In the collection of vintage and historic images available online from the Library of Congress is one of the exterior of the Town Talk Diner in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Regrettably, on May 28, 2020, the Town Talk Diner was damaged by vandalism, and subsequently destroyed by a fire that engulfed the building early on the morning of May 29th due to civil unrest following the death of George Floyd. The restaurant first opened in 1946, closed in 2011 and subsequently re-opened under new ownership in 2014 with French cuisine, then from 2016 until its demise as an American bistro. While this was not known at the time of selecting the image for a typographic model, subsequent research on the diner turned up these facts. The large vintage sign above the entrance was in big, bold Art Deco letters with rows and rows of bulbs for illuminating the name at night. Coffee and Danish JNL, modeled from the image of that sign, is available in both regular and oblique versions. Perhaps, in a way, the type design will serve as a bit of historic recognition for a popular eating spot.

Sharpe Variable is a stylish serif typeface family. The original type was drawn between 2018 and 2019, and the variable font and its updated styles was created in 2020. It is clear, sharp and has brave, lively letter forms but with a conservative backbone. This font is provided as a Variable Font. It is only one font file, but this file contains multiple styles. Use the sliders in Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign to manually set any weight and width. This gives you not only the 15 predefined styles, but instead more than half a million steps to customize the type to the exact look your project requires. Each style contains ligatures and support for a wide range of languages. More info about Variable Fonts: https://mansgreback.com/s/About_Variable_Fonts.pdf

Inspired by the old Stephenson Blake Caps only font Algerian from 1908, this version, named Algerian Mesa, has been freshened up with a new matching lowercase. The original Algerian, on page 142 of the 1908 Stephenson Blake specimen book, was a small caps to a more decorative lining caps and the plain black version, without the shadow line, was named Gloria. Also on page 142 of the 1908 Stephenson Blake specimen book is a shaded Latin font that gave me the idea for the Alt version of Algerian Mesa. The Alt version works well at smaller point sizes combined with the regular Algerian Mesa font on the same page. New for 2016 were Opentype features including original alternates, oldstyle numerals and case sensitive forms, also new is a fully usable Alt version. New for 2022 are the higher x-height, 90% small caps, 80% small caps and all new italic versions. Also new for 2022 are straight sided accent marks replacing the flared or curved accents. While Algerian Mesa includes some alternates our related Tavern font will still remain the version with more alternates and more weights.