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.

Tiemann Antiqua was designed by Walter Tiemann in 1923 and appeared with the Klingspor font foundry. It is one of the modern book typefaces created in the first half of the 20th century, but differed from most in its Modern Face forms. It displays the same strong stroke contrast and flat serifs but its proportions have more in common with those of neorenaissance fonts. Tiemann Antiqua is an elegant, legible font suitable for books and longer texts, but also found in headlines, newspapers and magazines due to its classic yet unusual appearance.

Waldo is a bold, stencil-focused display typeface loosely based on a 1973 science fiction movie poster for "The Battle For The Planet of The Apes". Narrow rectangular slots cut into heavyweight forms create a stylish and energetic font ideal for apparel, books, film titles, packaging and posters. Included in the font are over 400 characters with four unique styles; Black, Stencil, Outline, and Shadow. Opentype features consist of digital numerals, tabular figures, numerators, denominators and fractions. Other features cover alternate lowercase f and r, with language support for Western, South and Central Europe.

Boondock is another Imre Reiner design resurrected from the ashes of hot metal type for digital use. This wild paint font is a revival of the fascinating Bazaar brush type from 1956. Boondock has some very unique characters that combine to form a statement of casual but loud strength, seriousness and raw primal emotion. Great for short sudden-impact spurts, like book cover titles, single sentence headers, movie posters and music sleeves. Redrawn from original specimen by Patrick Griffin, and expanded with some built-in extras too add to the convenience of this digital version.

Designed by Les Usherwood. Chelsea is a ‘modern’ Old Style serif font family designed by Les Usherwood (Typsettra) in the early 1980’s. Steve Jackaman (ITF) digitally engineered the family exclusively for ITF’s Red Rooster Collection in 1993. Usherwood drew influence from Frederic Goudy’s 1911 creation ‘Kennerley Old Style’ when designing Chelsea; Chelsea, however, tends to be wider with a taller x-height. Chelsea has the clean and upscale feel that is present in all Usherwood creations, and its legible design lends itself to projects of any size.

A circa-1951 toy set called “Kusan Kavalcade of Letters” was comprised of molded plastic letters and numbers a child could play with, trace and arrange to learn their alphabet and numerals. Typographically, the design was all over the place – from sans serif characters to those with some spurred serifs and even some stenciled characters because of the nature of manufacture. As odd as this combination seems, it was novel enough to be turned into a digital typeface called Stencil Playthings JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

New Letter Gothic was designed for ParaType by Gayaneh Bagdasaryan based on monospaced Letter Gothic font by Roger Roberson, 1956–62. Due to clear and easy-to-read lettershapes of Letter Gothic the font is rather popular now for display and advertising matters. The idea was to create a font similar to Letter Gothic in lettershapes but with proportional widths of letters. For use in both display and text setting. New Letter Gothic has been adjudged an Award for Excellence in Type Design at Kyrillitsa ’99 International Type Design competition in Moscow, 1999.

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.

Europa Grotesque is a condensed sans serif font family that was originally designed by Sam Ardell (TP) in the 1950’s for the Techni-Process Collection. Steve Jackaman (ITF) acquired the rights to the TP Collection in 1991 and produced Europa Grotesque in its digital form in 1994. Europa Grotesque has impressive impact at display and subhead sizes, and its geometric forms sustain that distinctiveness in both all-caps and lowercase. The family is flexible and freeform enough to support both a laid-back feel while still feeling tight and controlled.

Scritta Nuova was born to transpose my personal handwriting and evolved today into a smart typeface that maintains the original feel with improved legibility and visual balance. The steady rhythm and roundness of Scritta Nuova give the impression of a smooth, girlish and gentle writing. It also evokes retro calligraphic styles taught in Italian schools around the 1950s, which might have influenced in one way or another my original handwriting. Note that the capital letters can be nicely set next to each other without overlapping, unlike script typefaces with swashy capitals created as initials.

Architype Crouwel is a collection of typefaces created in collaboration with Wim Crouwel, following his agreement with The Foundry, to recreate his experimental alphabets as digital fonts. Crouwel's most recognized work was for the Van Abbe and Stedelijk museums (1954 –72) where he established his reputation for radical, grid-based design. Architype Vierkant was developed from the few letterforms that Crouwel created for an opening spread in a 1972 Drupa catalogue, on the theme ‘typo vision international’ – this single reference showed an interesting interplay of the experimental ideas underpinning his controversial ‘new alphabet’ and Fodor.

