Alf Becker graced the pages of "Signs of the Times" magazine month after month for decades, presenting attractive and unusual hand lettered alphabets as inspiration for other sign painters and show card writers. From straightforward text faces to novelty ideas, Becker's talent as a master sign crafter was constant in his work. Show Card Casual JNL is one example of what is referred to as a "one stroke" alphabet (utilizing a single brush stroke in each direction to form the letter or number). Its casual look and playful charm allow for a message to be presented in an informal format that is pleasing to the eye. The type design is available in both regular and oblique versions. Special thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Publications for providing the reference material.

Joost Schmidt?s (1893?1948) name is undoubtedly connected with monolinear condensed letters of geometric appearance ? his unfinished draft of a stencil alphabet, constructed on grid paper in 1930, is much lesser known. These modular shapes simply consist of half circles, quarter circles and square strokes with half-round terminals. From just six original letterforms (a, b, c, d, e, g), Flavia Zimbardi completed Schmidt?s draft and extended it to a full character set for contemporary use, adding upper case letters and different figure sets including old-style. Joschmi overcomes legibility issues usually associated with this stencil style, with special attention to the design of white space. Zimbardi lends the face even more character by carefully adding round terminals in subtle spots of the alphabet, accessible through stylistic sets.

ITC Johnston is the result of the combined talents of Dave Farey and Richard Dawson, based on the work of Edward Johnston. In developing ITC Johnston, says London type designer Dave Farey, he did “lots of research on not only the face but the man.” Edward Johnston was something of an eccentric, “famous for sitting in a deck chair and carrying toast in his pockets.” (The deck chair was his preferred furniture in his own living room; the toast was so that he’d always have sustenance near at hand.) Johnston was also almost single-handedly responsible, early in this century, for the revival in Britain of the Renaissance calligraphic tradition of the chancery italic. His book Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering (with its peculiar extraneous comma in the title) is a classic on its subject, and his influence on his contemporaries was tremendous. He is perhaps best remembered, however, for the alphabet that he designed in 1916 for the London Underground Railway (now London Transport), which was based on his original “block letter” model. Johnston’s letters were constructed very carefully, based on his study of historical writing techniques at the British Museum. His capital letters took their form from the best classical Roman inscriptions. “He had serious rules for his sans serif style,” says Farey, “particularly the height-to-weight ratio of 1:7 for the construction of line weight, and therefore horizontals and verticals were to be the same thickness. Johnston’s O’s and C’s and G’s and even his S’s were constructions of perfect circles. This was a bit of a problem as far as text sizes were concerned, or in reality sizes smaller than half an inch. It also precluded any other weight but medium ‘ any weight lighter or heavier than his 1:7 relationship.” Johnston was famously slow at any project he undertook, says Farey. “He did eventually, under protest, create a bolder weight, in capitals only ‘ which took twenty years to complete.” Farey and his colleague Richard Dawson have based ITC Johnston on Edward Johnston’s original block letters, expanding them into a three-weight type family. Johnston himself never called his Underground lettering a typeface, according to Farey. It was an alphabet meant for signage and other display purposes, designed to be legible at a glance rather than readable in passages of text. Farey and Dawson’s adaptation retains the sparkling starkness of Johnston’s letters while combining comfortably into text. Johnston’s block letter bears an obvious resemblance to Gill Sans, the highly successful type family developed by Monotype in the 1920s. The young Eric Gill had studied under Johnston at the London College of Printing, worked on the Underground project with him, and followed many of the same principles in developing his own sans serif typeface. The Johnston letters gave a characteristic look to London’s transport system after the First World War, but it was Gill Sans that became the emblematic letter form of British graphic design for decades. (Johnston’s sans serif continued in use in the Underground until the early ‘80s, when a revised and modernized version, with a tighter fit and a larger x-height, was designed by the London design firm Banks and Miles.) Farey and Dawson, working from their studio in London’s Clerkenwell, wanted to create a type family that was neither a museum piece nor a bastardization, and that would “provide an alternative of the same school” to the omnipresent Gill Sans. “These alphabets,” says Farey, referring to the Johnston letters, “have never been developed as contemporary styles.” He and Dawson not only devised three weights of ITC Johnston but gave it a full set of small capitals in each weight ‘ something that neither the original Johnston face nor the Gill faces have ‘ as well as old-style figures and several alternate characters.

The Svati Sava font is a Latin Alphabet layout of a Serbian font. The original letterforms of this font struck me in their modern simplicity while retaing a traditional Eastern European feel and I wished to have a variant of it suitable for Latin Alphabets. To create this font I used many of the letterforms from Serbian and recreated a large portion of the miniscule alphabet. Svati Sava comes with full punctuation, a complete character set for most Western European Latin alphabet languages. Being a decorative font, it works best at larger point sizes.

