869–1940), architect, designer and typographer, created a new ”German“ type which became very successful very quickly for the Rudhard’sche Gießerei (foundry which later became Gebr. Klingspor AG) in Offenbach am Main. It served, for example, as the official German type for the world expositions in 1904 and 1910. Behrens himself writes about the development of this type ”...For the actual form of my type, I took the technical principle of the Gothic script, the stroke of the quill feather. The proportions of height and width and the boldness of the strokes of the Gothic letters were also decisive for me in producing a German character. A cohesive character could be hoped for by avoiding all non-necessities and by strictly carrying out the design principle of holding the quill at an angle…“ By the way, when “long s” is activated, the typographically correct “round s” is automatically placed at the end of the word so that you need only pay attention to the correct s on syllable endings within words. When using “long s,” you must ensure the correct use of the rules for the Fraktur font: “round s” is always at the end of the word, also in compound words. For those of you who want to be even more correct, read the corresponding article in >> Wikipedia. Peter Behrens also drew matching ornaments for his typeface – we have likewise carefully revised these decorative touches and arranged them into a font. The "Behrens-Schrift" fits best on all topics that have something to do with art history or the time around 1900.

inspired by and advertise lettering publishing from 1920's

Doodles received honorable mention in U&lc's First Annual Type Design Competition in the Picture Category. Inspiration came from many long hours logged in corporate strategic planning meetings. Check out Doodles the Alphabet designed to compliment the Doodles picture font.

Shtozer is a retro-themed display typeface based on designs of 1960s and 1970s and additionally inspired by Cyrillic ornate lettering Vyaz. It comes in 8 weights, with 5 width variations each, all accompanied with respective obliques - making 80 styles altogether. Shtozer is a font family with extensive language coverage including Cyrillic script. It also contains numerous OpenType features and alternate glyphs to vivify the typesetting.

Honest draws inspiration from the serif fonts prevalent in print media during the 1970s and 1980s. Its letter shapes are well-suited for prominent uses like logos and striking headlines due to their distinctive style. The font's large x-height makes it suitable for tight leading in headlines. Honest offers a variety of options, including seven different weights and two styles: Standard and Italic.

Roadstar is a script designed in the style of the classic American advertising font from the 1940's-1950's. Roadstar is a retro brush-style script designed for logotype, packaging, posters, T-shirts, signage & design projects with a retro & vintage feel. Roadstar comes with two styles that both contain all upper and lower case characters, punctuation, numerals and mathematical operators, as well as all accented characters.

Here's a lettering style that just might be exactly on your wavelength. Add just the right dose of vintage freak-a-delia to your retro graphics with this original psychedelic-style design. Great for music posters, album graphics, book titles, etc. Evoke a warpy, wavy, whimsical vibe that harks back to the carefree 1960s or early 1970s era with Sixties Flashback; it's pure hippie, trippy fun!

From alphabets created for book illustrations in the 1970s to lettering created for a book jacket in the 1990s, the Mentor family of typefaces has developed along its own slow and circuitous path. Always present in its evolution, though, has been the influence of three 20th century design giants: Eric Gill, Reynolds Stone, and Hermann Zapf, as filtered through the meticulous sensibility of Michael Harvey.

Although less prevalent today, a cover charge was added to better class night clubs of the 1930s and 1940s to discourage patronage by people of questionable social graces. The general idea was that the lower strata of society (meaning the "average Joe" or "hoi polloi") would balk at paying an extra fee just for entrance to a place of good entertainment and fine dining.

Eckmannschrift is a redrawing based on original sketches and type specimens of the original 1900 Otto Eckmann typeface Eckmannschrift. It includes the original characters designed by Otto Eckmann not included in most modern releases of the font. Though it is a vintage typeface, it has found several popular resurgences of use over its 100 years in existence, including today's retro styles and psychedelic posters from the 1960s.

Balcony Seats JNL is a different take on Jeff Levine's Aisle Seats JNL. The original font was modeled from Redikut die-cut cardboard letters - used in the 1940's and 1950's for display and show card work). Although the basic letter shapes are similar, the horizontal stroke weights have been narrowed, providing a type variation with a classic Art Deco "thick and thin" look.

This typeface is inspired from the old display fonts that used to decorate the world around us, but just because we don't see such beautiful signage these days, doesn't mean we should lose the great typefaces used. Foreman is a condensed serif display typeface, with hard geometric lines inspired from fonts used in the 1930s and 1940s, and very much used by the American Art Deco movement.

Neue Rinjani is a all-caps sans serif with Wide Stretch contemporary typographic, vintage futuristic art-deco touch Streamline influence of the 1930s and 1940s. A mix from the old Euro-American signage/advertising letters and modern clean sans serif, carefully mousecrafted to bring you the genuine feel of the era. If you're into classic/vintage letter designs, then this typeface suits best for you.

The hand lettering found on a small catalog sheet for decorative decals from the 1930s-1940s era was the perfect source material for Crestview Six JNL. Handmade typefaces or signage from past decades offer a wonderfully humanistic change from the perfectly-crafted designs of printer's type (or digital type in the modern era). The font's name comes from the old alpha-numerical phone exchanges of the past.

