Morris Fuller Benton's Hobo [designed in 1910] is one of a number of fonts which have been so over-used that many designers shy away from it altogether. However, Jeff Levine had often wondered what the design might look like it given a serif treatment. The result is Rail Bum JNL, named for the hobos and transients who hitched along on freight cars to ride the rails across the country during the years when trains were the mainstay of American transportation.

The first Century typeface was cut in 1894 by Linn Boyd Benton in conjunction with T L DeVinne for the Century Magazine. It was a blacker, more readable face than the type previously used. Morris Fuller Benton designed the Century Expanded version in 1900 for American Type Founders to meet the Typographical Union Standard of the day. The 'expansion' was in the vertical plane. Century Expanded is a useful font family for text setting in magazines, books, presentations and newsletters.

Popular music of the early 1900s included a genre called two step; round dances utilizing a sliding step with a tempo in either march or polka time. 1911's "Daughters of the American Revolution" was one such march/two step. The cover of the sheet music had the title hand lettered in a slightly rounded sans serif type design in the Art Nouveau style popular during that era. It is now available as Two Step Nouveau JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

A thin Roman typeface with slab serifs shown in various editions of the American Type Founders’ Specimen Book as either Lining Antique or Lining Central Antique was the model for Specimen Book JNL which is available in both regular and oblique versions. This is the 1700th design released by Jeff Levine Fonts since its inception in January, 2006 and was named Specimen Book JNL to celebrate the era when metal type and letterpress were the modern technology of their time.

The capitals of Register share a similar construction to Morris Fuller Benton’s 1930 Bank Gothic for American Type Founders, but iron out the broader curves and add ‘ink traps’ to emphasise the machine aesthetic. Register also provides the lower case missing from Bank Gothic. Available in two main widths, each in five weights plus reweighted italics with cursively-derived letterforms, plus a bold condensed, Register has been used for the Sochi Winter Olympics, Source magazine and releases from Transient Records.

Lewis F. Day, in his Alphabets Old and New, presented these letters as examples of rustic Roman lettering of the first through third centuries, AD. An uppercase-only typeface, most of the lowercase positions are occupied by letterform variants. It should be noted that the name does not refer to a savory dish made from a nocturnal American marsupial; it’s Latin for “I can dance”. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Madrone is an Adobe Originals typeface designed by Barbara Lind in 1991. Madrone was digitized from proofs of the woodtype collection in the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. A fat face roman, Madrone is typical of popular early nineteenth-century styles. Fat face types are characterized by their squatness and extreme letter width. One familiar version of this design is Bodoni Ultra Bold. Madrone is eye-catching for display uses in advertising and packaging.

When this font slips on a pair of ordinary, over-the-counter spectacles, applies a little hair gel and straightens its red, white and blue tie, it disappears amongst common mortals like you and I... But when danger raises its ugly head, when Truthiness, Justice and the American Way are threatened, MildMannered abandons its secret identity, rips open its shirt and takes to the skies to fight evil... ... and, of course, to help sell colorful paper plates, halloween costumes and happy meals.

Bulletin Script was a style offered by several American wood type manufacturers in the late 19th Century. It may actually be one of the most iconic styles of the late 1960 Psychedelic era when Victorian revival was in full swing. The style known as "Bulletin Script No. 2” varies from the more commonly seen Bulletin in that its bottom strokes have a concave swash to them rather than rounded bulbous bottom terminals. This new digitization features over 300 glyphs including Central European characters.

American type designer Guy Jeffrey Nelson created this script FontFont in 1994. The family contains 2 weights: Regular and Bold and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, festive occasions, poster and billboards as well as web and screen design. FF Providence Sans provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, and stylistic alternates. It comes with proportional lining figures. This FontFont is a member of the FF Providence super family, which also includes FF Providence.

Gather Serif - The Modern Classic Let your creativity flow with Gather Serif. Beautifully crafted letterforms and ligatures to give your type a modern touch of elegance. Gather Serif is packed with extra ligatures and stylistic alternative glyphs. Ligatures: CH CO DO EH EA EO IJ KA KO LA LE LH OC OO QO QU RA RC RH RI RO RS RU TH TT Th ZO fl ffl fi ffi st Language Support for: Western European, Central European, South Eastern European, South American, Esperanto.