Quota is an investigation into the modularity of the Cyrillic alphabet. Unlike Latin and Greek, the Cyrillic alphabet owes much of its form to its development in early industrious printing and movable type. This lead the Cyrillic alphabet to be dominated by hard edge and straight lines, giving it a much more modular overall construction. The forms within the Cyrillic alphabet therefor allow for all the characters themselves to have somewhat unified side bearings without compromising ease of reading. Within Quota the default character set has only unified side bearing, giving a more relaxed mono-spaced appearance. While the first stylistic set unifies the entire character set with the same character width, creating a true mono-spaced typeface. Quota was initially designed in Cyrillic, catering to all languages using the alphabet. While the Latin was designed after, and is loosely based of the forms present within the Cyrillic alphabet.

This face was designed in 1925 as the Monotype answer to the very popular Cooper Black. Goudy is also quite similar in appearance to Ludlow Black and Pabst Extra Bold, both of which were also done in response to Cooper Black.

A sheet music edition of an early 1900s song entitled "You Taught Me How to Love You, Now Teach Me to Forget" was hand lettered in a free-form Art Nouveau style that combined varying line widths and character shapes. This unrestricted style of lettering was popularly embraced and revived by the hippie counterculture of the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s through their rock concert posters, record album covers and tee shirt graphics. It is now available digitally as Nouveau Artiste JNL. As a side note, a 1940s reprint of the sheet music was done in a popular metal typeface, which was also redrawn digitally and available as Elite Resort JNL [in both regular and oblique versions].

VolumeFour is a heavy, geometric sans-serif display face inspired by the custom lettering which adorns Black Sabbath's groundbreaking "Vol 4." Its bold forms and naturally tight spacing evoke the era which spawned such classics as "Snowblind" and "Supernaut", bringing this aesthetic to a contemporary audience.

Grota is a very expressive font, has a gestural character inspired by the hand lettering . Grota is grotesque, unicase and exceptional. It has six weights ranging from thin to black with their italics. It is ideal for logos, brands, magazines, headlines, books. etc. Photography by Matías Troncoso

Streamlined Stencil JNL is based on a photo of an Art Deco era shipping stencil saying "With Care" which was heavily influenced by the Futura Black style of lettering. The image was seen in the Steven Heller-Louise Fili book "Stencil Type" (published by Thames and Hudson).

Dormitory Decals JNL is a set of Greek letters placed on the standard keyboard positions of A-X and a-x. The design (based on Jeff Levine's Juneway JNL) emulates the gold and black water-applied decals used by college kids in the 50s and 60s.

The Vivala old black letter font family is characterized by its hard-cut lines. This gives the typeface a special woodcut-like character. The typeface family offers a wide range of possibilities for design. It works well for posters, packaging, and corporate design for restaurants or breweries.

Spirals is a doodle-style font with lots of - you guessed it - spirals! This alphabet looks great printed out big or small. Use this alphabet whenever a playful approach to typography is needed.

Jill Bell's typefaces are energetic, highly decorative, and refreshingly unpredictable. Some are friendly and childlike, while others are rough and nervous. Her latest creation is ITC Swank, a connected script whose shabby-chic" sophistication communicates a worn elegance. Bell begins the design process "with black stuff on white paper," she explains, preferring to draw letters before she digitizes them. Often the inspiration for her typefaces comes from a piece of hand-lettering. "Bruno began as a reminder to buy cat food," she says, "and ITC Swank started out as a small bit of lettering for Wurlitzer Pianos." Bell finds that working with blocks of lettering is a good start for script typefaces. "If I'm drawing a script typeface, I have to write out sentences in the letters first," she explains. "Drawing each letter separately doesn't establish the flow and spontaneity that scripts deserve." Bell's newest design is ITC Swank. It's a somewhat tattered formal script with definite links to early copperplate scripts. Though probably not for wedding invitations, Swank's elegant underpinnings are evident, with its slightly narrow proportions and a baseline that can best be called "bouncy." Graphic designers will appreciate the abundance of swash letters, making it easy to create distinctive headlines and short blocks of copy. Bell has a fondness for the "open, genuine" quality of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy. "Eastern styles incorporate the natural flow of the hand," she says. "Natural, human qualities shine through. Mistakes are accepted, not scorned as in the 'white-out' Western culture." This philosophy is evident in Bell's own designs. Whether it's ITC Clover 's carefree spirit, the slightly spooky Hollyweird, Caribbean 's< rustic charm or the weathered elegance of ITC Swank, there is a natural honesty in her work."

Flagstaff JNL takes the lettering from Roma Initial Caps JNL and gives them the movement of an unfurled banner. For added effect, there are flagpoles facing in either direction on the lesser and greater keys. Left and right flag ends are placed on the parenthesis keys; a wide blank flag panel is on the left brace key and a narrow blank flag panel is on the right brace key. Letters only; no punctuation or extended characters.

