In 1931, Morris Fuller Benton created the Stymie typeface for the American Type Founders (ATF). Stymie is a reworking of a slab serif type that was popular in Europe at that time, Memphis. For the past one hundred fifty years, slab serif types (sometimes called Egyptian or Egyptienne-style faces) have been a popular choice for headline text in newspapers, magazines, and advertising.

Extrabold and exuberant caps from a blackletter face rendered by Ross George in his perennial Speedball Text Book have been combined with a more restrained and traditional lowercase to create a unique and striking typeface that will definitely get noticed. Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252 and CE 1250 character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

This no-nonsense titling face is based on a Morris Fuller Benton 1934 offering for American Type Founders called, simply, Poster Gothic. Its crisp, clean lines and subtle Art Deco modeling make for attractive and attention-getting headlines. Available in plain and prismatic styles. Both versions of this font include the complete Unicode Latin 1252 and Central European 1250 character sets.

Amundsen is an all-caps stencil-like face with a unique look due to several originally shaped glyphs and overlapping letters. The font is equipped with automatic discretionary ligatures and it comes with a fine-tuned kerning. As the ligatures combine light letters, the overall look remains balanced even with wider display oriented spacing. Amundsen supports West as well as Central European languages.

Based on Morris Fuller Benton's 1905 oeuvre American Extra Condensed, this titling face packs a lot of information into very little horizontal space. Its champfered corners give the font an industrial feel which remains fresh even after more than a century. Both versions include the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, with localization for Lithuanian, Moldovan and Romanian.

Luxury Home is a slab serif typeface of 9 weights from Extra Light to Extra Black and can be used as both a headline and text face. "Luxury Home" is recommended for using in long-form writing and articles, since a serif is far more readable for longer passages of text. The typeface has a carefully crafted weight range, with ligatures .

This typeface made its first appearance in Schelter & Giesecke's 1915 specimen book. It exhibits the cleanness and crispness one might expect in a sans-serif face, along with a few unexpected grace notes that make it warm and friendly, as well. Both versions of this font include the complete Unicode Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets.

Coupler is a sturdy text face with low contrast, airy counters, and a strong baseline for smaller sizes and extended reading. Lightly bracketed serifs and pleasantly conspicuous italics temper Coupler’s formal demeanor—well suited for financial reports, news magazines, catalogs, academic journals, and any instructional setting. Four weights with italics and advanced typographical support provide design flexibility in any layout.

Aladin is a calligraphic art deco face with an eastern touch, designed by Angel Koziupa and produced by Alejandro Paul. Casual, airy counters and friendly terminals give it an advantage as a packaging font for exotic coffees and teas. It also serves quite well on posters and book jackets where relaying the famous sense of Eastern hospitality and playfulness is a must.

Handmade Caslon JNL is a somewhat imperfect version of one of the many Caslon faces in use during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Based on vintage source material, Handmade Caslon JNL is the right typeface for projects reflecting antiquity, a hand-made look or where slightly imperfect lettering adds a bit of the "real world" to the message.

A little Compacta, a little Impact, a little photolettering from the 70s, all rolled into one make for a unique headline face that commands attention. Although this font is primarily unicase, the lowercase positions feature stylistic alternates, so can can mix things up and pack them in. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Warning: works with contextual alternate-feature, which is not showing here. Matita Connected is part of a larger type family developed from 2005-2019 with handwriting in mind. A solid script face in two weights and a dotted instructional version. With alternative glyphs based on different writing habits. For teaching, teaching material or just typography. An unchildish handwritten type family for many purposes.

Aquatronik is a decorative display face with a somewhat retro-futuristic flair. It brings alternate glyphs for some letters and numerals and has extended language coverage, speaking more than 200 languages. The family includes three widths, for added versatility. Aquatronik is an excellent pick for eye-catching designs, including posters, book covers, album art, editorial, apparel, and many more. Have fun!

Demotte is a display face constructed from triangular blocks (wedges) and some circles. It comes in two styles. In one style the triangular blocks point up so that the letters are bottom heavy, and in the other the blocks point down so that the letters are top heavy. Also included in the family is a distorted version of the design.