Jongleur is a multifaceted hand-drawn display typeface based on a Maury Nemoy lettering from 1957. Packed with handy OpenType features, the font makes automatic substitutions when you turn on the contextual alternates, creating an interesting hand-lettered feel. If you're in a messy mood, use the stylistic alternates instead! The font also brings an extra set of alternate letterforms you can pick by hand to spice up your compositions. Great choice for titles and small amounts of text, perfect for posters, book covers and a wide range of applications.

While searching online for vintage type inspirations, an image was spotted of an old letterhead for a steel manufacturing company. The hand lettering of the word 'Ludlum' only offered D,L,M and E as visual examples, but from this Jeff Levine has designed Eckhardt Dualine JNL - a Deco-flavored dual-line type font. As with a number of other releases that emulate hand-lettering or sign painting, Jeff has named this font in honor of his good friend, the late Albert Eckhardt, Jr.; who ran Allied Signs in Miami from 1959 until his passing.

The first three weights of the family were designed at ParaType (ParaGraph) in 1997 by Dmitry Kirsanov . They were based on the artworks of Moscow graphic designer Andrey Kryukov (1923-1997). The original version was developed by Kryukov at the end of the sixties for Russian railways. The proportions and elements of construction were inspired by Eurostile (1962) by Aldo Novarese. It is intended for use in advertising and display typography. In 2009, Dmitry added the new styles, corrected the old ones, and enhanced them with extended character sets.

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.

Originally designed by American type designer Morris Fuller Benton in 1933, Agency Gothic is a wonderful, narrow, squarish art deco typeface. I was commissioned by Publish magazine to create digital versions of Agency Gothic Open and Agency Gothic Condensed for a redesign in 1990. Since then, I have added four other styles. Agency Gothic CT is uppercase only and supports most European languages that use the Latin or Cyrillic alphabets. The Agency Gothic CT family is available in six weights/styles: Light, Medium, Bold, Condensed, Inline, and Open.

The English roundhand has always occupied the central position in the group of faces appropriate to the social printing handled by engravers, and their contemporary imitators, thermographers. At the end of the nineteenth century when engraving was mechanised by the pantographic engraving machine, the traditional roundhands found their way onto pantographic pattern plates. Embassy is a traditional roundhand of vigorous contrast with straightforward capitals with ball terminals; it was transferred from such an engravers’ pattern plate to the Fotosetter at Intertype about 1955. Alphatype’s Yorktown is similar, but appears to have less contrast.

Nuber Next is a modern geometric sans influenced by the popular neo-grotesques of the 1950s including Helvetica and Univers. Carefully remastered from the original Nuber type family to improve letter shape, overall uniformity and introduce a flexible width system capable of handling a wider variety of typographic applications. Details include 750 characters per font, nine weights and five widths with matching italics. Opentype features include seven variations of numerals, fractions, case-sensitive forms, stylistic alternates, ligatures, extended monetary symbols and language support covering Cyrillic, Western, South and Central Europe.

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.

Shicken Zoop JNL is based on an old lettering stencil from the early 1950s. The A-Z and a-z keystrokes contain the bulk of the Hebrew alphabet. Additional letters are found on the exclamation point, quote and apostrophe keystrokes. Vowels are positioned on the period, comma, hyphen, colon and semicolon. Please note that this is not a normal Hebrew font; it is in effect a latin font with Hebrew letters appearing in place of latin letters. It will not allow you to copy and paste with other samples of Hebrew text.

Francis is a design previously offered by the Lanston Type Co. in the early 1990s. It is a revival of a 1955 Günther Gerhard Lange design, but with a heavier overall weight. Coming out of retirement, it has been fully reworked and refined with elegant curves and an expanded character set. This font works well at small sizes and larger display sizes for everything from wine labels to personal stationery. This type evokes the elegant sophistcation of the Jazz age and pairs well with a Martini and a fine selection of charcuterie.

