typeface based on old lettering by an 1930's advertise lettering in a Flight Magazine

Albertina was a typeface ahead of its time. It was in the early 1960s when designer Chris Brand, an accomplished calligrapher, aspired to draw a typeface based on the principles of calligraphy. Unfortunately, typesetting machines of that era put many restrictions on designers. Characters had to be drawn within a very coarse grid, which also defined their spacing. Technological limitations meant that italic designs often had to share the same character widths as the romans. Designers were forced to draw italic faces much wider and with more open spacing than what would be typical in calligraphic lettering or hand-set type. Not surprisingly, production of the first Albertina fonts went very slowly. Brand would submit his character drawings, and the Monotype Drawing Office would modify them to be compatible with the company's typesetting equipment. The new drawings would then be sent back to Brand for approval or rework. Most were reworked. The process took so long, in fact, that by the time the face was completed it was once again out of phase with the times: instead of being released as metal type for the Monotype composing machines it had been tailored for, Albertina debuted as phototype fonts for the Monophoto typesetter. The design's first use was for a catalog of the work of Stanley Morison, exhibited at the Albertina Library in Brussels in 1966. Sales of the design were not remarkable. With the advent of digital type technology, Albertina's story took a far happier turn. Frank E. Blokland, of the Dutch Type Library, used Brand's original, uncompromised drawings as the foundation of a digital revival. The Monophoto version had taken a considerable battering from the limitations of Monotype's unit system," recalls Blokland, "but there was no need for me to incorporate these restrictions in the digital version." With the full backing of Monotype and original designer Brand looking over Blokland's shoulder, a new design for Albertina emerged, displaying all the grace and verve of Brand's original drawings. The basic family drawn by Brand also grew into three weights, each with an italic complement and a suite of small caps and old style figures."

This classic face is based on Kleukens Scriptura, designed by Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens in 1926 for D Stempel AG. It served as an alternative to Lucien Bernhard's Cursive and an inspiration for Oswald Cooper's Pompeian Script. Both versions of the font contain the complete Unicode Latin 1252 and Central European 1250 character sets.

Choc font is the work of French designer Roger Excoffon, based on the traditions of Japanese brush calligraphy, thick yet graceful. Choc light font was designed by Phil Grimshaw, who had to redraw many times in different weights before finding one that worked as a text face and remained true to the original.

This elegant stencil face is based on lettering used by Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, popularly known as Le Corbusier, on his architectural drawings. Big, bold and beautiful, it's the perfect choice for commanding headlines or subheads. Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets.

Mellin takes us to the simple designs of the Streamline era. It is based on heavy vertical strokes with a slight taper. Mellin is offered in a solid form as well as an open outline face, and is ideally suited for posters that aim at the elegant functionality of the 40s and 50s.

Zebra was originally designed by Karlgeorg Hoefer in 1965 for the Stempel foundry in Germany. This unique font was designed as a two-color script face and is now available digitally for the first time. The P22/IHOF release presents six separate fonts based on the original painted drawings and Stempel proofs.

This Art Deco-inspired face is based on the Baltimore Type Foundry’s Tourist Extra Condensed. Graceful and elegant, this typeface’s compact design also packs a lot of information into very little space. This font contains the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

This engaging headline face is based on a rather pudgy typeface named "Bullion Shadow", which was originally released somewhere on the cusp between the hippie and disco eras, and was equally at home in both. Both versions of this font include the complete Unicode 1252 Latin and Unicode 1250 Central European character sets.

A rollicking fun face based on lettering on a poster for Britain's LNER steamship lines, which featured a piano-playing mouse and a dancing goose. The Postscript and Truetype versions contain a complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252); in addition, the Opentype version supports Unicode 1250 (Central European) languages as well.