This font is actually two different fonts. The uppercase mimics the typeface used once upon a time in Teletypes, and the lowercase is patterned after the face used during the first half of the twentieth century by Western Union for their telegrams. Both flavors of this font feature the 1252 Latin, 1250 Central European, 1254 Turkish and 1257 Baltic character sets.

The typeface was designed at the Polygraphmash type design bureau in 1951-53 by Lev Malanov, Elena Tsaregorodtseva et al. Based on Cyrillic version of Excelsior, 1931, of Mergenthaler Linotype, by Chauncey H. Griffith. Excelcior Cyrillic was developed in 1936 in Moscow by Professor Michael Shchelkunov, Nikolay Kudryashev et al. A low-contrast text face of the Ionic – "Legibility" group.

Nanquim is a versatile font, available in three sketchy options. At display sizes the line art is very eye-catching. At smaller sizes it turns out like textured faces. Always with a pleasant handmade feel. Nanquim characters were hand drawn with pen and India ink on film, like we use to do when preparing artwork for screenprint. Hope you enjoy!

Farquharson is an all-caps display face, adapted from an early American woodtype, and designed especially for use in the book Charlie Farquharson’s Unyverse. The complete family consists of two fonts: a regular version and a stencil version. Alternate versions with slightly elongated feet are provided for A, H, K, M, N and R. Very eccentric, it is best used in small doses.

Rum Plakat is a display type developed as a display face within the type family »Rum« Rum Plakat is an alternative version of Rum Soft Sans Black. It is suitable for posters and editorial design in large sizes & other eye catching matters. The complete family consists of Sans Serif & Serif in both sharp and soft version + the display fonts Rum Plakat & Rum Silhouette.

A whimsical semi-script typeface named Belcanto, designed by Edwin Sisty for Photolettering in the 1970s, provided the pattern for this typeface. Elegant and engaging, this face is sure to put a smile on yours. The PC PostScript, TrueType and OpenType versions contain the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

Type books and lettering manuals of the 1900s were resplendent with examples of chamfered type faces, as this was a popular and simple style of lettering that was easy to reproduce with little effort. Poster Chamfer JNL is one such example taken from one of these turn-of-the-century publications that exemplifies the style as a condensed version of the letters.

Coronard is another of Greater Albion's explorations of 'Evolutionary' type. In this case we imagine a transition from Blackletter to Roman forms. Coronard shows that posited transition in all its simple calligraphic splendor, providing a beautifully legible face for invitations and certificates, as well as for lettering and signage that needs to be readable but to have a gothic flair.

A humanist sans-serif family which displays subtle influences of the edged writing tool. Inspired by modern faces such as Chaparral and Enigma, Arum Sans is versatile enough to be used for high-end text setting as well as display purposes. A full international glyph set, extended for European use, allows Arum Sans to play on the field with the big boys.

ITC Esprit is the work of designer Jovica Veljović and blends the classic proportions of a serif typeface with the grace and charm of calligraphy. Highly legible even in small point sizes, the font can also be used as an impressive display face for use with sans serif text. In 2010 Veljovic revised this family and released this as ITC New Esprit.

Wolverhampton is a new Neo-Victorian face from Greater Albion Typefounders. It's something of an example of starting with a small idea and running with it. This family of three typefaces (Regular, Small Capitals and Capitals) was inspired by a line of lettering seen on a late 19th Century enamel advertisement made by Chromo of Wolverhampton (hence the family name). The family grew, topsy-like, from a recreation of these initial fifteen capital letterforms to the three complete typefaces offered here. The three typefaces are ideal for advertising and poster work with a Victorian, Edwardian, or 'Steam-punk' theme. They would also be eminently suitable for signage inspired by the same eras or (as we've seen a number of our other typeface families prove very popular) for book covers of period related novels and historical works. Finally, these slender elegant display faces are just plain fun!

