In researching historic decorative material offered by Lanston Monotype as well as other metal foundries such as Barnhart Brothers and Spindler, there were occasionally ornaments that defied description. Perhaps it was a Victorian sense of humor or someone really thought these were a good idea or perhaps popular taste has just changed so much over the last hundred years, or our forbearers were completely insane. In any case, LTC is somewhat proud to present a collection of the most bizarre, disturbing and baffling printers ornaments we could find. Along with mutant fowl-children and frolicsome amphibians, there are also Masonic and other secret fraternal symbols that may not be creepy to everyone, but just enough to be moderately disturbing.

A titling font, combining caps inspired by the work of lettering artist Samuel Welo, and a lowercase based on the work of Lucian Bernhard. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

Günter Gerhard Lange designed Boulevard in 1955.

The roots of Adana going back to the year 1930, to the Berlin-based German graphic designer Wilhelm Berg. His typeface can be interpreted as an answer to Lucian Bernhards Schönschrift. Adana Circular and Regular play well together in all kinds of adverts, as well with designs like Bodoni or Didot.

Barnhard Brothers and Spindler called this typeface Congo when it appeared in their circa-1910 type catalog. The design is characterized by strong Art Nouveau influences, tight spacing and a large x-height.

Botanique is a hand-drawn typeface based on Schmalfette Bernhard Antiqua by Lucien Bernhard. The original face was released in 1912 by Flinsch Type Foundry, which was later acquired by Bauer. Schmalfette means ‘bold condensed’ in German and Botanique adds a charming roughness to these attributes, evoking an organic and somewhat retro mood. Its uppercase glyphs shine with adorned stylistic alternates and cool blooming swash versions for both initial and final forms, all cleverly programmed into OpenType font features. Botanique is a ​great pick for display purposes, branding, packaging, editorial design, poster work and many more. The original face counts more than one hundred years, but yet communicates quite well, you bet. Specially if loaded with some contemporary flair and smart features such as this one. Let it bloom.

A charming headline font, bold yet feminine, based on Lilith, designed by Lucien Bernhard for Bauersche Gießerei in 1930. Some of the fussier elements of the original have been removed in order to create an elegant exercise in typographic chiaroscuro. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

Solemnis was designed by Günter Gerhard Lange in 1953 and is a uncials-based typeface.

Ornaments 3 contains ornaments based on designs by Bernard Naudin for Deberny et Peignot, c. 1924; and ornaments based on designs by Oldrich Menhart, Karel Svolinsky and Jaroslav Slab for the state printing office of Czechoslovakia and Grafotechna.

A dark, condensed, nineteenth century sanserif made popular by Linotype, the capitals deriving from Barnhart Brothers and Spindler, the lowercase from Farmer.

There are many fonts inspired by Lucian Bernhard. I have always admired his 1906 award-winning poster: ‘Priester’— believed to be the birth of the ‘Sachplakat’ (or Object Poster). I have interpreted the hand lettered “Priester” logo into a formal typeface and only hope I have done it justice. Usage recommendations: Captions, fliers, packaging, cards, posters, ads, book jackets, manuals, bulletins, magazines, greetings, announcements.

Reliant is a free interpretation of the classic design from fonts "BernhardSchoenschrift", originally designed by Lucien Bernhard and "Liberty", designed by W.T. Sniffin for ATF in 1927, following the original designs from Lucien Bernhard. This enhanced OpenType version has complete sets in Greek and Latin alphabet with Central European, Vietnamese, Baltic and Turkish complete resources with all diacritic signs and punctuation marks plus extra characters belonging this ranges. A Cyrillic alphabet completes the font, and we thanks to Dmitry Greshnev from Green Type. He help us to fix our original Cyrillic alphabet to the Cyrillic readers. We added a extensive set of ligatures (stylistic and contextual alternates plus discretionary ligatures) providing a lot of letterform variations that make your design really special, plus swashes and tails ornaments (to artistic increase any letter of this font) more fractions and number ligatures (a strange idea from Iza W). Over 800 glyphs which you have total access using software such as InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXpress and others.