It’s alive! Insigne’s new creation, Daito, is now functional, built to process your logos, business cards, magazine layouts, packaging and more without the slightest glitch. But this new slab serif is no heartless churn of the same factory nuts and bolts. Daito is designed to greet your reader with a friendly face. Inspired by types from the era of the Space Race, this new take on some old faces brings a contemporized, unique set of serif forms to the font race. Daito comes complete with a variety of weights to help you find the best settings for your current needs or moods. Need soft and playful? Daito light communicates its message gently with softened serif. Need a different feel with more authority? With the touch of a few buttons, engage the powerful Black or striking Bold. Additional features with Daito include stylistic alternates, ligatures, titling capitals and small caps among other typographic features. Please note: use magical OpenType-savvy applications such as Adobe Creative Suite, QuarkXPress, etc to keep your font from malfunctioning, shorting, attacking people, or attempting a world takeover. Daito also speaks Western, Eastern, and Central European languages. However, Japanese is not available for this edition. It’s not every day you find a top-of-the-line font like Daito. This machine can handle most anything on your list, short of folding your laundry (though it may make your laundry look nicer). Don’t wait. Order yours today while supplies last.

Driver Gothic is based on the typeface used for Ontario license plates. Although unique among Canadian provincial license plates, this face is very similar to, if not outright identical with, the face used on car plates in 22 American states: Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia. Driver Gothic is available in all popular font formats, and is comprised of a very extended character set (over 750 characters) covering a wide range of languages, including Central and Eastern European languages, Greek, Cyrillic, Esperanto, Turkish, Baltic and Celtic/Welsh. Driver Gothic Pro, the OpenType version, contains class-based kerning and push-button stylistic alternates for use with apps that support advanced typography. Buckle up!

Prospector JNL is based on a lettering example found in an old Speedball-pen lettering handbook.

Xylo is a rugged, no-nonsense typeface that was originally designed in 1924 by the Benjamin Krebs type foundry in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Even back then, Xylo must have been very popular; the design made it at least as far as England. In 1995, after finding its design in an old London printer's reference book, the Letraset Type Studio faithfully converted Xylo into digital format. A time-proven display face, Xylo will convey a feeling of power and strength in any application. Best used big in headlines or logos; Xylo exudes an expressionistic and art deco spirit that just as much at home today as it was during the roaring 20s!

Chank claims to have the fastest type design, we think we have the youngest. Samuel was merely four years old when he wrote out his first face. We are expecting many more brilliant typefaces from this upcoming designer. Please note that this font has no numbers or punctuation symbols; Samuel just did letters at that time.

Venecian Old Face fonts had a strong influence on typeface design in the 1930s and 1940s in England. Such influence is evident in the font Electra, designed by William A. Dwiggins for Linotype in 1935. Electra combines its classic roots with the Zeitgeist of the 1930s, also displaying characteristics of the Bauhaus and Art Deco styles.

Here's a great old face from the H. W. Caslon foundry in London; a real workhorse. The lowercase is eminently readable, so you can set entire paragraphs to good effect. We don't recommend it for setting all caps, but we did take time to kern it well; so you won't get a jumble of ovelapping letters if you do.

In one of our yearly type hunts, we came across the ancestor of this font, much wider and more decorative, with fine outside shading. Condition was poor so we did the obvious, cutting out the excess decoration and condensing the face optically. It reeks of dancing girls and drunken sailors and other colorful attributes of Old San Francisco.

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.

Glitzy is a caps-only font with extreme contrast. It was inspired by Art Deco typefaces, especially Broadway by Morris Fuller Benton, but Glitzy is not an attempt to reproduce that typeface. The letters on the lower-case keys differ slightly from the letters on the upper-case keys. The large black interiors invite decoration and the family includes four faces with interior decoration. These four faces with interior decoration can be used in layers with the base font to add color to lettering. (OakPark is a another attempt to do high-contrast lettering with an Art Deco feel.)

