One in the series of fonts celebrating the Halcyon Days of Handlettering. Magic Lantern is a caps and small caps font based on an untitled design by Samuel Welo, whose Studio Handbook for Artists and Advertisers appeared in six editions between 1927 and 1960. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

In their circa 1900 specimen catalog, Barnhard Brothers and Spindler called this typeface "Samoa", suggesting exotic locales. On the other hand, it also suggests some serious fun, and is named in honor of British artist Dudley Hardy, whose posters used a very similar typeface extensively. Both versions of this font include the complete Unicode Latin 1252 and Central European 1250 character sets.

Hand lettering on the packaging for an Arrow "Commander" Staple Remover seen in an online auction is the inspiration for the unusual and angular typeface comprising Staple Remover JNL. The Art Deco era of the 1930s and 1940s offers many wonderful examples of stylized and experimental lettering, and this, by far is one of the more eclectic styles of the time.

The pattern for this typeface was suggested by a poster for beer, designed by German artist Ludwig Hohlwein around 1920. The plump curvy serifs suggested a great complement to beer, hot dogs, and thus the name translates roughly to “weiner wagon.” Prosit! Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252 and CE 1250 character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

Theater posters of the 1930s were often exuberant exercises in Art Deco lettering sensibilities, and the handiwork which inspired this typeface is no different. Big, bold and oddly elegant, this face is an excellent choice for enticing and commanding headlines. Both versions contain the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250, Turkish 1254 and Baltic 1257 character sets, with several language-specific localizations.

Based on a typeface named "Viola Flare", issued by Franklin Photolettering in the 1970s, this version has been kerned for every possible letter combination, so you can mix the swash uppercase letters with the lowercase as you please, creating distinctive and delightful headlines. Both versions of this font include the complete Unicode Latin 1252 and Central European 1250 character sets.

This quirky little number is based on a typeface originally named Turtle, which made a very brief appearance in Letraset's product line catalog in the 1970s. Admittedly, its uses are limited, but its cryptic and playful nature will reward those with imagination. Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets.

This elegant yet playful offering is based on the typeface Domino designed by Alfred Riedel for the German foundry Ludwig & Mayer in 1954. Its large x-height and subtly sinuous curves make it a natural choice for headlines which are both warm and compelling. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

The unusually-shaped hand lettering of Penny Wise JNL was modeled from the cover of the 1936 sheet music for "You Dropped Me Like a Red Hot Penny", and is available in both regular and oblique versions. Although it was drawn during the Art Deco period, this type of lettering design style was revived during the Hippie movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

At the apex of the 1960s-70s Hippie movement, San Franscisco's Haight-Ashbury district was the epicenter of the Love Generation, and the Fillmore (East and West) were the city's musical venues. Inspired by a 1970 concert poster, the Art Nouveau influence was strongly felt in the hand lettering from that poster, which is the basis for Flower Children JNL.

Based on Morris Fuller Benton's 1905 oeuvre American Extra Condensed, this titling face packs a lot of information into very little horizontal space. Its champfered corners give the font an industrial feel which remains fresh even after more than a century. Both versions include the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, with localization for Lithuanian, Moldovan and Romanian.

A playful, casual take on round nib pen lettering was spotted amongst some online scans from an old lettering book. The free-form and stylized shapes of the letters and numbers are reminiscent of old-time show cards, movie titles and signage in vogue around the early 1900s through the 1920s. Fancy Show Card JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

One of countless variations possible from the modular lettering system called "Super Veloz", developed by Spanish type designer Joan Truchut-Blanchard in the 1930s. This particular variant, for whatever reason, was called "Bob" in the style sheet announcing the system, and it seemed particularly apt. Both versions of this font include the complete Unicode 1252 Latin and Unicode 1250 Central European character sets.

Grafiker means 'Graphic Designer' in German. This fat, colored, uneven font with a 1001 uses was loosely based on the work of designers Oskar Kokoschka (1886 - 1980) and Jean Carlu (1900 - 1997). The glyphs were hand-drawn with a 0.5 roller ball and colored in with Chinese ink, using a stiff brush. The result is a lively, rather unusual font.

This sometimes-top-heavy, sometime-bottom-heavy, sometimes-centered typecase is based on an old Photolettering face designed by the irrepressible Dave West, originally called "Nickelodeon". That name was already taken, so I chose another with a nod to the 1953 film starring Leslie Caron. Both versions of this font include the complete Unicode Latin 1252 and Central European 1250 character sets.

A whimsical semi-script typeface named Belcanto, designed by Edwin Sisty for Photolettering in the 1970s, provided the pattern for this typeface. Elegant and engaging, this face is sure to put a smile on yours. The PC PostScript, TrueType and OpenType versions contain the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

This typeface derives both its style and its name from a logotype design for an eponymous magazine, executed in the 1940s by Catalán type designer Joan Trochut Blanchard, of Supertipo Veloz fame. Its strong geometric forms and large x-height make for commanding headlines. Both versions of this font include the complete Unicode 1252 Latin and Unicode 1250 Central European character sets.

