Penitentiary Gothic is a digital recreation of the letters used on California state license plates, designed in order to make props for movies and television shows. The regular style is meant to be used on its own, but the other four styles are meant to be used one on top of another in different colors to create an embossed 3D effect. For best results, use the fill style in a dark color on top of a light colored background. Put the lolite style directly on top of the fill style in 10 - 30% of the background color. Put the hilite style directly on top of that in 10 - 30% of your fill color. Put the shadow style directly on top of that using your background color plus 50 - 80% black.

A classic example of Art Deco lettering made with a round nib ink pen was found within the pages of “Lettering” by Harry B. Wright (circa 1950). Now available as a digital type font, Pen Moderne JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

To design a font Bobbin I was inspired by a You And Me Monthly published by National Magazines Publisher RSW Prasa that appeared from Mai 1960 till December 1973 in Poland. In the Bobbin family, every variety contains 3 alternative characters with automatic replacement.

Rundfunk-Antiqua was originally designed as a font for small point size and shorter texts. It was presented 1933/35 by Linotype Designstudio but unfortunately never developed as a font family, including only Antiqua roman and sans-serif bold. Such an unusual combination resulted from the font combinations common during that time. The font’s basic forms tend toward the Transitional style but its details come from the influence of Jugendstil.

This 1935 design from Monotype is an extremely condensed display font that has a slight flavor of nineteenth-century wood type. Runic Condensed font is tall and lean with a huge x-height and hairline serifs. It is an ideal display type for eccentric pieces where space is at a premium.

Cooperative is a retro style poster font in Hebrew and Latin. Is based on a printed example of a vintage handmade wood type from the 1950's. This sans serif font is available in both regular and bold versions, with a dirty and grungy styles as well in regular and bold.

Working for Bauer in the thirties, F.H.E. Schneidler followed Weiss’ lead to provide an alternative. In 1956 he added the companion italic under the name Amalthea.

Handmade Stencil JNL was inspired by the hand lettered opening credits of the 1954 film “Human Desire” and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

A set of capitals popular with American engravers and typefounders through the last third of the nineteenth century, shown under this name by ATF in 1903.

This font is an experiment in building dynamics into a typeface. Explosion has two variants to be put on top of each other for more dimension.

Killega is a bold and modern serif font. Elegantly crafted to become a top choice, this font has the potential to bring each of your creative ideas to the highest level!

A family of extra compressed styles designed at ParaType in 1993 by Alexander Tarbeev. For use in advertising and display typography. Decorative versions were added in 1996.

AstroBats is a fun set of ornaments with a 'Retro Sci-Fi' theme. Think of those 1950s Japanese tinplate robots, think ray guns, think spaceships! Have fun!

Another delightful offering from "The Signist," compiled by R. Henderson in 1903, named after the comic strip that introduced the world to Popeye the Sailor in 1929.

Designed for ATF in 1913, Morris Fuller Benton’s version of Nicholas Jenson’s roman, the best of the Venetians and a model for regularity in color and fit.

Hand lettering from the opening credits of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” (1951) inspired Train Car JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Frederic Goudy designed Californian as a private commission for the University of California at Berkeley in 1939. The first Commercial release was by Lanston Monotype in 1958.

Manual Typewriter JNL was modeled from an example of the 1933 design originally created by Morris Fuller Benton, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The font family Univers is one of the greatest typographic achievements of the second half of the 20th century. The family has the advantage of having a variety of weights and styles, which, even when combined, give an impression of steadiness and homogeneity. The clear, objective forms of Univers make this a legible font suitable for almost any typographic need. In 1954 the French type foundry Deberny & Peignot wanted to add a linear sans serif type in several weights to the range of the Lumitype fonts. Adrian Frutiger, the foundry’s art director, suggested refraining from adapting an existing alphabet. He wanted to instead make a new font that would, above all, be suitable for the typesetting of longer texts — quite an exciting challenge for a sans-serif font at that time. Starting with his old sketches from his student days at the School for the Applied Arts in Zurich, he created the Univers type family. In 1957, the family was released by Deberny & Peignot, and afterwards, it was produced by Linotype. The Deberny & Peignot type library was acquired in 1972 by Haas, and the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) was folded into the D. Stempel AG/Linotype collection in 1985/1989.

Designed by expert ad artist Herbert Thannhaeuser for East German foundry Typoart in 1955, Lotto was until now one of the long lost gems of European sign and brush lettering faces. Unlike in Kurier (Thannhaeuser’s other brush face digitized by Canada Type as Puma), the forms’ brush construct uses a series of strokes that are mostly sudden, whimsical, and at times even look like great genius being born out of simple afterthought or straight-forward idiosyncracy. For instance, check out the simple brush pause that is the top of the f, the confident yet welcoming serifs on the T, the similarly-themed C/E and O/Q relationship, and much more. Lotto comes with over 400 glyphs, contains a few alternates and ligatures sprinkled throughout the character set, and includes support for the majority of Latin languages.

Handlettering on a piece of sheet music from 1903 was the inspiration for this little whimsical wonder. The font features a very sinuous S and teddy-bear bookends in the {brace} positions. This font contains the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

With the name Helvetica (Latin for Swiss), this font has the objective and functional style which was associated with Swiss typography in the 1950s and 1960s. It is perfect for international correspondence: no ornament, no emotion, just clear presentation of information. Helvetica is still one of the best selling sans-serif fonts.

Hand Drawn is a faithful adaptation of the original typeface of hte Letraset range by Michael Gills. A set of numerals was added to complete the font. Hand Drawn has all the charisma of the 1950s brush style and should be set closely for the best impact.

Koehler Sans JNL was inspired by a set of cardboard sign kit letters made by the Koehler Sign Company of Missouri (presumably) in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Not much is known about them, other than the letters looked interesting enough to turn into a font.

Pigalle Swing is a very elegant script from the 1950s which I found some time ago in a similar but not so elegant version on Place Pigalle in Paris. I designed lots of alternate capitals and lowercase letters to make the font more usable and interesting. Enjoy!

The original Phenix typeface was produced in 1935 by Morris Fuller Benton for ATF. Utilizing the original proofs, we have added three additional complementary weights with all the alternate glyphs. Our Phoenix Pro contains all the high-end features expected in a quality OpenType Pro font.

English designer David Quay created the Agincourt font in 1983. Drawn after the Old English style of type, Agincourt features intricate capitals, which complement the more reserved, slightly condensed lowercase. Agincourt is perfect for use on certificates, greeting cards, or anything that should have an historical appearance.