The first Antique Olive fonts were produced by the French type foundry Olive, in 1962-1966 and designed by poster designer Roger Excoffon (1910-1983). All Excoffons fonts are flamboyant, elegant and highly stylistic. They include the Banco, Mistral, and Calypso fonts. Antique Olive was launched to rival Helvetica and Univers, but the shapes it took were totally refreshing. Antique Olive is probably the most striking Sans Serif since Futura and Gill, and more refined than either. It is perfect for posters and display material as it works well in larger sizes.

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.

Cirkulus is an experimental display face, constructed using combinations of hairline circles and straight lines. The typeface was designed by Michael Neugebauer in 1970. The letters exude a constructivist aura, reminiscent of both the revolutionary 1920s, and the digital experiments of the 1990s. Cirkulus is a unicase alphabet, with a very lightweight appearance, and should be used solely in large display sizes.

ITC Outback was designed by Bob Alonso, a contemporary typeface with a distressed" look. It combines the rustic 1920s look of Rudolph Koch's Neuland with the proportions of a 1960s headline typeface, then roughens the edges 1990s style. The crude, rough ITC Outback is clearly intended as a display typeface but reads surprisingly well even in sizes as small as 18 point."

A piece of sheet music for “Broken Blossoms” circa the 1920s or early 1930s has its cover title hand lettered in a wide thick-and-thin Art Deco design. This is now available as Flower Shop JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Latin music was all the rage in the United States from the 1930s through the 1950s and songs with a “South of the Border” or “Old Mexico” theme were plentiful. The 1940 sheet music for “Make Love with a Guitar” evoked the idea of serenading one’s lovely lady on horseback while strumming the guitar. ..at least if you went by the by the illustration under the song’s name. As the hand lettered title was rendered in an Art Deco design, it became the basis for Jazz Guitar JNL [which seemed a more befitting name], and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

At one time, the Hampton Publishing Company of New York specialized in producing reading and activity books for children. The “Letters and Numbers Stencil Book” (probably from the late 1940s or early 1950s) was the basis for Kiddie Stencil JNL. This bold sans serif type style replicates the handmade steel rule dies used for cutting the stencil pages of the book, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

At first glance, Transcendental JNL looks like a 1960s or 1970s-era "Hippie" type face, hence its "love generation" name. However, the actual inspiration comes from a piece of sheet music from the early 1900s with Art Nouveau influences. It is often proven that what goes around certainly does come around in art, fashion and lettering. Transcendental JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Cardboard Cutouts JNL is a blocky sans serif font re-drawn from some old "kiddie" stencils from the 1950s or 1960s acquired by Jeff Levine.

David Berlow drew Romeo Medium Condensed during winter of 1990, basing the design on the Estrecha Fina weight of Electra, a spectacular art deco sanserif with an unusually fine condensed series. Carlos Winkow designed it circa 1940 for the Nacional typefoundry of Madrid, the leading typefoundry in Spain. Jill Pichotta drew the ultra-light Skinny Condensed, a digital tour de force released with Medium Condensed; FB 1990–91

Fette Deutsche Schrift also known as Koch-Fraktur or Kochschrift was created by Rudolf Koch for Klingspor foundry between 1908 and 1910. The basis of this font is a publication in the magazine “Das Plakat” of September 1921. The font contains swash capitals to use as dropcaps, contextual alternates, glyphs for line endings, ligatures, discretional ligatures for use in German, ornaments and other OpenType features. It supports all the European languages using Latin alphabets (including slashed S and slashed long s used in Latvian old orthography till 1930s).

A new font inspired by vintage hand-painted paper signs. The Doorbuster Collection is based on retro hand-painted paper signs primarily seen in grocery stores from the 1920s through the 1970s. We meticulously hand-drew each font, modeling the spacing and uneven baseline found in vintage sign painting. The purposely organic ascenders and descenders, along with a huge set of ligatures/contextual alternates to avoid the same letters repeating when paired, give it a real hand-lettered look. Doorbuster Plug is perfect for both vintage-inspired and contemporary marketing, branding, and packaging designs. It's a classic workhorse font from the 1950s thru 1970s. Check out a few of the samples included in the thumbnails to see what can be done with it.

The range of subtle differences in the many different sized lettering stencils of the 1940s and 1950s allows for a wonderful library of authentic-looking stencil fonts. Storage JNL is another Roman (serif) type design by Jeff Levine and modeled from a 1950s stencil set.

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.

An Art Deco “thick and thin” novelty type design based on the hexagon shape was found within the pages of “La Lettre Dans le Decor & La Publicite Modernes” - a 1930s-era French alphabet collection. The title somewhat translates to “The Letter in Modern Decor and Advertising”). Named Oh Hex JNL, it is now 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.

Decorative type in style of 1930s.

Decorative type in style of 1930s.