The 1905 Barnhart Brothers & Spindler catalog featured an ultrawide face called "French Antique Extended". The letterforms have been faithfully rendered here, but this font’s kerning calls for a lot of overlapping and interlocking that the original cast-metal face wouldn't have been able to duplicate. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Not to be confused with the prolific, 1980s British super-star graphic and type designer Neville Brody, this brush script typeface was designed in 1953 by the American type designer Harold Broderson. Broderson worked for ATF (the American Type Founders), who were the original publishers of this design. Body is a brush script face that mimics the show card style of lettering, which was very popular throughout the United States during the first half of the 20th Century. The letters appear as if they were drawn quickly and spontaneously with a wide, flat lettering brush. The lowercase letters connect to each other, cursive script style. Brody is the perfect display face to provoke a nostalgic feeling for the 1950s. Anything having to do with apple pie, home cooking, or last minute sales would look great in this face. You could outfit a whole supermarket signage system in a snap with Brody. If you need the original version with more lettered characters then Brophy Script is a good alternate,

Willoughby JNL by Jeff Levine is a typeface whose lettering was inspired by a 1950s package of toothpaste. Slightly Deco, it also fits well into 1950s-retro projects. This type design is best used at large point sizes.

Reklame Script is a brush typefamily consisting of four weights. It was designed by Hannes von Döhren in 2010. This family is influenced by the handlettering of printed advertisements of the 1940s and 1950s. You can combine the four weights to gain a better emphasis – perfect for headlines, posters, and other display uses. Reklame Script is equipped for professional typography. The OpenType fonts have an extended character set to support Central and Eastern European as well as Western European languages. The fonts also contain double-letter ligatures to prevent repetition.

Alphaluxe is a distinctive new typeface from Wesley Poole of Hawai’i. This vertical script packs a velvet punch. It compels attention like the best of the futuristic Moderne scripts from the 1930s, (refined by the 1950s) with none of the bulk. The shapes are strong, their rendering light. Fortunately, Mr. Poole can't break his addiction to elegance and sophistication. It's a classy alphabet. but not self-conscious or stereotypical. Contributing mightily to this effort is Rod Cavazos (Psy/Ops, San Francisco). Among today's typefaces, Alphaluxe is a rare achievement.

Architype Ingenieur was inspired by Wim Crouwel’s late 1950s exhibition catalogues and posters, for which he had created a few geometrically constructed, simplified letterforms. In the 1960 Venice Biennale Dutch entry poster, he drew grid-based letters with 45-degree angles for ‘olanda’, the style influenced by his boyhood fascination with naval lettering. A subtle variation appeared in the Stedelijk Museum catalogue for painter Jean Brusselmans. Several dot matrix versions followed. The themes and systems in these early letterforms are encapsulated in this new four weight family Architype Ingenieur.

Sistina, designed by Hermann Zapf in 1950 was first named Aurelia Titling. It is a heavy supplement to the Michelangelo Titling based on studies of inscriptions in Rome. First release in hotmetal at D. Stempel AG, Frankfurt in 1951. Sistina was originally an all caps font. The digital version from Linotype contains small caps. Hermann Zapf together with Akira Kobayashi, type director from Linotype had made a new revised version of Sistina now named as Palatino Imperial" in the Palatino nova type family, a Platinum Collection product from Linotype."

When 45 RPM records were the norm for a teenager’s music collection in the 1950s and 1960s, many discs had their labels printed by letterpress. Some record companies utilized a bold, condensed typeface set in all caps for the song’s title and other pertinent information. The digital version of this font is called Recording Artist JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions. A companion font loosely based on this type design [but with more original characters and a slightly lighter weight] is Promotional Copy JNL.

Here’s a novelty font emulating the plastic pennant streamers that were popular in the 1950s and 1960s used to decorate a store parking lot or used car lot for a sales event. The typeface inside the individual pennants is Manufacturer JNL, which can be used for body copy associated with titles made by this font. Parking Lot Sale JNL is available in regular (black letters on white pennants) and black (with white letters). A blank pennant for word spacing or end caps is available on the backslash key.

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 ‘Haverj’ means ‘Eternally’. The face resembles many regular text serif fonts but elements like serifs and terminals make it eccentric and a little bit funny. The shape of diagonal legs in capital K and R resembles book lettering of the 1950s—60s. Using it in text, advertising and display typography may lead to surprising effects.

Bike Decals JNL captures the fun and nostalgia of the 1950s and 1960s when kids all around the country ran to their local five and dime or hobby store to purchase water applied decals. The "cool" thing would be to customize your bike, little red wagon or anything that would be fair game with various racing symbols, weird space creatures or other unusual images. In this font, Jeff Levine has put his own spin on some of the classic designs of yesteryear, drawing from scratch some of the most popular of their day.

Nacho Script is a classic and casual typeface ideal for give to your design a confortable touch of traditional feeling, casual style and luxury looks. Is a script system of glyphs with a subtle modulations in it strokes, because it's inspired on the classic advertising from the golden age of ads in 1950; promptly in 1957. Was so amazing design it and create it for multiple uses like ads for food, drinks, traveling, commercial products, and personal things, and thats it. Enjoy it like we enjoy it creating it. Thanks for your buy.

Michelangelo was designed by Hermann Zapf in 1950.

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.

Here’s another offering based on the work of Alf Becker, long-time contributor to Signs of the Times magazine. This only comes from the 1940s, and is a light and bouncy single-stroke face that’s sure to pep up any project it graces. This font contains the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

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.

The model for this monocase typeface was issued in the early 1900s by Barnhart Brothers & Spindler with the rather prosaic name of Steelplate. A hundred years later, it still retains its currency (ouch!), which is how it got its name. Complete Adobe character set except for superior numbers. The Opentype version of this font supports Unicode 1250 (Central European) languages, as well as Unicode 1252 (Latin) languages.

For decades, spot illustrations - whether by hot type, photoengraving, clip art or (in later years) digital means provided decorative and often lighthearted breaks in reading printed copy. This collection of twenty-six cartoon images has been meticulously re-drawn in digital format from 1920s-1930s era source material. By adding a simple caption underneath a design, your ad copy can be enhanced with these wonderful period pieces.