During the period of the Great American Depression, “hobos” created a system of symbols to communicate and assist fellow travelers. These symbols would mark a home, farm, fence or other structure to indicate what to expect in the area. They would tip off travelers on how to find food, stay safe and what to avoid and more. In some areas of the USA, these symbols are still visible and have also become part of the American popular culture. These 96 symbols are accompanied by the what the symbol was used to indicate. The meanings and symbols are by no means the complete list andther may be additional or alternative meanings. These are for casual use and not historical or anthropologically completely accurate

During the period of the Great American Depression, “hobos” created a system of symbols to communicate and assist fellow travelers. These symbols would mark a home, farm, fence or other structure to indicate what to expect in the area. They would tip off travelers on how to find food, stay safe and what to avoid and more. In some areas of the USA, these symbols are still visible and have also become part of the American popular culture. These 96 symbols are accompanied by a pdf describing what the symbol was used to indicate. The meanings and symbols are by no means the complete list and there may be additional or alternative meanings. These are for casual use and not historical or anthropologically completely accurate.

At first glance, Burgstaedt Antiqua looks like an old typewriter face, or rather like a typeface from a typewriter that has gone hopelessly wrong! Only after your second glance will you see this font for what it really is - a thoroughly new text face. Several features of Burgstaedt Antiqua, and its companion italic face, are worth special attention: First, the terminal styles of the letters vary throughout the alphabet. This gives text set in Burgstaedt Antiqua a slightly jittery feeling. A second interesting feature is the lowercase q", which takes the form of a shrunken-down uppercase "Q". Burgstaedt Antiqua Regular and Burgstaedt Antiqua Italic may be used in both text and headlines. For use in text, we recommend employing a slightly larger point size (12 pt or 14 pt and above). British designer Richard Yeend designed this family in 2002.

Southern colonialist is a new slab typeface from Intellecta, based on ancient advertisements from the Wild West of America Good for titling and display usage; in many styles.

Film Noir JNL is a classic Art Deco Alphabet from the brush of the late master sign painter Alf R. Becker, and appeared in Signs of the Times Magazine. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media and the American Sign Museum for providing the reference material to make this font.

Quadrus is the work of New York graphic designer Peter Fahrni, a condensed open slab serif typeface. Fahrni was inspired by the lettering styles typical of baseball, basketball and American football sportswear. Quadrus is an all caps alphabet ideal for a variety of applications, particularly for those related to sports.

Mister Hand was created in 1998 from a found object. Chank scanned it in, cleaned it up a little and voila! It's a retro version of the American Sign Language finger spelling alphabet. Uppercase is only the hand shapes, lowercase has the hand shape with the corresponding letter beside it.

ITC Ozwald was designed by David Farey and is a revival of a little-known typeface of American type designer Oswald Cooper called Cooper Fullface. The original was intended to be a modernized version of Bodoni and Farey captured all the charm, wit and creativity of the original in ITC Ozwald.

Lakester is a layered type family. It comes with 4 font systems that can be layered to create different effect (regular,shadow,inline,inline 2) . Inspired by vintage american west poster, it's loaded with 300 glyphs. This family works best for logotype, gig poster, letterhead, dropcap, titles, and any artworks.

American type designer Paul H. Neville created this display FontFont in 1992. The family contains 4 weights and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, editorial and publishing as well as poster and billboards. FF Kath provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures. It comes with proportional lining figures.

Boardley Script is a script-style display font in two layers, Boardley Script was the result of an exploration of mid-century American and European bold script lettering for advertising. is an attractive contemporary typeface drawn from scratch with brand-new, more vigorous detailing — and layerable variations for chromatic use.

An offering by lettering artist Harvey Hopkins Dunn for the 1930 classic, American Alphabets, provided the inspiration for this graceful, engaging typeface. Use it liberally to exude elegance, or to turn on the charm. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Higher and higher! Arriba burns and churns with the life and spirit of Latin American culture. Its unique style and extensive character font will give all kinds of film, video, print and multi-media work real altitude. Created by English graphic designer Phill Grimshaw. Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos

This quintessential nineteenth-century offering is based on a typeface from the 1912 American Type Founders catalog called Lining Central Antique. Quaint, yet crisp and clean, it is equally suitable for headlines or body copy. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Charles Beeler Jr. designed this in 1895 for Mackellar, Smiths and Jordan, which was part of the American Type Founders combine. The font had a short life because five years later ATF began an "off with the old, on with the new" program, and this font was an early victim.

Calypso was inspired by the dance of the same name, and its flowing lines suggest the rhythms of Caribbean / Latin American music. Ideal for tourist literature, album sleeve art, packaged foods or other products with a Caribbean / Latin flavor. See also my other fun fonts Bebopalula, Barrowboy, and Pier Arcade.

This handy family takes its design cues from Beton, a slab serif designed by Heinrich Jost for Bauersche Gießerei in 1931. A number of characters have been softened by the addition of ball terminals, commonly seen on manual typewriter type in the 1950s. Both versions of this font contain the complete Latin A Extended character set, as well as extended ligatures and fractions.