Berlin Sans is based on a brilliant alphabet from the late ’20s, originally released by Bauer with the name Negro, the very first sans that Lucian Bernhard ever designed. Assisted by Matthew Butterick, David Berlow expanded this single font into a series of four weights, all complete with expert character sets, plus a dingbat font. Imaginative & little-known, it promises enticing opportunities to the adventurous typographer; FB 1994

The Belucian series offers a distinguished text design supported by dynamic headline structure. In need of a distinctive display style, Smart magazine asked Font Bureau in 1990 to revise the work of Lucian Bernhard from 1925. David Berlow prepared Belucian Demi, now accompanied by Kelly Ehrgott-Milligan’s 1994 Demi Italic, added Book and Book Italic for text, and designed Ultra for dynamic impact in headlines; FB 1990–94

Rosengarten is a condensed, bold typeface inspired by the work of Lucien Bernhard and the Plakatstil mouvement. With bold, rounded serifs, this typeface was created for use in headlines and larger point sizes. A complimentary sans serif style was integrated as a secondary weight with accompanying italics to allow a combination of styles to be set in layouts. This typeface includes an extended Latin and Cyrillic language support.

It's cool to be square. Among the many strange attempts to conceal writing, these two systems allegedly used by the Masons have a wonderful simplicity and relative ease of use. Both systems, the Rosicrucian and Free Mason, (also called the Pigpen cypher) as simple replacement ciphers never offered very great cryptographic security, but certainly would ensure that the casual observer would not be able to read documents written in such scripts.

Günter Gerhard Lange designed El Greco for Berthold in 1964. This script dresses up informal documents and adds lightness to formal documents.

Here's a good old Victorian job printing font. Faithful to the original issued by Barnhart Bros. & Spindler about 1880. Nothing wildly decorative about it, yet it clearly looks old.

Live long and prosper. Barnhart Brothers and Spindler. 1884. Originally named Vulcan. Enough said. Both versions support the Latin 1252, Central European 1250, Turkish 1254 and Baltic 1257 codepages.

Cooper Black, commissioned by Barnhart Brothers & Spindler, is the best known of Oswald Cooper’s typefaces. Bitstream has expanded the 1921 original into a complete series of round-edged text faces.

Günter Gerhard Lange designed this “fun” typeface for Berthold in 1957. Although a departure from his more serious designs, Champion shows Mr. Lange’s diversity.

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.

a, g, k and y It was a forensic examination by Jason Smith of his existing designs that laid the groundwork for FS Jack. Jason made a list of unique characteristics that would give the sans serif font its typographic thumbprint, which included an unusually large x-height and slightly off-the-wall letters like the lower-case “a”, “g”, “k” and “y”. “I wanted to make something that was slightly uncomfortable,” says Jason, “and in doing so simplify the quirkiness down to a few letters.” Fernando Mello did “the rest of the cooking”, filling the design out and making the additional weights. Tipos Latinos Upon its release in 2010, FS Jack was submitted by Fernando, who is Brazilian, for the esteemed type design biennial, Tipos Latinos, where it was selected as a winner in the Families category. It went on to be selected for type exhibitions throughout Latin America and around the world. “FS Jack is a workhorse,” says Fernando, “but also very ownable and distinctive, and available in a good range of weights, crafted by Jason and I.” Corporate “FS Jack took a couple of years to get noticed and is still fairly underused,” says Jason, “which is good in a way, for our Brandfont clients that have adopted it.” FS Jack was chosen as the signature font for The Shard in London, from its signage down to business cards. Fontsmith also worked with Lloyds Bank to customise FS Jack into a bespoke font for the bank’s updated brand identity – part of Fontsmith’s Brandfont service, which you can read about here. Fat Jack Included in the FS Jack family – just – is FS Jack Poster, the super-heavy weight of the range. “That was a last minute addition,” says Fernando, “after Jason and I started talking about how much we liked Gill KO, a typeface that is almost comically fat.”

Pleasant Evening JNL was modeled after an Art Nouveau serif typeface named ‘Racine’ [found in the 1881 Barnhart Bros. & Spindler type specimen book] and is available in both regular and oblique versions.