LTC Athena brings a somewhat “lost” hot-metal typeface back from obscurity into digital Opentype format. In fall 2012, printing historian Rich Hopkins contacted P22 type foundry regarding some inked type drawings he had just uncovered from his acquisition of the Baltimore-based “Baltotype” company some 20 years ago. It is a rare face whose original matrices were destroyed and thought fully lost. The drawings included a full upper and lower case set, numerals, basic punctuation, and alternate forms of some letters. The design is a narrow deco-flavored design from the 1950s with a curious avoidance of straight lines in the stems and main strokes. The face has been expanded to over 340 characters by Miranda Roth and includes ligatures as well as a full Pan-European character set. It is released through the Lanston division of P22 in consideration of its earlier incarnation as a metal typeface.

Calluna was born more or less by accident. When I needed a little break from designing Museo I was just fiddling around a bit to see if maybe a full slab serif would be something to have a look at. The first thing I did, of course, was to put slab serifs on the stems of Museo. When I did, something nice happened. Slab-serifs with a direction! I ended up using the idea for something I always wanted to do: making a rather serious text face. The goal was to make a text font, but one with enough interesting details. In the end it all came down to finding the balance in a typeface between the robustness needed to function as a text face and enough refinement to look good as a display font. Check out Calluna Sans™ which is a great pair for Calluna™.

Patent Reclame manages to be light-hearted, while clearly showing its blackletter roots both in the shape of the individual letters and the rhythm of text on a page. The designer is unknown. Schriftgeisserei Flinsch of Frankfurt a.M. cast the face around 1895. Nicolete Gray shows a quite similar face called “Graphic,” from Stephenson Blake in 1896. Personally, I don't think that Patent Reclame looks like an English design, but I do not have any proof one way or the other. The numbers are proportional, intended for posters, not spreadsheets. Two ornaments are included, an art nouveau rose at #172 and a lilypad with long tendril at #177. Great for invitations, posters and flyers announcing fun events. Do not use for obituaries. Quite readable in smaller sizes for short blocks of text. I really like the buoyant quality -- a nice combination of discipline and enthusiasm.

Matthew Carter designed the Shelley family 1972 for Mergenthaler Linotype to be used as a new script face for the photo typesetting machines. The basic idea was to create one script face that would offer dfferent elegant letterforms. Matthew designed Shelley in three different versions, Allegro which is in the style of Kuenstler Schreibschrift, Andante where the caps are less flowrish and wide and Volante where the letters have its most expressive and wide forms and the lowercase z in this font is in the french anglian double stacked form. All three versions can be easily mixed to give the text a more individual calligraphic look Besides Shelley Linotype Zapfino from Hermann Zapf shows similar basics, but in a totally different letterform. In Linotype Zapfino the individual lowercase letters from the four different versions have different letterforms which gives the text an even more individual touch.

George Ryan's ITC Migrate is a highly condensed sans serif display face that effectively complements ITC Adderville. Migrate represents what Ryan calls a “more highly evolved version” of a typeface he designed for Bitstream in 1991 called Oz Handicraft. “Both faces,“ says Ryan, “are based on designs of the popular early 20th-century type designer Oswald Cooper.” His inspiration came from drawing samples found in the Book of Oz Cooper, published in 1949 by the Society of Typographic Arts in Chicago. “Oz worked extensively with the sans serif form long before it became popular in the States, eschewing a popular belief of the time that sans serifs were only skeletons of letters.” Where Oz Handicraft was informal and quirky, ITC Migrate has a more restrained feel. “The uppercase characters and figures, in particular, have been reworked,” says Ryan, ”resulting in a more formal and traditional, compressed sans serif typeface.”

This late 19th century design conjures up early 20th century Dutch DeStijl lettering with a mostly strict adherence to right angles and minimal stroke modulation. Geometric began its life as a metal typeface from the Central Type Foundry, circa 1884. Soon after, this design was officially licensed to Morgans & Wilcox and was shown in their 1890 catalog in Regular, Light and Condensed Light variations. After acquiring Morgans & Wilcox, Hamilton Manufacturing offered Geometric Light Face Condensed as their own No 3020 and the Geometric Light Face as No 3021. HWT Geometric has been expanded digitally to include a Regular Condensed version. A heavier wood type specimen was found from an unknown manufacturer and digitized as it was found, resulting in the HWT Geometric Shopworn and Shopworn Inked variations. These digital versions all include a full Western and Central European character set of over 380 glyphs.

