It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that these letter shapes are familiar. They have the unmistakable color and weight of Cooper Black, Oswald Cooper's most famous typeface from 1921. What should be a surprise is that these letters are actually from George Auriol's Robur Noir (or Robur Black), published in France circa 1909 by the Peignot foundry as a bolder, solid counterpart to its popular Auriol typeface (1901). This face precedes Cooper Black by a dozen of years and a whole Great War. Cooper Black has always been a bit of a strange typographical apparition to anyone who tried to explain its original purpose, instant popularity in the 1920s, and major revival in the late 1960s. BB&S and Oswald Cooper PR aside, it is quite evident that the majority of Cooper Black's forms did not evolve from Cooper Old Style, as its originators claimed. And the claim that it collected various Art Nouveau elements is of course too ambiguous to be questioned. But when compared with Robur Noir, the "elements" in question can hardly be debated. The chronology of this "machine age" ad face in metal is amusing and stands as somewhat of a general index of post-Great War global industrial competition: - 1901: Peignot releases Auriol, based on the handwriting of George Auriol (the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer," according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili), and it becomes very popular. - 1909-1912: Peignot releases the Robur family of faces. The eight styles released are Robur Noir and its italic, a condensed version called Robur Noir Allongée (Elongated) and its italic, an outline version called Clair De Lune and its condensed/elongated, a lined/striped version called Robur Tigre, and its condensed/elongated counterpart. - 1914 to 1918: World War One uses up economies on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Georges Peignot with a bullet to the forehead, and non-war industry stalls for 4 years. - 1921: BB&S releases Cooper Black with a lot of hype to hungry publishing, manufacturing and advertising industries. - 1924: Robert Middleton releases Ludlow Black. - 1924: The Stevens Shanks foundry, the British successor to the Figgins legacy, releases its own exact copies of Robur Noir and Robur Noir Allongée, alongside a lined version called Royal Lining. - 1925: Oswald Cooper releases his Cooper Black Condensed, with similar math to Robur Noir Allongée (20% reduction in width and vectical stroke). - 1925: Monotype releases Frederick Goudy's Goudy Heavy, an "answer to Cooper Black". Type historians gravely note it as the "teacher steals from his student" scandal. Goudy Heavy Condensed follows a few years later. - 1928: Linotype releases Chauncey Griffith's Pabst Extra Bold. The condensed counterpart is released in 1931. When type production technologies changed and it was time to retool the old faces for the Typositor age, Cooper Black was a frontrunning candidate, while Robur Noir was all but erased from history. This was mostly due to its commercial revival by flourishing and media-driven music and advertising industries. By the late 1960s variations and spinoffs of Cooper Black were in every typesetting catalog. In the early- to mid-1970s, VGC, wanting to capitalize on the Art Nouveau onslaught, published an uncredited exact copy of Robur Black under the name Skylark. But that also went with the dust of history and PR when digital tech came around, and Cooper Black was once again a prime retooling candidate. The "old fellows stole all of our best ideas" indeed. So almost a hundred years after its initial fizz, Robur is here in digital form, to reclaim its rightful position as the inspiration for, and the best alternative to, Cooper Black. Given that its forms date back to the turn of the century, a time when foundry output had a closer relationship to calligraphic and humanist craft, its shapes are truer to brush strokes and much more idiosyncratic than Cooper Black in their totality's construct. Robur and Robur Italic come in all popular font formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages. A range of complementary f-ligatures and a few alternates letters are included within the fonts.

Experimental 90s geometric type. Regular and Stencil.

Arbour Soft is the cheeky version of it's big brother, Arbour. The soft version creates a smooth finish that flows perfectly across screens and print. Arbour Soft comes in 7 weights, from a delicate extra-light to a soft, strong black, with matching soft italics for each upright. The soft black weights are perfect for your new brand or article headlines, and the light weights are great for calling out text. The mid weights are perfect for longer texts.

ITC Woodland is the work of Japanese designer Akira Kobayashi. It is based on Kobayashi's hand lettering with a flat brush or square-edged pen. I wanted to design each weight to act its own part," says the designer. "The light version tends to look almost fading in small sizes, but the heavy weight is as black as Cooper Black." The cheerful ITC Woodland is ideal for graphics, greeting cards, correspondence, and other applications requiring a light touch.

Knip, in Dutch, means ‘cut’. You can tell by the glyphs that I made this font by cutting out the shapes from black paper, gluing it onto white paper and photographing the result so I could digitalise it! I don’t make too many cut out fonts, as it is a lot of work and it often leads to nothing. Besides that, I depend on the paper supply from my kids and they happened to have black paper this time!

Alphacal JNL and Alphacal Black JNL are variants of the same lettering style found in Jeff Levine's Juneway JNL font... all based on water-applied decals once made by the Duro Decal Company (now Duro Art Industries) of Chicago, Illinois. Alphacal JNL can be used alone as an outline font (best at 18 pt. and above) or with Alphacal Black JNL as a backfill. Note: Perfect registration is not guaranteed. Some user adjustments may be necessary.

Picaflor soft, is a continuation of "Picaflor" now in a rounded version, especially for titles, it contains different styles from Thin-Black, in addition to multiple languages

The numerals and alphabet of the Semaphore Flagging Code, as well as black and white version of the flags and pennants of the International Code of Signals.

A heavy black display face with lots of retro 'cool'. Modernist to the extreme MB SIXTYTHREE oozes 'mod' culture. Great for magazines & headlines, logotypes, posters, album artwork.

The cover of a 1950s-era catalog for the Freedman Novelty Company (of San Francisco California) had the word "Novelty" hand-lettered in an unusually angular type style against various geometric shapes somewhat resembling balloons. While the lettering was quirky enough to warrant re-drawing as a digital font, the shapes would have presented a visual nightmare in design and spacing, so simple black rectangles were substituted and the letters appear in white. Since novelty lettering of this type would never become "standard" in use, its function became the font's name, Limited Appeal JNL. There is just a simple A-Z and 1-0 character set along with basic punctuation.

Reba Samuels is based on the 2007 release Rebecca Samuels. While Rebecca was largely intended for text use Reba aims to be more versatile with an extended weight scope and added cut varieties. While Rebecca’s slab character is developed in the Reba serif, the ’seriffed’ italic of Rebecca is abandoned in favor of a simple italic sans, better matching the serif in plain text. The weight extremes are very useful for headlines while the middles do better in text. The robust and angular shapes of the serif matches the straightforward sans. The extreme contrast between the thin and the black cuts opens up great opportunities in any design project.

Introducing Fire Hell – a fiery font inspired by the intensity of death metal. With flames dancing within each letter, this font is tailor-made for death metal, black metal, gothic, horror, and other heavy music genres. The sharp, angular design adds a touch of darkness, making it the perfect visual companion for bands seeking a fierce and impactful typographic identity. Unleash the power of Fire Hell to set your artwork ablaze and embody the relentless spirit of heavy music. Ignite the darkness with this visually striking font! Fire Hell features: Allcaps Beginning Uppercase alternate Ending Uppercase alternate Numbers and punctuation PUA Encoded Characters OpenType Features

Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital in the foothills of the Himalayas, is not like any other city. That's why Kathmandu Bold is not like any other font going by the name of a town, either: This font is not as digital as Chicago but not as solid as Aachen. Kathmandu Bold's capital letters are slightly irregular, giving the font its unique character, which is extended and more black than bold. Everyone who has hitherto regarded "naïve" and "cool" as being an oppositional pair should check out this font by Ingo Juergens. For special needs, such as foreign languages, there is a host of special characters.