Barricade JNL is Jeff Levine's take on an old favorite that's been around since at least the 1940s.

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).

Robert Hunter Middleton drew the original design of Stellar for the Ludlow Typograph Company in Chicago. Work began in the late 1920s, when Middleton was asked to create a sans serif type family to compete with European imports of Futura and Kabel. Stellar was Middleton's attempt to raise the ante. Where Futura and Kabel were geometric in design and monotone in weight, Stellar was based on roman character proportions and stroke weighs were stressed. In the late 1990s, Dave Farey took on the task of reviving the Stellar design. While Ludlow cut Stellar in a full range of point sizes, the family was limited to just a roman and bold design. Farey's revival is twice as large a family. It ranges from a very light called Stellar Nova to a very bold called Zeta In between are Lyra and Epsilon.

Samuel Welo’s “Studio Handbook for Artists and Advertisers” (published in both 1927 and 1960) showcased this talented man’s hand-lettered alphabets; used as inspiration for the sign trade and for graphic designers. A particularly interesting slab serif from the 1960 edition has many unusual character shapes, and served as the model for Casual Slab Serif JNL – available in both regular and oblique versions.

A round modular typeface inspired by British movie posters of the 1970s such as Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange .

Another in the series of competent IBM serifed typewriter faces, this one from Howard Kettler in Lexington in 1956.

Based on the 60-point Amati designed by Georg Trump and issued by C. E. Weber (Stuttgart) in 1953.

1920s Art Nouveau hand lettering from the sheet music for Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" is the inspiration for Debutante JNL.

Another in the series of competent IBM serifed typewriter faces, this one from Howard Kettler in Lexington in 1956.

Brazil Nut JNL comes from hand lettering on some 1920s sheet music from Florenz Ziegfeld's musical comedy "Rio Rita".

The unusual hand lettering found on a piece of 1940s sheet music forms the basis for Pencil Pusher JNL.

Futurette is a large weight family, covering all your needs for futuristic or sport projects, logos and others. Each style comes with 409 glyphes and can be used for Display titling, but in text also well. It was inspired by a bunch of 70's and 80's types like Handel Gothic or the ITC Bolt, and more recent faces like Typodermic's Conthrax and Good Times...

Gandur is a display textura in three weights, split into two families: Alte — the German word for old — and New. Gandur was inspired by other geometric texturas, specially Max Bittrof’s Element (1933). The design began by adhering to a strict hexagonal grid, but during its development, slowly moved from a purely geometric to a more pen-based design (this is especially true in the heaviest weights). The differences between Alte and New are essentially morphological, with reflections in the character set and OpenType features. Gandur New has a more humanistic, contemporary structure and is more ‘romanized’ then Alte. Gandur New also features small capitals. Gandur Alte, on the other hand, remains truer to historical forms, most notably: S s X x Z z. Gandur Alte also features the long-s, which can be accessed via a Stylistic Set or the glyph palette. (As is historically accurate, a short-s will be used at the end of words automatically when the historical Stylistic Set has been activated).

Gandur is a display textura in three weights, split into two families: Alte — the German word for old — and New . Gandur was inspired by other geometric texturas, specially Max Bittrof’s Element (1933). The design began by adhering to a strict hexagonal grid, but during its development, slowly moved from a purely geometric to a more pen-based design (this is especially true in the heaviest weights). The differences between Alte and New are essentially morphological, with reflections in the character set and OpenType features. Gandur New has a more humanistic, contemporary structure and is more ‘romanized’ then Alte. Gandur New also features small capitals. Gandur Alte, on the other hand, remains truer to historical forms, most notably: S s X x Z z. Gandur Alte also features the long-s, which can be accessed via a Stylistic Set or the glyph palette. (As is historically accurate, a short-s will be used at the end of words automatically when the historical Stylistic Set has been activated).

Ice Creamery is a new variation of our Saloon Girl font family complete with italics and fill fonts which may be used to layer different colors into the open parts of each glyph. We don’t recommend using the fill fonts for Ice Creamery as stand alone solid fonts, Ice Creamery Chocolate was designed as a the stand alone solid font for this font family. Fill fonts go back to the 1850's where they would design matched sets of printing blocks and the layering of colors took place on the printing press, they would print a page in black then on a second printing they would print a solid letter in red or blue over the letters with open spaces to fill them in. Most of the time the second printing didn't line up exactly to the open faced font and it created a misprinted look. With the fill fonts in Ice Creamery and other FontMesa fonts you have the option to perfectly align the fill fonts with the open faced fonts or shift it a little to create a misprinted look which looks pretty cool in some projects such as t-shirt designs. I have some ice cream making history in my family, my Grandfather Fred Hagemann was the manager of the ice cream plant for thirty years at Cock Robin Ice Cream and Burgers in Naperville IL. In the images above I've included an old 1960's photo of the Cock Robin Naperville location, the ice cream plant was behind the restaurant as seen by the chimney stack which was part of the plant. If you were to travel 2000 feet directly behind the Cock Robin sign in the photo, that's where I started the FontMesa type foundry at my home in Naperville. My favorite ice cream flavor was their green pistachio ice cream with black cherries, they called it Spumoni even though it wasn't a true Spumoni recipe. Their butter pecan ice cream was also incredibly good, the pecans were super fresh, their Tin Roof Sundae ice cream was chocolate fudge, caramel and peanuts swirled into vanilla ice cream. One unique thing about Cock Robin and Prince Castle was they used a square ice cream scoop for their sundaes.

AZ Storm was inspired from old '70's skateboard logo. This font was designed for use as a fun bold headline.

Passo Borgo is a blackletter typeface inspired on classic vampire filmes from 50"s and in Dracula's Bram Stoker novel... creepy...

A bold sans serif typeface influenced by Ed Benguiat 's work for the 1968 movie poster for Planet of the Apes .

The hand-lettered name on a couple of 1940s-era piano course books was the basis for Piano Solo JNL.