Ice Creamery is a new variation of our Saloon Girl font family complete with italics and fill fonts which may be used to layer different colors into the open parts of each glyph. We don’t recommend using the fill fonts for Ice Creamery as stand alone solid fonts, Ice Creamery Chocolate was designed as a the stand alone solid font for this font family. Fill fonts go back to the 1850's where they would design matched sets of printing blocks and the layering of colors took place on the printing press, they would print a page in black then on a second printing they would print a solid letter in red or blue over the letters with open spaces to fill them in. Most of the time the second printing didn't line up exactly to the open faced font and it created a misprinted look. With the fill fonts in Ice Creamery and other FontMesa fonts you have the option to perfectly align the fill fonts with the open faced fonts or shift it a little to create a misprinted look which looks pretty cool in some projects such as t-shirt designs. I have some ice cream making history in my family, my Grandfather Fred Hagemann was the manager of the ice cream plant for thirty years at Cock Robin Ice Cream and Burgers in Naperville IL. In the images above I've included an old 1960's photo of the Cock Robin Naperville location, the ice cream plant was behind the restaurant as seen by the chimney stack which was part of the plant. If you were to travel 2000 feet directly behind the Cock Robin sign in the photo, that's where I started the FontMesa type foundry at my home in Naperville. My favorite ice cream flavor was their green pistachio ice cream with black cherries, they called it Spumoni even though it wasn't a true Spumoni recipe. Their butter pecan ice cream was also incredibly good, the pecans were super fresh, their Tin Roof Sundae ice cream was chocolate fudge, caramel and peanuts swirled into vanilla ice cream. One unique thing about Cock Robin and Prince Castle was they used a square ice cream scoop for their sundaes.

Because you demanded it, the Aviano series is back with a variable version of the futuristic sans serif Aviano Future. Aviano Future’s strong letterforms will make you look like a rock star. Aviano Future Variable is a medium-contrast sans serif titling face that has a bold and futuristic look. It has a bowed square shape which gives it an interesting appearance that is both unique and eye-catching. Given that it has a variable axis any weight can be selected with no loss of clarity or legibility. Aviano Future's expanded forms give the letterforms heft and intensity. Aviano Future is a powerful yet adaptable title face that builds on the award-winning traits of Aviano and elevates them. Aviano Future Variable contains a ton of OpenType capabilities and comes in ten different defined weight instances with "fast" italic forms for emphasis. Want to use more traditional rounded forms? Need swash forms? Art Deco alternates? Aviano Future includes 400 alternate characters. Twelve style sets are available, two sets of art deco inspired alternates, small forms, tough swash, constructivist titling and traditional stylistic alternates. Aviano Future also includes 40 discretionary ligatures for artistic typographic compositions. Additionally, there are glyphs in this family to accommodate a variety of languages, and Cyrillic support was added in 2022. An extensive selection of sans serif typographic systems can be found in the Aviano family. The typefaces can be used alone or in combination to suit the needs of any project. The family's fonts have all been meticulously designed to assist ensure maximum impact and usability at any size. Aviano, Aviano Serif, Aviano Sans, Aviano Didone, Aviano Flare, Aviano Copper, and Aviano Slab are presently part of the Aviano collection. A skilled designer who wishes to create a technological, futuristic, or epic design should consider Aviano Future. Aviano Future Variable will make your design stand out from the competition, regardless of whether you are designing a logo, poster, flyer, website header, or banner ad. Why wait? With the exciting and versatile Aviano Future Variable at your disposal, reach new heights and create a brand that stands out from the rest.

John Sigvard ‘Ole’ Olsen and Harold Ogden ‘Chic’ Johnson were musicians-turned-comedians who rose to fame in the zany 1938 Broadway musical review “Hellzapoppin'”. They reprised their roles in the 1941 film adaptation of the show, and the opening title card of the film has “Hellzapoppin'” hand lettered in a tall, condensed sans serif design with an inline. This is now available as Wild Comedy JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Neotuba – A Display Racing Serif Font Neotuba, a captivating display racing serif font, seamlessly marries classic elegance with a contemporary edge. Its sleek, elongated letterforms convey a sense of speed and dynamism, making it an ideal choice for racing-themed designs or any project that demands a touch of velocity. The font exudes a refined sophistication through its precisely crafted serifs and balanced letter proportions, ensuring readability even at high speeds. Neotuba’s distinctive design captures the essence of speed and precision, making it a versatile and eye-catching choice for headlines, logos, or any creative endeavor where a racing-inspired aesthetic is desired. Neotuba is perfect for branding projects, logo, wedding designs, social media posts, advertisements, product packaging, product designs, label, photography, watermark, invitation, stationery, game, fashion and any projects. Fonts include multilingual support for; Afrikaans, Albanian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish.