Liturgisch was created by Otto Hupp for Klingspor foundry in 1906. The basis of this font is a publication in the magazine "Das Plakat" of October 1921. The font contains contextual alternates, ligatures, discretional ligatures for use in German, ornamental bullets and other OpenType features. It supports all the European languages using Latin alphabets (including slashed S and slashed longs used in Latvian old orthography till 1930s).

Karaoke JNL is one of the many alphabets created by the late Alf R. Becker that was showcased in Signs of the Times magazine from the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media (and who is the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio) for providing Jeff Levine the research material from which this font design was modeled.

With all of the stencil fonts created by Jeff Levine from various vintage sources, you would think everything had already been covered. Not so. Along comes Amateur Stencil JNL. Modeled from a child's stencil set from the late 1950's or early 1960's, it vaguely resembles Futura, but its irregular widths and semi-stencil appearance sets it off greatly from that classic typeface.

General Chang JNL is one of a number of fonts redrawn by Jeff Levine from the creative output of the late Alf R. Becker. Becker's alphabets were a monthly feature of Signs of the Times Magazine from the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media (who also is the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio) for the resource material.

A set of pictures on the subject of beer.

This is a picture font of various Christian symbols.

Broadway No2 is a decorative 1920s font published by SoftMaker.

Soprani is a unique typeface inspired by a plaque found in New Zealand dating from the 1920s. The design was contemporized and brought 100 years into the future. The serifs are dramatically flared at the end of the stems, while in the middle, they contract. This leads to a unique shimmering effect that draws the eye and catches your user's attention. This typeface meets the demand for unique serif types that are both eye-catching and delicate. It’s a display face that's ideal for very contemporary work. This typeface has plenty of alternates and has a full complement of OpenType features. The 1920s inspire the design, with a bit of art nouveau and arts and crafts, yet the typeface is designed to meet contemporary design requirements. It has a unique elegance and the letterforms are condensed more than most. Soprani is suggested for table books, menus, and various promotional materials, newspapers, television, motion pictures and other media. There is a wide range of widths and weights available, from the thin, which is delicate and graceful, to a bold and robust black. Production assistance by Lucas Azevedo and ikern.

Carnaby Street is a vintage style bold font that pairs strong rectangular framing with softer rounded elements. It has a cool, funky, and groovy vibe, while still retaining a strong sense of linearity and geometry. This lettering style conjures up the retro vibes of the 1960s swinging London scene, or the psychedelic poster art of posters and handbills for the Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco in the mid to late '60s. It represents a new take on a classic array of hand lettered stylings that have their roots both in the Art Nouveau Movement and the hippie counterculture movement of the 1960s and early 1970s.

For many decades, the fashion magazine “Vogue” featured superbly illustrated covers before photography became more commonplace. During the 1930s and 1940s those illustrations were accompanied by many creative styles of hand lettering for its monthly issues. The January, 1930 cover had the magazine’s name lettered in an Art Deco geometric monoline, which became the inspiration for Vagary JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. A vagary [in a simple sense] is when something or someone changes in an erratic or unexpected way (as the wind’s direction or in a person’s mood or whim)… and thus seemed the fitting name for this type style.

Sequel Geo is a geometric/neo-grotesque hybrid superfamily, influenced by formalized sans-serif typefaces from Germany and Swiss modernist type design—particularly Max Bill’s greek-styled lettering. 8 subfamilies and 120 individual fonts allow for a wide range of typographic expressions. Sequel Geo’s hallmark features, such as the circular “G” and punctuation, simple “t”, and two-story “a” turning one-story in bolder weights, persist throughout all styles. But it’s the formal and functional differences between subfamilies that let you really fine-tune your layouts. The three optical sizes of the core collection, “Body Text”, “Headline”, and “Display”, boast optimized spacing for the intended use. “Extended” packs some extra punch with 18 display-oriented styles. Finally, 48 “Graphic” styles in 4 subfamilies push to the Geometric side, replacing horizontal and vertical stroke endings with angular ones, simplifying letterforms. Sequel Geo is a journey through time and space. From 1920s Germany to 1950s Switzerland. All the while, its archetypal shapes are neutral yet confident, its appearance is classic.

The first cuts of Kabel appeared in 1927, released by the German foundry Gebr. Klingspor. Like many of the typefaces that Rudolf Koch designed for printing use, Kabel is a carefully constructed and drawn. The basic forms were influenced by the Ancient Roman stone-carved letters, which consisted of just a few pure and clear geometric forms, such as circles, squares, and triangles. Koch also infused Kabel with some elements of Art Deco, making it appear quite different from other geometric modernist typefaces from the 1920s, like Futura. Linotype has two versions of Kabel in its library. Kabel has a shorter x-height, with longer ascenders and descenders, making it a bit truer to Koch's original design than the second version, ITC Kabel, which was designed by Victor Caruso. This version, also known in the United States as Cable, has a larger x-height, shorter ascenders and descenders, more weights ,and a diamond shaped i-dot. Typefaces in the same oeuvre include Avenir Next, ITC Avant Garde Gothic, Metrolite, Metromedium, Metroblack, and Erbar, just to name just a few."

Here is a nice sign-painterly display font inspired by the 1920s.