In a career spanning the early 1900s through 1940, George M. Cohan wrote and produced over 50 plays, 300 songs and was also an actor, singer and dancer. Many of his works honored his Irish roots, and the cover of one piece of sheet music called “The Irish American” (1905) had its title hand lettered in a condensed Art Nouveau type design with tiny spurred serifs. This is now available digitally as Dress Rehearsal JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Bernhard Modern was designed by Lucian Bernhard and was first cut by American Type Founders. Bernhard Modern is an unusual face with small lowercase but very tall ascenders and short descenders. Bernhard Modern was intended to hold its color and contrast without depending on the spread of ink of the letterpress method. It has an attractive pen drawn quality which has made it a popular choice for invitations and greetings cards. The Bernhard Modern font is useful for advertising and display work.

American designer Frank Marciuliano created the Linotype Abstract display font in 1997. Abstract's letters are made up of collaged elements: a single letter can contain several different textures. Instead of an upper and lowercase, Linotype Abstract offers two different uppercase alphabets, each with different patterns. Text set in Linotype Abstract takes on the appearance of a cubist painting, making it the perfect font for all of your funky type needs. Linotype Abstract is included in the Take Type 4 collection from Linotype GmbH."

Italian type designer Maurizio Osti and American type designer Jane Patterson created this display FontFont in 2003. The family contains 4 weights and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, music and nightlife as well as poster and billboards. FF Folk provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, and stylistic alternates.The font was based on the original alphabet created by Ben Shahn in 1940. It comes with proportional lining and tabular lining figures.

Nexus (2004) consists of three matching variants – a serif, a sans and a slab – which makes it a highly versatile typeface. Nexus started as an alternative to Seria, a typeface Majoor had designed some 5 years earlier. But soon the design developed into a new typeface, with numerous changes in proportions and in details and with a redrawn italic. Besides the three connected versions (Nexus Serif, Nexus Sans, Nexus Mix) Majoor designed a monospaced version called Nexus Typewriter. The Nexus family is a workhorse typeface system like Scala, with features such as small caps in all weights, four different sorts of numbers and an extensive set of ligatures. All fonts in the Nexus family come in regular, italic, bold and bold italic. Free bonus: there are more than 100 elegant Swash italics and dozens of arrows and other icons. The Nexus family was awarded the First Prize at the Creative Review Type Design Awards 2006.

Designed in 1950s Japan by Okanao & Kushiro, the perfect partnership until artistic temperaments drove them apart. The duo spent years crafting the font with the working title “Messenjā”, Okanao bringing technical expertise to craft letterforms, while Kushiro made it his life, obsessively working late into the night to check pages for errors. For him the project was never about making money, it was an artistic endeavor to reprint the great Western works of literature. When he found out Okanao had secretly sold the rights to the font for use as a logo for a major Japanese manufacturer, Kushiro burned all evidence of the designs in a fit of passionate fury. The two reportedly never spoke again. “Messenjā” was thought lost forever until a type specimen was discovered in a vintage typewriter box bought on eBay. Now redrawn and available as 57-nao, a faithful and beautifully crafted monospace characterized by what is considered Okanao’s defining moment, the angular loop on the lowercase ‘a’.

Blacker mono was developed out of a brief by Isabella Ahmadzadeh, by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Francesco Canovaro for the editorial project "A beautiful mistake" by OFFF Tlv in 2022. It is a monospaced version of our typeface Blacker, bringing its "evil serif" aesthetics in the realm of typewriter and coding typefaces. In designing these, usually the letterforms are deformed to better fill the space, but in Blacker Mono only the serifs are modified to balance letters, while letter skeletons are kept consistent with the ones of the original Blacker family. This gives the typeface an uneven, unexpected rhythm, underlined by the unusual choice of providing three optical sizes and some extreme display weights - both uncommon choices in monospaced fonts. The resulting typefamily is thought for use in editorial situations where readability must be married by a strong personality, and is complemented by all the wide array of Open Type features that are present in all Blacker variants, from positional numerals to small case letters and alternates.