In 1995, FontHaus came upon a rare opportunity to create a revival of Aries, a little known and previously unavailable typeface by the legendary Eric Gill. Discovering a lost typeface by one of the major designers of the 20th Century, was the discovery of a buried treasure, and being the first type company to release it was an honor. Thirteen years later, FontHaus came across another little known typeface treasure: Diane. Designed by the legendary French designer Roger Excoffon in 1956, this remarkable script has never been faithfully recreated until now. In close collaboration with Mark Simonson, FontHaus and Mr. Simonson painstakingly researched rare type books, publications, European metal type services, and period showings from the United States, England, Germany and from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Finding full specimens of the font turned out to be quite a challenge. In most cases, only the caps and lowercase were shown. Furthermore, the more we researched Diane, many curious facts came to light. The caps in earlier specimens of Diane are completely different from specimens published later, suggesting that the face was redesigned at some point, perhaps in the mid-1960s. So we are left with two different sets of caps. The original had very elaborate, swirly strokes, very characteristic of Excoffon¹s gestural designs for posters and logos. Later on, these appear to have been replaced by a set of simpler, more traditional script caps. The original caps are criticized in one source Mark found (Practical Handbook on Display Typefaces, 1959) as being "exquisite" but "not highly legible". Perhaps this is what led to the simpler caps being introduced. Nevertheless, FontHaus's release includes not only both sets of caps, but a range of alternates and a number of new characters not originally available such as the Euro, and a magnificent alternate Ampersand to name a few.

Smart, legible and elegant, Gravesend Sans is a based on the unique typeface used for the iconic grass-green signage for the Southern Railway. In existence from 1923 to 1948, when the network was nationalised, the Southern Railway linked London with the Channel ports, South West England, the South coast resorts and Kent. The same design was also used for the ‘hawkeye’ signs on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, differentiated by black letters on a yellow background. Reference for each letter was taken from vintage ‘target’ station nameplates and other platform signage. The rarest letters were the Q, seen in Queens Road Battersea, the X, seen in East Brixton, and the Z, used in Maze Hill, site of an infamous train crash in 1958. Being hand-made, the letters often differ in width and thickness. There was no lower case. The Bluebell Railway, a heritage steam line, runs over part of the old Southern Railway network and uses a very similar type. The design of the numbers differed considerably, but here have been taken from the Device 112 Hours font Smokebox. As well identifying platforms, they were used on the front of the steam engine’s smokebox, hence the name, and stylistically are more in keeping with the letters than some of the squarer versions that can be seen in old photographs. William Caslon IV is credited with the first Latin sans-serif type, shown in a 1816 Caslon specimen book. ‘Two Lines English Egyptian’, as it was called, was caps-only, and there are several other correlations between that type design and this one. Includes a selection of authentic arrows and manicules, plus abbreviated ligatures such as ‘St.’ (Saint or Street) ‘Rd.’ (Road) and ‘Jn.’ (Junction). The Cameo version includes many graphic banner elements that can be freely combined.

The Journal Sans typeface was developed in the Type Design Department of SPA of Printing Machinery in Moscow in 1940–1956 by the group of designers under Anatoly Schukin. It was based on Erbar Grotesk by Jacob Erbar and Metro Sans by William A. Dwiggins, the geometric sans-serifs of the 1920s with the pronounced industrial spirit. Journal Sans, Rublenaya (Sans-Serif), and Textbook typefaces were the main Soviet sans-serifs. So no wonder that it was digitized quite early, in the first half of 1990s. Until recently, Journal Sans consisted of three faces and retained all the problems of early digitization, such as inaccurate curves or side-bearings copied straight from metal-type version. The years of 2013 and 2014 made «irregular» geometric sans-serifs trendy, and that fact affected Journal Sans. In the old version curves were corrected and the character set was expanded by Olexa Volochay. In the new release, besides minor improvements, a substantial work has been carried out to make the old typeface work better in digital typography and contemporary design practice. Maria Selezeneva significantly worked over the design of some glyphs, expanded the character set, added some alternatives, completely changed the side-bearings and kerning. Also, the Journal Sans New has several new faces, such as true italic (the older font had slanted version for the italic), an Inline face based on the Bold, and the Display face with proportions close to the original Erbar Grotesk. The new version of Journal Sans, while keeping all peculiarities and the industrial spirit of 1920s-1950s, is indeed fully adapted to the modern digital reality. It can be useful either for bringing historical spirit into design or for modern and trendy typography, both in print and on screen. Designed by Maria Selezeneva with the participation of Alexandra Korolkova. Released by ParaType in 2014.