Prestige Elite is a word processor face which offers clear and monospaced type. The slanted versions have kept the same design as the roman font. The word Elite denoted a specific size of typewriter face. The Prestige Elite font family is easy to read, even in small sizes and is useful for tabular material with narrow columns, such as directories and lists.

Introducing, Absolutely Vintage Font! As the name implies, Absolutely Vintage brings a retro and nostalgic feel. This font is made to mimic the typing of a typewriter. With a simple and organic impression, this font is able to create a warm and friendly feel. Absolutely Vintage also brings alternates to each letter to give it a unique feel for display purposes.

Kennerley Old Style was designed by Goudy for publisher Mitchell Kennerley in 1911. Goudy described it as a "book letter with strong serifs, firm hairlines, and makes a solid, compact page." One of Goudy's best text faces, Kennerley is considered an original American classic as it is not based on historical type designs.

American type designer Jim Parkinson created this display FontFont in 1996. The font is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, festive occasions, film and tv as well as poster and billboards. FF Motel Gothic provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures and stylistic alternates. It comes with proportional lining figures.

English by influence with an American disposition and modernist details, Steady Sans is a blend of styles from multiple eras. Decidedly expansive letterforms make for an overall lively presence. Fluid italics, multiple weights, and alternate forms provide a variety of tone for headline use and solid construction works well for text settings.

Designed specifically for AT&T to set telephone directories by Chauncey Griffith at Mergenthaler in 1938, Bell Gothic was the standard American directory typeface for forty years. Limited in performance by linecaster matrix requirements, Bell Gothic was replaced by Bell Centennial. Furlong is a version of Bell Gothic adapted for the racing form.

This is a stylized blackletter font with many OpenType features and 403 characters -- many of which are presently unknown for blackletter fonts: Caps, lower case, small caps, old style figures, numerators, denominators, accents characters and so on. The idea is a modern blackletter that is readable and usable for the American eye.

Hexide JNL was modeled and modified from an original design created by the late sign artist Alf R. Becker for Signs of the Times® Magazine. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Publications, Inc. and the American Sign Museum of Cincinnati, Ohio for providing the reference material used to make this font.

The Logansport, Indiana Pharos-Observer dated June 12, 1917 had the following headline running across its front page: “American Steamer Sunk by German U Boat”. The condensed slab serif typeface used to set that headline has been recreated digitally as Newspaper Publisher JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

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.

American type designer Jim Parkinson created this display FontFont in 1996. The font is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, festive occasions, film and tv as well as poster and billboards. FF Matinee Gothic provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures and stylistic alternates. It comes with proportional lining figures.

Oakland is a Streamline era design inspired by some hand-drawn lettering on a 1930's French poster advertising a certain brand of Car (Automobile for our American cousins). It's ideal for giving poster and design work that late 1930s to mid 1950s feel. Make a bold statement with this all capitals typeface!

Voilà, the Meister Antiqua font family, which was originally released by Typoart, Dresden, circa 1951, is again available as a remastered, modernized and digitized version, with swash caps integrated in the Italics.

Luxor Pro is a semi-encircled Egyptienne with exaggerated serifs. It is a font of Victorian style which was widespread in Europe and America at the fin de siècle, especially in advertisements.

Duquesne Dark Woodcut is a new typeface in the spirit of 19th century American wood cut typefaces. There is an almost rustic simplicity to its heavily serifed letter forms, ideal for capturing the spirit of the mid-west, or early Victorian Britain. Long live the era of the Cowboy and the Steam Navigation Canal!

The pattern for this elegant, if slightly quirky, Art Deco typeface was drawn by Gustav Jensen for the 1931 classic, American Alphabets. Perfect for suggesting the exotic, the font also includes several graphic elements in Jensen’s inimitable style. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

The Federal Music Project was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's WPA (Works Progress Administration), putting many people back to work in the Depression years of the 1930s. A hand-lettered poster advertising an "American Music Festival" featuring the Bridgeport Symphony Orchestra offered up the extra bold Art Deco inspiration which became Music Festival JNL

The American Type Founders 1923 Specimen Book and Catalogue called the inspiration for this typeface Engravers Text; it could easily be called elegant, enchanting and erudite, as well. The inline version of this font includes the complete 1252 Latin and 1250 Central European character sets; the Solid version includes the Turkish 1254 set in addition.

A poster for the publication “The Quartier Latin – A Magazine Devoted to the Arts” featured the magazine’s name in a light Art Nouveau serif style. The Quartier Latin was published between 1896 and 1899 by the American Art Association of Paris. This is now available as Nouveau Meadow JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

This typeface takes its inspiration from Will Bradley's Ultra Modern Initials, released by American Type Founders in 1934. Unlike the caps-only original version, both versions of this font contain complete Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan, and the Macintosh Roman character set, as well.

This typeface is a faithful reproduction of an elegant and somewhat quaint design by Morris Fuller Benton, which first appeared in the American Type Founders 1913 specimen book. It's equally at home as a text or a headline face. Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252 and Central European 1250 character sets.