Lumios is a freehand casual marker script that was created using Pilot Sign Pen. It has both extended Latin and basic Cyrillic support that is enhanced with oodles of ligatures (latin as well as cyrillic) and alternates. As a compliment to the script I also created Lumios Design Elements font that can be useful in brand design, greeting cards design etc. Both fonts were carefully traced by hand and have clean edges, hence they are safe to use in all graphic design software (including but not limited to Adobe Suite, Silhouette and Cricut Design, Affinity Designer etc) as well as on websites. The script is fully unicode mapped. To use it in Silhouette and similar applications that do not support OpenType features (yet), you may need to use your default Mac/Windows software such as Font Book or Character Map to select alternates you need. Lumios Marker is a perfect companion to Lumios Typewriter, sharing the same soft curves and clean letter edges.

Nexus (2004) consists of three matching variants – a serif, a sans and a slab – which makes it a highly versatile typeface. Nexus started as an alternative to Seria, a typeface Majoor had designed some 5 years earlier. But soon the design developed into a new typeface, with numerous changes in proportions and in details and with a redrawn italic. Besides the three connected versions (Nexus Serif, Nexus Sans, Nexus Mix) Majoor designed a monospaced version called Nexus Typewriter. The Nexus family is a workhorse typeface system like Scala, with features such as small caps in all weights, four different sorts of numbers and an extensive set of ligatures. All fonts in the Nexus family come in regular, italic, bold and bold italic. Free bonus: there are more than 100 elegant Swash italics and dozens of arrows and other icons. The Nexus family was awarded the First Prize at the Creative Review Type Design Awards 2006.

Compendium is a sequel to my Burgues font from 2007. Actually it is more like a prequel to Burgues. Before Louis Madarasz awed the American Southeast with his disciplined corners and wild hairlines, Platt Rogers Spencer, up in Ohio, had laid down a style all his own, a style that would eventually become the groundwork for the veering calligraphic method that was later defined and developed by Madarasz. After I wrote the above paragraph, I was so surprised by it, particularly by the first two sentences, that I stopped and had to think about it for a week. Why a sequel/prequel? Am I subconsciously joining the ranks of typeface-as-brand designers? Are the tools I build finally taking control of me? Am I having to resort to “milking it” now? Not exactly. Even though the current trend of extending older popular typefaces can play tricks with a type designer’s mind, and maybe even send him into strange directions of planning, my purpose is not the extension of something popular. My purpose is presenting a more comprehensive picture as I keep coming to terms with my obsession with 19th century American penmanship. Those who already know my work probably have an idea about how obsessive I can be about presenting a complete and detailed image of the past through today’s eyes. So it is not hard to understand my need to expand on the Burgues concept in order to reach a fuller picture of how American calligraphy evolved in the 19th century. Burgues was really all about Madarasz, so much so that it bypasses the genius of those who came before him. Compendium seeks to put Madarasz’s work in a better chronological perspective, to show the rounds that led to the sharps, so to speak. And it is nearly criminal to ignore Spencer’s work, simply because it had a much wider influence on the scope of calligraphy in general. While Madarasz’s work managed to survive only through a handful of his students, Spencer’s work was disseminated throughout America by his children after he died in 1867. The Spencer sons were taught by their father and were great calligraphers themselves. They would pass the elegant Spencerian method on to thousands of American penmen and sign painters. Though Compendium has a naturally more normalized, Spencerian flow, its elegance, expressiveness, movement and precision are no less adventurous than Burgues. Nearing 700 glyphs, its character set contains plenty of variation in each letter, and many ornaments for letter beginnings, endings, and some that can even serve to envelope entire words with swashy calligraphic wonder. Those who love to explore typefaces in detail will be rewarded, thanks to OpenType. I am so in love with the technology now that it’s becoming harder for me to let go of a typeface and call it finished. You probably have noticed by now that my fascination with old calligraphy has not excluded my being influenced by modern design trends. This booklet is an example of this fusion of influences. I am living 150 years after the Spencers, so different contextualization and usage perspectives are inevitable. Here the photography of Gonzalo Aguilar join the digital branchings of Compendium to form visuals that dance and wave like the arms of humanity have been doing since time eternal. I hope you like Compendium and find it useful. I'm all Spencered out for now, but at one point, for history’s sake, I will make this a trilogy. When the hairline-and-swash bug visits me again, you will be the first to know. The PDF specimen was designed with the wonderful photography of Gonzalo Aguilar from Mexico. Please download it here http://new.myfonts.com/artwork?id=47049&subdir=original