Inspired by the basic letter concept of Walter Huxley's 1935 gem Huxley Vertical, Dining Room JNL is a completely re-drawn typeface, adding even more of an Art Deco feel to an already classic Deco-era letter form consisting of condensed, rounded letters. Thick vertical lines balance against lighter weight ones, giving a dramatic contrast so typical of the Streamline Era of design concepts. This font marks another milestone in the Jeff Levine library of retro-inspired type faces. Beginning in 2006 with only ten designs, the collection has grown steadily with Dining Room JNL being the 750th font in the library.

Gobsmacked is a rather new English word. It has been around since 1959 and was used mostly around Liverpool at that time. The word means: ’astounded’, ‘flabbergasted’ (another nice word!) or ‘speechless’. Gob could be of French or Scottish Gaelic origin and means ‘mouth’. Gobsmacked font was created using a brush and black gouache. The result is a very eroded, very legible and quite unique brush font. I have created alternates for the lower case letters, plus two double letter ligatures (oo and ss). Use it for any design that needs a little brushwork; I am sure the result will leave you gobsmacked!

Pondicherry is a nice city in the South-East of India. It has changed colonial hands over time, but after the last colonial power (the French) left in 1954, it reunited with India. I have always liked the name Pondicherry. It evokes something happy and exotic and I guess I had the same feeling when I developed this font. Pondicherry font is an outlined affair with an uneven baseline and an overall 'happy' feel. It is an all caps font, but upper and lower case differ and you can use them together. Pondicherry comes with a treasure chest full of diacritics.

Tekton font is based on the hand lettering of West Coast architect Frank Ching, who wrote out the text for his books. It is an Adobe Originals typeface designed by David Siegel in 1989. Tekton is ideal for architectural drawing/design software, to match the feel of the type with the designer�s plans, or to give the page an architectural or informal handwritten flavor. Tekton multiple master, released in 1993, has increased the usefulness of the design by adding weight and width axes and making the font more usable for signage and display work, as well as informal correspondence.

NixonScript is a display typeface inspired by the typographic emancipation given voice by 1950s and '60s north American vernacular type. NixonScript's starting point was lettering found on a 1960s camera found in a Chicago junk shop, but its development saw it transformed from a punchy sans-serif to a more thoughtful serif, with a lowered x-height and a vibe of almost priestly piousness. Rather than a simple regular italic, a bold italic is offered. During its development, the regular version seemed almost placid but with the double emphasis of bold and italic, NixonScript gained an energetic, self-congratulatory form.

Plantain Stencil is based on Plantain which in turn is my interpretation of Plantin Adweight, which was one of my first commissioned projects (by Smarter Image, long before they went bankrupt). Plantin Adweight is one of the most beautiful designs of the Plantin family, which is a modern revival typeface, cut under the direction of F. H. Pierpont in 1913, who based the design on that of a famous 16th century printer, Christophe Plantin, for whom Pierpont’s font was named. The stencil cut of Plantain adds a bit of sparkle to the design. Supports most European languages that use the Latin alphabet.

Gothamburg is a blackletter or square gothic face. The shapes of many of the letters were inspired by sets of letters in Oscar Ogg’s The 26 Letters (Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1963, 1948) illustrating the gothic style of the middle ages. The Plain and Bold versions differ not just in pen width, but also in pen angle. The Plain version has less contrast between the thin and thick strokes. The ShadowedInside style has the letter shapes of the plain style but the spacing of the shadowed style. It can be layered with the shadowed style to easily create two-color lettering.

ITC Kulukundis is the work of designer Daniel Pelavin, a square, connecting script which looks as though it could have been cast in shiny chrome for the side of a 1950s American roadster. Pelavin based his design very loosely on a vertical French script but the overall look is all his own. Unlike calligraphic scripts, the lower case letters all connect in exactly the same way and the straight diagonal junctures give the typeface its broad, spacious character and keep it locked into a continuous line. ITC Kulukundis could also be used to create a decorative border for special occasions.