British designer Bob Newman's Horatio family is a delightful look back into the modernists experiments of the 1920s. This geometric sans serif design was created in 1971, and was originally released by Letraset. We are please to offer the family in digital form, in light, medium, and bold weights. Many designers during the 1920s were interested in reforming the alphabet, and wanted to reconcile letterforms with the machine and manufacturing technology of the age. Herbert Bayer at the Bauhaus was one of many designers who developed a universal alphabet," creating letters using only the simplest of geometric forms. Similar experiments in 1920s-style revivals were also created during the 1970s, most notably Herb Lubalin's ITC Avant Garde Gothic."

Performer JNL, is a typeface re-drawn from condensed hand lettering found on a piece of vintage sheet music. Fairly basic in style, there are still some hints of the Art Deco influence that permeated the 1930s and 1940s art, design and typography. Available in both regular and oblique versions.

A mid-1950s hand lettered ad for Stenso Lettering Guides provided the inspiration for Stencil Company JNL, now available in both regular and oblique versions. The Stenso Lettering Company of Baltimore, Maryland pioneered easy-to-use and inexpensive lettering devices with guide holes for accurate spacing. Originally designed by a school teacher (Ruth Libauer Hormats) around 1940, the company was family run until it was sold in 1962 to Ottenheimer Publishers. They in turn sold the line to the Dennison Manufacturing Company, and it was discontinued in the 1980s after Dennison merged with Avery.

My affection for Slab Serifs began in the early 1960s in Kansas City with Rob Roy Kelly and his fabulous collection of wood type. In the 1970s tried to re-create a Nebiolo Egiziano for Roger Black. Again for Roger, in the 1980s I designed a Slab Serif logo for Newsweek Magazine. Finally, in 2003, designed the Sutro Family. There were things I didn't like about it, so when I did Version 2 for Open Type, I changed it around a little, making it a much nicer Sutro.

Opinion varies regarding the role of Claude Garamond (ca. 1480–1561) in the development of the Old Face font, Garamond. What is accepted is the influence this font had on other typeface developments from the time of its creation to the present. Garamond, or Garamont, is related to the alphabet of Claude Garamond (1480–1561) as well as to the work of Jean Jannon (1580–1635 or 1658), much of which was attributed to Garamond. In comparison to the earlier Italian font forms, Garamond has finer serifs and a generally more elegant image. The Garamond of Jean Jannon was introduced at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900 as “Original Garamond”, whereafter many font foundries began to cast similar types. Simoncini Garamond was designed by Francesco Simoncini to be true to the Original.

“Teja” font was inspired in the lettering styles printed on enamel advertising signs. The enameled iron signs were, from 1880s until the 1950s, amongst the most striking features of streets and railway stations in most towns and villages around the world. “Teja” was designed specially for use in logotypes, advertising and packaging. It is interesting to note the use of free-flowing lettering to perform its own eye-catching.

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.

Stencil Work JNL was re-drawn from a vintage paper stencil with one inch high Roman letters and numbers, often found in stationery, drug and variety stores in the 1950s through the 1980s.

A sales catalog sheet from the American Decalcomania Company circa the late 1940s-early 1950s provided some hand lettering that served as the inspiration for Sign Painter JNL. Emulating the look of characters made with a round pen nib, this Deco-style typeface conveys nostalgia and charm seldom found in advertising of today.

McKnight Kauffer is a casual sans derived from poster and book cover lettering by the American designer, Edward McKnight Kauffer, who mainly worked in England through the 1920s and 1930s. The style owes much to Louis Oppenheim's Fanfare of 1927, but without the Germanic blackletter inflection. The two display fonts, regular and outline, have a playful art deco feel, and share spacing and kerning so can be overlapped for bicolor effects.

A style of die-cut cardboard letters and numbers used for signs, displays and show cards was the basis for Haute Couture JNL, an Art-Deco flavored typeface from Jeff Levine. A direct cousin to Signboard JNL, this font shares some similar characteristics in letterforms. Both styles of die-cut lettering were manufactured by a number of companies, and were most popular from the 1940s through the mid-1960s.

A poster circa 1930s-40s designed for the WPA Federal Art Project promoted free band concerts at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York. Its headline (“Free Band Concerts”) was hand lettered in a dual line Art Deco sans serif design. Now recreated digitally, the font takes its name after the poster’s topic. Band Concert JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Scentogram is a deco font inspired by some 1950-60 ads.

Frantic Pace JNL is based on hand lettering found on the lid of a late 1950s or early 1960s edition of the Print Craft alphabet printing set once manufactured by the Superior Marking Equipment Company of Chicago. The free-form spurred serif lettering is fun and casual; giving the impression of movement or action.

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.

Kings in Disguise is a chunky, balloon font of the sort used extensively during the 1970s. It has a retro, disco feel and is ideal for signs and logos. The name comes from a great comic book series published in the late 1980s. The engraved style has a limited character set.