Bitstream typeface based on Koch Antiqua by Rudolph Koch (Klingspor, 1922). Koch Antiqua, also known as Locarno and Eve, is the most popular face of one of the great lettering artists of the 20th century. This delicate display face has a small x-height, very tall ascenders, and main strokes that taper gracefully downward. Koch-Antiqua appeared extensively in advertising between the wars. A refined letterform, it is best used sparingly for a distinctive look in advertising, book, and job work. Two weights of Cyrillic version including alternative lc characters were developed by Isabella Chaeva and released in 2008 by ParaType.

Auriol and Auriol Flowers were designed by Georges Auriol, born Jean Georges Huyot, in the early 20th century. Auriol was a French graphic artist whose work exemplified the art nouveau style of Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1900, Georges Peignot asked Auriol to design fonts for Peignot & Sons. The resulting Auriol font was the basis for the lettering used by Hector Guimard for the entrance signs to the Paris Metro. It was re-released by Deberny & Peignot in 1979 with a new bold face, designed by Matthew Carter. These decorative fonts with a brush stroke look are well-suited to display settings.

This family takes its inspiration from two early Art Deco faces from Germany. The Normal version is based on Dynamo, designed by K. Sommer for Ludwig & Mayer in 1930, while the Narrow version is based on Stadion, designed by Erhard Grundeis for Die Schriftguß AG in 1929. Their common design motifs epitomize the Age of Streamline. Both versions include the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, with localization for Lithuanian, Moldovan and Romanian.

Interboro JNL is based on the serif lettering found on an old E-Z Letter lettering guide.

Naratif is a condensed display based on an early 1900 sans-serifs and gothic faces and it has 7 weights including italic. Great for anything big and for not so small text or display. With a wide range of latin support, and OpenType features such as Small Caps, Fractions, Alternates Character, Inferior and Arrows.

Inlines that go over, under sideways, down! Deck out your headlines in grand style with this unusual inline face, based on Dektiv, a seventies-style classic from "Homage to the Alphabet." Both versions include the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, as well as localization for Moldovan and Romanian.

Kammerlander is a sans typeface with a distinctively strong thick/thin contrast. It’s based on Messner- a hairline font with a constant stroke weight, so their combination looks very natural. They look great in fashion magazines, in the expensive world of beauty and glory. Kammerlander is an all caps face, especially suitable for larger sizes.

Kubera was designed to be a display and text face. It has six weights with same height. Kubera Serif is modernized letterform. It has square serif, high contrast stress, with large x height. Serifs are given soft corners, rather than pointy ones. Kubera Serif font family is designed by Gunjan Panchal based in India.

ITC Blackadder is the work of British designer Bob Anderton, an eerie transformation of insurrectionist Guy Fawkes' signature after his torture. Anderton based his design on 16th century handwriting, captured the scrolls and curlicues and then added the sinister tremble. This elegant, yet potentially menacing display face is perfect for theatrical or scary" applications."

This family of faces is based on the series Riverside Drive, designed by Peter Max for Photo-Lettering Inc. in the early 1970s. However, several letters have been altered to maintain design consistency and to improve legibility. Both versions of this font support the Latin 1252, Central European 1250, Turkish 1254 and Baltic 1257 codepages.

When a formation of jets flies over the top of a stadium before a big game, there is an unparalleled sense of excitement in the crowd. Flyover, a display typeface, captures that moment with an italic base, left-facing serifs, hollowed notches and a change in angle representing the instant the jets pass overhead.

British designer Tim Donaldson created the lively typeface Etruscan in 1995. Based on Etruscan letters from ancient Italy, this unusual and condensed sans serif face whimsically mixes soft lowercase characters with more angular capitals. Etruscan brings light and airy classical form into contemporary documents, and a sunny Mediterranean flair and jollity into your projects.

Trencher JNL is based on hand-cut stencils spray-painted onto a vintage 1947 Cleveland Trencher acquired by the Marine Corps Mechanized Museum at Camp Pendleton, California. Restoration volunteer Brian Platzer supplied to Jeff Levine the images of the stencil markings - and they were quickly re-drawn and turned into a digital type face.