An unsold 1973 TV pilot for the series “Catch 22” (based on Joseph Heller’s 1961 book and the subsequent 1970 movie) had its title hand lettered in an extra bold stencil type style. Heller coined the phrase as a satire on absurd military rules and bureaucracy. Although the show’s title provided only five characters to work with, there was enough inspiration there to create the military styled Enlisted Stencil JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. According to Wikipedia: “A catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations.”

Designed for Linotype Library GMBH and the International Typeface Corporation in 1997 by Phil Grimshaw. Based on bold script Banco designed by French graphic and poster designer Roger Excoffon and released in 1952 by the Fonderie Olive. Originally Banco was an all-caps bold typeface, and the lower case and the corresponding light weight were created for ITC. The tapering slightly slanted strokes of Banco made by sharp-edged flat brush. The face has the effect of being quickly sketched by a powerful hand. For use in advertising and display typography. Cyrillic version developed for ParaType in 2000 by Tagir Safayev.

Amongst a batch of antique sheet musical instruction booklets offered for sale online was a piece with Art Nouveau hand lettering on the cover entitled “Seven Musical Travelogues for Piano”. This design served as the inspiration and model for Ragtime Gal JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. The font’s name comes from the line ‘Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal…’ from the 1899 song “Hello Ma Baby”; a tune that found a new burst of popularity in an odd way within a 1955 Warner Brother’s cartoon [“One Froggy Evening”].

Sun-tanned, smooth, and fluid. Suave Script is based on disconnected calligraphy originating from a how-to lettering book from the 1950s. The uppercase letters dance, and then dance some more - Samba, Tango, Mambo or Candombe - take your pick. The lowercase flows like honey waiting to be licked off the comb. A rare gem - depicting the sweet hustle and bustle of life of a history-rich urbanism. Suave Script is at once fashionable, human, and creative. For this new Pro version a number of endings, ligatures and an extensive range of languages were covered (Western and Eastern European, Baltic, Turkish, Maltese and Celtic)

Hey guys! Once I got a book "Letters From Father Christmas" by J.R.R. Tolkien. He wrote them for the children every December from 1920 to 1943. I totally fell in love with the calligraphy in those letters. Now I created a font and you can use it to write your own letter from the North Pole. I've also redrawn stamps and patterns from that book, so you can decorate your blank. It's Icons font style. You'll get: Regular and Icons styles Numbers and symbols Multilingual support and alternative symbols Thanks! Feel free to request to add characters you need: kaer.pro@gmail.com

I found this type specimen on the statue of Jan Hus in Prague’s Old Town Square. The statue was designed in 1903 by Ladislav Saloun, and its writing is the cutest Nouveau font I've ever seen. Filling in the blanks, I realized the need for a standard lower case because the caps are so wild. The result is a very type-able and dynamic Nouveau. I encourage you to mix up your upper and lower cases for curious results. Use the lower case for running type. Go to http://facebook.com/frostfoundry to share this and see more!

Adrian Frutiger designed Egyptienne F for the Deberny & Peignot Foundry in 1956. This was the first of several Egyptians designed by Frutiger, see also Glypha and Serifa. “Egyptian” or “Egyptienne” is a typographic designation for roman typefaces with slab (or square or rectangular) shaped serifs; and those that have bracketing between main stroke and serifs (like this one) are known as “Clarendon-style Egyptians”. Egyptienne F has a medium x-height and excellent character spacing for setting text in small point sizes. Legible, flexible, and neutral in appearance, Egyptienne F is a good choice for books, magazines, and on-screen presentations.

This unicase typeface, with alternate characters in several of the lowercase positions, is patterned after Mosaik, designed by Martin Kausche for Schriftgeißerei Stempel in 1954. A stencil treatment has been employed, and the outlines have been roughened to enhance its ancient feel. The typeface is named for a king of England, Æðelred the Unready, who ruled over a millenium ago. Unlike its namesake, this typeface is quite ready to do yeoman's duty on your next project. The Opentype, Truetype and Windows Postscript versions of this font contain both the Windows 1252/ANSI character set and the 1250/Central European character set.