In the 1990s I drew a text face for the San Francisco Chronicle. It was based on W. A. Dwiggins’ Electra and incorporated many features of the Linotype Legibility Series: More compact, with a taller lowercase X-height, etc. That type was called Electric and it was the Chronicle’s text face for nearly a decade, surviving several redesigns. From that, I made Azuza, a more detailed and sensitive style. Azuza was recognized in the TDC2 type competition in 2001. Then it went into hibernation as a Type 1 font family. Today it is back. Six fonts. Open Type.

The engraver Jean Jannon ranks among the significant representatives of French typography of the first half of the 17th century. From 1610 he worked in the printing office of the Calvinist Academy in Sedan, where he was awarded the title "Imprimeur de son Excellence et de l'Academie Sédanoise". He began working on his own alphabet in 1615, so that he would not have to order type for his printing office from Paris, Holland and Germany, which at that time was rather difficult. The other reason was that not only the existing type faces, but also the respective punches were rapidly wearing out. Their restoration was extremely painstaking, not to mention the fact that the result would have been just a poor shadow of the original elegance. Thus a new type face came into existence, standing on a traditional basis, but with a life-giving sparkle from its creator. In 1621 Jannon published a Roman type face and italics, derived from the shapes of Garamond's type faces. As late as the start of the 20th century Jannon's type face was mistakenly called Garamond, because it looked like that type face at first sight. Jannon's Early Baroque Roman type face, however, differs from Garamond in contrast and in having grander forms. Jannon's italics rank among the most successful italics of all time – they are brilliantly cut and elegant.

Aegypti 7 is a digital revival of Font No.7 or Egyptian Narrow - a Soviet display face cast for hand composition. I settled on the 12pt version as a basis for my digital version, as larger sizes added too much contrast to an otherwise quite orderly slab serif. The Soviet Font No.7 itself was based on an older Semi-Egyptian narrow cut before the revolution.

Cordin is a rough handdrawn face useful for scrapbooking and other craft-based ideas. There is a free version available.

The Broadstreet font is one of the exciting display faces from designer Richard Yeend, who is based in Fourqueux, France.

Bookkeeper JNL is based on the lighter weight version of R. Hunter Middleton's 'Karnak', produced in 1936 for Ludlow. "Karnak" itself was based on the geometric slab-serif "Memphis", designed in 1929 by Dr. Rudolf Wolf and released originally by the Stempel Type Foundry of Germany. According to Wikipedia, "Karnak" "was named after the Karnak Temple Complex in Egypt, in reference to the fact that early slab serifs were often called "Egyptians" as an exoticism by nineteenth-century type founders." Available in both regular and oblique versions, Bookkeeper JNL serves well as both a headline and text type face.

Inspired from blueprints of old Montreal buildings, this font is a hand lettered, all caps face with influences from the arts & crafts movement.

Originally inspired by the natural beauty of seahorses and their environment. It has the appearance of a turn of the century display face, but is in fact completely new and original to Drewfonts.

American Uncial™ was designed by Victor Hammer in 1943. Uncial typefaces consist of letter forms of the Capitalis Monumentalis and the majescule cursive. The origins of Uncial faces date back to the 5th century. In 1953, American Uncial was expanded to include some new figures, also designed by Hammer, and was rereleased by Klingspor with the name Neue Hammer Unziale. The forms are based on old scripts in books of antiquity and the early Middle Ages and the font is a new variation of a classic. Neue Hammer Unziale font has been a favorite for certificates and diplomas and is recommended for headlines and shorter texts in a point size of 12 or larger.

Patricia Pothin-Roesch's Tendria typeface bases its letterforms on the logo for the French “Tendriade” mark. Clearly inspired by writing and hand lettering, Patricia Pothin-Roesch began her work on Tendria in Adobe Illustrator. After a few letters, she went back to designing the old-fashioned way: drawing by hand on layers of tracing paper. Tendria is a sturdy upright script face with a warm, childlike feeling. Its letters are like the typefaces often used in primary schools; the counterforms are large and open. The name Tendria is reminiscent of the French word for tender, “tendre.” Designers who set Tendria lovingly will reap rewards; this is an excellent addition to a display heading toolkit.

Sabon was designed by Jan Tschichold and released in 1967. Sabon was created in response to the specific needs of a group of German printers who wanted a typeface that would be identical in form when produced by three different metal-casting technologies. Named after Jacques Sabon, a sixteenth century typefounder whose widow married another typefounder, Konrad Berner, who is credited with issuing the first typefounder's specimen sheet. Several types on the sheet were attributed to Claude Garamond, and one of these served Tschichold as the source for Sabon roman. The italic was based on another face on Berner's sheet, cut by Robert Granjon. Tschichold's skillful adaptation of these old style faces has produced an elegant and workmanlike book face. The Sabon font family is a popular choice for setting text.

Based on turn-of-the-century advertising type. A condensed, fat-faced display font with a touch of the medieval. The influence of art nouveau is also present in the high-waisted caps and flowing lines, putting the face into the early 20th century.