Veronika is a semi-serif text face, available in three styles: Regular, Italic, and Bold. All three faces are available in OpenType format, with both lining and old-style figures. Grüger, a German artist and designer, first began the design of her typeface by writing out its letterforms with a wooden stylus. She wanted to create a new semi serif face that had uniform stroke widths, but still maintained some aspects of calligraphy. Veronika achieves this; the terminals that begin the first strokes of most letters are round and bulbous, as if the writing instrument added extra emphasis on that spot. This adds a dynamic, movement-like quality to texts designed with Veronika. Aside from some sans serif-ness, Veronika appears similar to old style typefaces from the renaissance: classical inscriptions inspired the proportions of the capital letters, and the lower case letters stem from Carolinian minuscule. These proportions allow Veronika to function very well in text and at small sizes. However, only when you design larger headlines, logos, or other elements with Veronika, will you notice all of its special qualities, like its weight distribution and stroke characteristics.

The ornamental font is based on original decorative paper cut masks by Iryna Korhcuk.

SHE'S DEAD, FRANK It's the year 1991, BC (Before Comicraft) when REM were still making records and Frank Miller’s memorable run on Marvel Comics’ DAREDEVIL was just over ten years old. Comicraft’s Richard Starkings found himself working in Anaheim, California for Graphitti Designs. Graphitti had produced the first hardcover edition of Miller’s Batman tale, DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and was now putting together the sequel to Miller’s DAREDEVIL — ELEKTRA LIVES AGAIN! Richard was not engaged to letter this book, the pages of Frank’s incredible original art that came through Graphitti’s studio were already lettered by Marvel Stalwart, Jim Novak. However, there were some cover elements that needed to be added, based on the logo originally rendered by Frank’s brother, Steve. Starkings set about the task of creating an alphabet that could be used to develop Steve’s idea for the trade dress -- the cover elements, the back cover copy and credits on the interior pages. This was long before Macintosh computers and font programs made this work considerably easier, so Rich sat down with a pencil and a sheet of vellum and rendered an alphabet that could be used as the basis for the text that was needed... Those sketches have languished in a drawer for nearly thirty years, but now, finally, Comicraft’s John Roshell has dusted off those old letterforms and Elektrakuted a font based on those designs, a font we HAD to call ELEKTRAKUTION! As for Elektra; she’s dead, Frank. Features: Ten weights (Light, Regular, Bold; Rough Light, Regular & Bold; Inline, Inline Rough, Outline & Outline Rough) with upper & lowercase characters, Western & Central European accents and Greek characters.

Luscombe is a boisterous and lively display face, recalling the shaded and outlined faced much beloved of 1920s poster and advertising artists, while offering a regularity of outline that those faces often did not achieve. Itís ideal for poster and display work, or for signage with a subtle period feel. Mix the two faces to add emphasis where it's needed.

This font is based on the popular and timeless Caslon design and was carefully digitized from the pages of an early 19th century book. I was excited to see some unique design treatments of characters such as the lower case italic 'p', the question mark, and various swash caps that I had never seen before. During the conversion process, I made sure to preserve the worn look of faded ink on old paper by maintaining a subtle level of decay and opacity with each character. For missing characters not found in the book, I created new characters that were faithful to the style of the rest of the family. Used as a text font, The Letterpress Text Family successfully reproduces the appearance of old letterpress lithography.

Campan, is a new semi-linear face which unites mono-line and classic elements. It is very strong in headlines and its tall x-height lends itself to comfortable reading in text applications. The Campan family comprises 12 styles and is well suited for ambitious typography. It comes in OpenType format with extended language support. All weights contain ligatures, small caps, proportional lining figures, tabular lining figures, proportional old style figures, lining old style figures, matching currency symbols, fraction- and scientific numerals and matching arrows.