SCALTER was designed in the early April and published in July 2020. Scalter Serif is inspired by the characteristics American vintage sign then the sans serif it’s combination retro typeface. All shape of this typeface is make strong and more contrast, giving a more dynamic and retro feel. Scalter are available in 5 Widths (Condensed – SemiCondensed – Normal – SemiExpanded – Expanded) with matches 4 style (Serif – Semi Serif – Sans Bold- Sans Black - Script) with a total 42 Styles. Also includes support for 26+ Latin (Extended) Languages.

Eldwin is a connected script type family with a friendly demeanour. With two styles of Script and Capitals, they combine playfulness with functionality, which allows it to perform best in display and headline situations. The inspiration for Eldwin was drawn from traditional Italian and American sign paintings. Details include six weights in two styles, 526 characters per Script font and 431 characters per Capitals font. Opentype features consist of stylistic alternates, ligatures, fractions, arrows and language support covering Western, South and Central Europe, and Cyrillic.

One of the more elegant script fonts available, this design is based on calligraphic handwriting called "Copperplate" because of the copper plates that it was etched into for reproduction. This face is not related to Copperplate [Gothic] by the American type designer, F.W. Goudy. The name Copperplate comes from the fact that writing masters used to hand-write their books and then send them to an engraver who recreated all the subtle details onto copper plates, which where then used to print the handwriting books.

A geometric design, published in Rick Poynor’s Typography Now 1 (Booth-Clibborn Editions, London UK,1991). Discussing these kinds of angular styles, the critic Rick Poynor noted that "fate has overtaken the angular post-constructivist type design of Neville Brody, Zuzana Licko and Max Kisman". Poynor described a process by which typefaces, once “fresh, unexpected, precisely attuned to the moment”, get used increasingly often in less and less appropriate contexts and end up looking "irredeemably passé". (Poynor, Rick, ‘American Gothic’ in Eye Magazine, 6/1992)

Douglass Pen was inspired by the handwriting of Frederick Douglass, who was born an American slave but died a distinguished 19th century statesman, orator, and abolitionist leader. He also had fine penmanship. Douglass Pen is modeled chiefly after Douglass's handwritten account of John Brown's famous 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. It simulates his somewhat condensed cursive, dashed off in a swift, bold style. The OpenType release has more than 800 glyphs, including scores of ligatures, alternative upper cases, inkblots, crossouts, and Eastern European characters.

Introducing Levo Dope Slab Serif Font a typeface that exudes boldness and confidence. With its thick, heavy serifs and rectangular shape, this font is the perfect choice for any design that needs to make a strong impact. Transport your audience to the American West with the vintage charm of the Western slab serif font. Whether you're creating posters, advertisements, or signage, this font will capture attention and convey a sense of stability and strength. Also come with FREE illustrations and editable logo to make better design.

Introducing PRONK. By Wearecolt. This is a tall, bold and round display font designed for retro-modern designs. This font is perfect for your next logo design or magazine titles. Taking inspiration from many tall fonts and American number plates i created a display font that would be my 'go to' for a neat tall, bold font. I also wanted something which would be able to take a good amount of treatment like stamp effects and grunge. The PRONK pack includes: .otf and standard webfont file types

Brush Script is a lively font with brush-written characteristics, designed by Robert E. Smith in 1942 for American Type Founders. Brush Script continues to be a favorite, despite competition from other similar typefaces of the period and more modern looking scripts digitized in recent years. Perhaps that's because Brush Script is peppy, informal, and unabashedly confident. The letterforms are casual, yet look as if they have been written quickly. Today, Brush Script is used for advertisements and sales materials, especially for luxury and consumer products.

Introducing Horse Boy Typeface The Horsebow typeface is inspired by the vintage cowboy western style. The Horseboy font family consists of 6 very cool fonts when combined to create western and cowboy themed designs. Can be used for the design of alcoholic beverage packaging, tattoo, poster, pomade designs, barbershops and so on with the western American concept. Apart from that this font is very easy to use in both design and non-design programs because all alternates and glyphs are supported by Unicode (PUA).

