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.

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.

Frenzy evolved from a logo for a Gen X product offered by a very staid company. It is a sythesis of Classic Roman Capitals and American Typewriter—with a bit of frenetic energy stirred in. It is dedicated to the designers son, who is the epitome of the font... contained chaos.

Zinjaro is the work of English designer Carol Kemp. Its clever design captures elements of both African and Latin American art in its forms. A combination of decorated and solid capital strokes gives it an exciting, unpredictable appearance and an array of devices and border elements further enhance the font.

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.

I spend a lot of time following two obsessions: packaging and hand lettering. Alongside a few other minor obsessions, those two have been my major ones for so many years now, I've finally reached the point where I can actually claim them as “obsessions” without getting a dramatic reaction from the little voice in the back of my head. When you spend so much time researching and studying a subject, you become very focused, directionally and objectively. But of course some of the research material you run into turns out to be tangential to whatever your focus happens to be at the time, so you absorb what you can from it, then shelf it — like the celebrity bobblehead that amused you for a while, but is now an almost invisible ornament eating dust and feathers somewhere in your environment. And just like the bobblehead may fall off the shelf one day to remind you of its existence, some of my lettering research material unveiled itself in my head one day for no particular reason. Hand lettering is now mostly perceived as an American art. Someone with my historical knowledge about lettering may be snooty enough to go as far as pointing out the British origins of almost everything American, including lettering — but for the most part, the contemporary perspective associates great lettering with America. The same perspective also associates blackletter, gothics and sans serifs with Germany. So you can imagine my simultaneous surprise and impatience when, in my research for one of my American lettering-based fonts, I ran into a German lettering book from 1953, by an artist called Bentele. It was no use for me because it didn't propel my focus at that particular time, but a few months ago I was marveling at what we take for granted — the sky is blue, blackletter is German, lettering is American — and found myself flipping through the pages of that book again. The lettering in that book is upbeat and casual sign making stuff, but it has a slightly strange and youthful experimentation at its heart. I suppose I find it strange because it deviates a lot from the American stuff I'm used to working with for so long now. To make a long story short, what’s inside that German book served as the semilla, which is Spanish for seed, for the typeface you see all over these pages. With Semilla, my normal routine went out the window. My life for a while was all Bezier all the time. No special analog or digital brushes or pens were used in drawing these forms. They're the product of a true Bezier process, all starting with a point creating a curve to another point, which draws a curve to another point, and so on. It’s a very time-consuming process, but at the end I am satisfied that it can get to pretty much the same results easier and more traditional methods accomplish. And as usual with my fonts, the OpenType is plenty and a lot of fun. Experimenting with substitution and automation is still a great pleasure for me. It is the OpenType that always saves me from the seemingly endless work hours every type designer must inevitably have to face at one point in his career. The artful photos used in this booklet are by French photographer and designer Stéphane Giner. He is very deserving of your patronage, so please keep an eye out for his marvelous work. I hope you like Semilla and enjoy using it. I have a feeling that it marks a transition to a more curious and flexible period in my career, but only time will tell.

Hibagon is the Japanese equivalent of the Yeti from the Himalayas, or Bigfoot from North America. It is usually sighted on Mt. Hiba (Hiroshima prefecture), hence the name. I have never seen Hibagon myself, even though I have visited Hiroshima several times. Hibagon font is a nice, handpainted, all caps font with a mythical feel to it. It probably won’t scare you, but it will look good on anything that needs a bit of brushwork, or a bit of roughness.

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!

Polli Sans is a sans serif geometric font, designed with both proportional and fixed-width styles in mind. Polli is great for large scale display purposes and small scale copy. The proportional’s curvy form makes it super useful for title type, and the detailed technical fixed-width sub-family is perfect for any informative body of text. Polli is designed as an homage to common type practices of the early 21st centric corporate America. Borrowing from friendly styles you’ve seen before but with contemporary challenging elements.

Upholding aspects of geometric shapes Created Pelinka. Pelinka is a Sans serif Family that has a solid foundation of geometric shapes designed to be bold and flexible. This typeface has all the widths needed to meet various design needs, Condensed, Normal and Expanded each width has 9 weights. Pelinka also includes support for Cyrillic and Greek Alphabets. Opentype feature: aalt, frac, liga, locl, numr, onum,ordn, salt, sinf, ss01, ss02, subs, sups, kern, mark. Language support for the Americas, most of Europe,Cyrillic and Greek.

The hand lettered title on the cover for the (ca. 1917) sheet music for “After the War is Over” provided the design inspiration for National Nouveau JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. A precursor to the Art Deco movement which would arrive within the next decade, this bold thick-and-thin design embraces the elements of both Art Nouveau and Art Deco in one type design and gets its name from the patriotic spirit of America during “The Great War”.

Styling is a simple, light, sans-serif typeface inspired on old cars and planes with an aerodynamic shape. The font comes in 5 weights plus italics. Styling and Styling Alt families offer professionals a wide range of creative options. Styling was created in 2014, while its designer was 30,000 feet in the air and the plane was flying over some Latin America cities. A flight full of flavours and shapes. This typeface is the result of anxiety and speed. Keep on rollin’ and fly high with Styling!

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 original Franklin Gothic was designed in 1903 by Morris Fuller Benton. Franklin Gothic is named after Benjamin Franklin, America’s greatest printer. Our Franklin Gothic Black Condensed is unique because it is designed to set properly in all display applications. It contains all the high-end features expected in a quality OpenType Pro font.

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.