Take your reader far away to a tropical morning, where the inviting aroma of a fresh roast introduces them to a gentle breeze and the first, warm light of day. Take them there with Barcis. This organic face with its tall x-height and neo-humanist attributes shows its free spirit through unique terminals, calligraphy-inspired strokes, and a rich variety of OpenType alternates All insigne fonts are loaded with OpenType options. Barcis is geared up for pro typography. The font features many numeral sets, with fractions, old-style figures, superiors and inferiors. OpenType-capable programs like Quark or the Adobe suite allow you to quickly change ligatures and alternates. You can see these options shown in the .pdf brochure. Barcis also features the glyphs to aid a variety of languages, together with Central, Eastern and Western European languages. In all, Barcis supports around forty languages that utilize the Latin script, earning Barcis the pick for for multi-lingual publications and packaging. Barcis features three different widths and seven weights from exceptional Light-weight to dense Black. Each of these individual fonts offers its own authentic italics and alternate glyphs as well. With its high versatility, Barcis is without a doubt an amazing titling font, a great choice for journals, a solid option for web use, or even for clearly defining your mark in logotype. Bring Barcis into your library, and use it to carry your audience away.

Many street nameplates in Britain use versions of Kindersley serif capitals designed by David Kindersley in the 1950s. K-Type Kindersley Sans is an unfussy alternative to the signage stalwart, perfectly suited to newer environments and more contemporary tastes. Kindersley Sans is a humanist sans-serif that conserves the Gill-inspired character and some of the calligraphic qualities of Kindersley’s lettering, it retains the Roman proportions and its Britishness, but traditional prettiness and intricacy are discarded in favour of a clean modernity. For purposes where Transport (MOT) is considered too formal and Kindersley too old-fashioned, Kindersley Sans offers an open and amiable up-to-date alternative. The typeface is comfortably spaced and carefully kerned to deliver beautiful results with ease, and although designed with nameplates in mind, it excels as an all-purpose text face in print and on screen. The tail of the uppercase Q has minimal descent to avoid constriction. Kindersley Sans includes a lowercase designed for signage with short descenders to prevent unsightly congestion. A generous x-height assists legibility, and characters are designed for easy reading and distinctiveness. The curved foot of the lowercase L distinguishes it from the uppercase i. The six fonts contain a full complement of Latin Extended-A characters, Welsh diacritics and Irish dotted consonants, so European language nameplates need not be a source of frustration. The ascent and descent of accented characters has been kept to an acceptable minimum.

From the designer, Tim Ahrens... I started designing this typeface about half a year after learning that Frutiger was not a new brand of sweets and that Garamond is not the name of a fragrance. In time it became clear that designing a sans serif must always be considered as a transformation of traditional serifed typefaces instead of deriving it from typefaces that have been derived from others which have been derived from others again. I did not want Aroma to be one of those odourless and tasteless typefaces wich sacrifice a natural feeling and the characteristic shapes of the letters to neutrality. I think that beauty often evolves unintentionally. For example, I am fascinated by the beauty of airfoils, which are actually a careful transformation of a bird's wing. I love their anorganic and abstract shape which still bears the essence and all the complexity of what they are modelled on. This is exactly the formal concept behind Aroma. Many of the outlines are actually parabolics. The small r, for example, consists exclusively of straight lines and parabolics. I decided to give Aroma more stroke contrast than it is usual for sans serif designs. Many strokes are slightly convex, which gives the font an anorganic feeling. The font was intended to have a feel similar to the antiqua. More specifically, it is based on Old Style Faces. The character of those fonts, which were cut during the Renaissance, is still inherent to Aroma.