Smack, from American designer Jill Bell, is oriented toward a young generation who does not want to mind the rules. The font invites unconventional and playful use. The figures seem to be almost coincidentally shaped. Letters alternate between thin and thick strokes alternate and are accompanied by fine dots which almost look like accidental drops of ink on the paper. Smack is an illustrative font with unmistakable handwriting character and is perfect for cartoons, comics and anything else which is not supposed to take life too seriously.

Alf Becker graced many issues of “Signs of the Times” (a trade magazine for the sign industry) with his innovative hand lettered alphabets for others to use as design inspirations. His 134th submission was titled “Post Card Type”, a condensed thick-and-thin stylized Art Deco design. This served as the inspiration for Tourist Postcard JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of S.T. Media Group and the American Sign Museum for providing the work image for this type revival.

Original Foundry: TypeType Original name: TT Marks The typeface Pinatas Marks is made in the style of the traditional American sign painting, which is the traditional art of painting on buildings, billboards and signage for the purpose of announcing or advertising of products, services, and activities. Font family Pinatas Marks consists of 32 fonts and has 8 different weights: Thin, ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, ExtraBold, Black. Pinatas Marks is looking great on all the modern information media, ranging from small labels to entire text blocks.

Kanona JNL is modeled from one of the numerous alphabets created by the late Alf R. Becker for Signs of the Times magazine from the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to a wealth of source material provided by Tod Swormstedt of ST Media (and who is also the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio), Jeff Levine has been redrawing many of these alphabets and presenting them in digital form. The original variations in letter widths from Becker’s hand-painted alphabet have been left intact.

Love songs are the perennials of music, outlasting all other popular fads and styles that come and go. The 1920s through the 1940s is considered by some to be the Golden Age of the American love song. Thousands upon thousands of copies of popular sheet music sold, and the cover lettering and art on many titles were from some of the finest illustrators of their time. Love Song JNL recreates the Art Deco-flavored design found on one such piece of sheet music from the 1930s.

Dylan is a Sans typeface in the best American tradition. In order to keep corners open and to make the font more readable in small sizes it has deep cuts where curves join straights. I designed 8 finely tuned weights with fitting italic sets. The fonts includes full smallcaps, language support for most European languages plus Turkish, many fractions, nominator and denominators, Greek mathematical signs and many currency symbols. It is a versatile font that is well suited for many occasions, even for signage.

The renowned American illustrator and graphic designer Milton Glaser designed Glaser Stencil in 1970. Glaser Stencil is a perfect summation of both Modernist proportion and New York-style solidity and self-assurance. An all capitals font, the shapes of the letters are reminiscent of popular sans serif faces of the time, such as Futura and ITC Avant Garde Gothic. Like everything New York-related, Glaser Stencil should be used big, in headlines and display applications, where it can play a bold, proud, and confident role.

Franko Luin, Carniola's designer, on this typeface: Carniola is a pastiche of different type designs from the beginning of the 20th century, mostly American. I am not very fond of it, but was convinced to release it by someone who needed a typeface with a time typical feeling. On the other hand: why not use the original typefaces from that period? Carniola has its name from the Latin name of Kranjska/Krain, a principality in the former Habsburg monarchy (Austria-Hungary), now part of modern Slovenia.

There's a cemetery in Castine, Maine, a lovely coastal town perhaps best known for Maine Maritime Academy and a surviving crop of stately old American elms, with headstones dating back into the 18th century -- the standard old headstone shape, often topped by winged skulls. Thanks to a local historical society volunteer, I got my hands on a couple rubbings; these show a particular style of stonecarving that proved captivating to the point of typeface design. Castine has a full character set in both roman and italic styles.

Magazin ST is powerful but delicate. What fascinated me seeing, a couple of letters, in Bob Roy Kelly's book (American Wood Type:1828-1900) were the little squares in the corners that represent a glow from lighting coming from below and from the right. Such ambiguity excited me and I thought that today with digital resources it wouldn't take long to do it. Seeing it working is excellent. Look In the posters what it is for and the effects it produces, including the sensation of relief.- L.S.