Chapeau is loosely inspired by a Johnny Cash letter written on an old IBM typewriter. The original typeface called “Doric” was a rare example of a proportionally aligned typewriter face, supplied by IBM in the late 1960s. Based on simple geometric shapes, Chapeau is a low contrast sans-serif with rounded endings. The letterforms have been carefully aligned to avoid exceeding width and to achieve an efficient, contemporary appearance.

Teamhair Tower is a “rough” monowidth font based on the face used on the old Sears Tower Gaelic manual typewriter. Teamhair was first digitized in 2002 by Michael Everson and originally used the MacGaelic character set on the Macintosh platform, and ISO/IEC 8859-14 on the PC. In 2008 Doire version 3 was released in OpenType format, completely compliant with Unicode encoding and with an extended character set.

Moscow-based designer Julia Borisovna Balasheva created her Lubok face as a pictogram-based font. The term "lubok" refers to a popular style of Russian folk art printing, which dates back to the 18th Century. In Lubok, Bakasheva has digitised several whimsical characters and animals, which were common in these prints. She suggests that you use Lubok's symbols to illustrate fairy tales; we suggest that you use Lubok to decorate everything: from your next office party invitation to comic books of your own design!

A hundred-year-old offering from Bauer & Company, named simply "Manuscript," provided the inspiration for this elegant script face. The name translates as Bavaria Handwriting.

Hagenbeck is an old style font face with the intention to get really bold. It's a design from 2019, drawn during a rainy stay in the eponymous district in Hamburg, the designers ‘hood for a long time. There is the bold weight and a decorative stamped version of this font face.

A 1964 piece of sheet music entitled “Old Soldiers Never Die (They Just Fade Away)” was based on the farewell speech General Douglas MacArthur gave to Congress on April 19, 1951. This particular edition of the song sheet had part of his speech (as well as its title) hand lettered in a free-form sans serif reminiscent of the lettering done by such noted lettering artists as Paul Coker and Saul Bass. The casual and playful style of this type design became the inspiration for Swing Vote JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Blackwood is a sans serif headline face with a woodgrain effect. Based loosely on Grotesk, it has strong, solid forms with distinctive style.

Woodlawn JNL is based on an open face wood type. A bold outline sans, this design is excellent for headline and titling applications.

The Quandary Font is created for a horror theme in use with an illustrated book ‘The Predicament’ by Edgar Allan Poe. It is designed as a highly expressive face to accentuate a sense of mystery and the macabre. A comparatively more carefree and free-spirited face, it comes as a uni-case single weight family used exclusively as the main face for the book. The characters are developed from the numeric glyphs found on the astronomical clock-face at Prague Old Town Square, Czech Republic. http://www.behance.net/gallery/Quandary/383204

In the 1970s, Face Photosetting in London was known as the preeminent typesetting house in London. Steve worked in the studio in Newman Street and Hanway Place. El Paso Pro is a family of typefaces based on a unique single font design from the Face Collection, called El Paso.

No mystery here: this monocase neon face is based on the old logotype lettering for The Electric Company TV show. This version adds a little jolt with happy outlet characters in the dagger and double dagger positions, a plug at the section mark, and a rather novel treatment of the mu character. This font contains the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

Doire is a monowidth font based on the face used on the old Royal Gaelic manual typewriter. Doire Royal is a “rough” version of that font. Doire was first digitized in 1993 by Michael Everson and originally used the MacGaelic character set on the Macintosh platform, and ISO/IEC 8859-14 on the PC. In 2008 Doire version 3 was released in OpenType format, completely compliant with Unicode encoding and with an extended character set.

Eroded, skeletal and gaunt, Obsessed was one of Zang-O-Fonts first typefaces, and is loosely based on a couple of Art Deco faces.

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.

Brosse is a family of slabserif faces which emphasise clarity and geometric cleanliness of line, in a 'Brave New World' sprit that harks back to the 1930s and possibly also to postwar rebuilding in the 1950s. Its clear legibility makes it ideal for poster work and titles, as well as for signage of any kind. Eight faces are offered, regular and italic, bold and bold italic, as well as a condensed face and a bold weight thereof. There are also two decorative forms- outline and embossed faces. All faces include a large character set and extensive Opentype features. A Demonstrater version of the regular face is also offered free of charge-this is fully licensed but has a signnificantly reduced character set.

Serif Nouveau JNL is a condensed type face based on the hand lettered title of a 1920s-era piece of sheet music for the song "Naturally".

OldHaroldRee is a modification of PhederFrack, a calligraphic fraktur face. It keeps the lower case letters and inserts a completely different set of upper-case letters, which is in the “Old English” rather than the “Old German” or fraktur style. It comes in two weights, a bit unusual for an Old-English style typeface.

PT Quadrat Grotesk™ was designed for ParaType in 2001 by Vladimir Pavlikov. An expanded sans serif with square letterforms due to what the face was named. Based on the shapes of one of old Russian wooden types. Wooden types were used for placard display composition at large sizes. Their printouts retained wooden texture and traces of handling. These features are reflected in the shapes of Quadrat Grotesk. It is a good typeface for display and advertising typography.