In 1529, Geofroy Tory, French scholar, engraver, printer, publisher and poet, was publishing the well known so called Champ Fleury, printed by Gilles de Gourmond, in Paris. It is a fully illustrated handbook where the author explains how to draw Roman characters. The font used for the text - a Humane/Jenson type - was not a very beautiful one, but rough and ready, and the book is well known for its capital letters designs. We are offering here the two complete historical type sets and more -- we have entirely redrawn the lacked letters: J, U and W, Eth, Lslash, Thorn and Oslash in the two initial forms. The text font, 1529 Champ Fleury Regular is now containing all characters for West European (including Celtic), Baltic, East and Central European and Turkish language, and the Initial set 1529 Champ Fleury Init is containing two complete alphabets, with a very great effort to be as close as possible to the original pictures.

A vintage French metal marking stencil for Comandon and Company was the inspiration for the 1400th type design from Jeff Levine Fonts. Dijon Stencil JNL is a condensed serif design with thin stroke weights and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Typoskript AR is based on a metal type which was produced in 1968 by VEB Typoart, Dresden, from a design of the German calligrapher and lettering artist Hildegard Korger. It bears all the qualities of the artist’s inimitable style which will be immediately recognizable to anyone who’s familiar with her Handbook of Type and Lettering (Lund Humphries, 1992) (Schrift und Schreiben, Leipzig, Fachbuchverlag, 1971). The ARTypes transcription retains the roughness of the artist’s pen on paper as it was featured in the original type, as well as the letterfit, ch, ck and f-ligatures. ARTypes have supplied the font with all the standard accents, monetary signs, etc. The original qu logotype is provided as an alternative letter. A printable .pdf specimen of the type can be downloaded from the gallery.

Plain Talk JNL is similar to Eckhardt Centerline JNL, but lacks the thin inline lettering and has a different A and G. The hand-lettered look of this font makes it perfect for titling applications.

I present to you Dubbo, a new retro serif! Dubbo is a fashionable font that is both retro and bold. Its thick curves give it a 70s groovy vibe, while the serifs bring it back to traditional. Dubbo fits right in with those retro mood boards and vintage logos. It includes a distinct lower and uppercase, as well as numbers, punctuation, and multilingual letters. The Ligature and Alternate fonts are sure to come in handy for whatever your imagination can conjure up! 5 Weights (Light, Regular, Semibold, Bold, Black) Basic Latin A-Z and a-z Numerals & Punctuation Stylistic Alternates & Ligatures Multilingual Support for ä ö ü Ä Ö Ü ... Free updates and feature additions Thanks for looking, and I hope you enjoy it.

The second in our Cool Japan series, Odaiba Soul echoes back to some of the futuristic amusement centers and entertainments found on Odaiba Island in Tokyo Bay. Tailored for sci-fi lettering, anime awesomeness or even just making flyers for a day trip across the Rainbow Bridge, this is one to keep in mind!

ITC Serengeti is a font of narrow, high reaching capital letters designed by Bob Alonso in 1996. In the form of small caps, the letters combine to make words. This font is at the same time modern and nostalgic, with letters like N and M being reminiscent of those on posters in the 1920s. One can also interpret this small caps alphabet as one influenced by the Jugendstil. ITC Serengeti should be used only for headlines and display in point sizes of 18 or larger.

Argone LC is a handmade organic typeface family. It is a variant of Argone typeface, but has lower case letters. It comes in four weights– light, regular, bold and black, which is a feature not seen much in handmade typefaces. This makes Argone LC a versatile and flexible type family. There is also a version of Argone LC which only has upper case letters – Argone

Art Museum JNL is yet another take on the classic Art Deco "solid letter" fonts that emulate the style of Futura Black. This version comes to you through the courtesy of a vintage WPA (Works Progress Administration) poster promoting national parks and Winter sports. Take note of the unusual inverted middle crossbar on the 'E' and 'F' as inspired by the poster's hand lettering.

The symbols in ITC TotSpots include everything from a child's life, except maybe the mess. In this font you'll find diaper pins, alphabet blocks, teddy bears, and even an inchworm-everything a digital baby would need. Polish-Canadian designer Victor Gad has specialized in editorial illustration, and also has extensive experience in poster design. These illustrations maintain his original sketchbook quality, despite being digital renderings. ITC TotSpots offers a clear, new style of symbols, which might be the perfect fit for your next project!

Big Band JNL is a classic Art Deco typeface in every sense of the word. Large, bold and innovative in its sectional construction, the font is based on a lettering example found in a 1941 Speedball® Lettering Pen instruction book. The basic alphabet was used for the model, with a new set of numbers and additional characters created by Jeff Levine in order to make this font fully functional in today’s digital designs.

PT Orden™ was designed by Oleg Karpinsky in 2000-2001 and licensed by ParaType. Orden is a genuine Cyrillic typeface, it contains antique Cyrillic letter forms such as d, z, N with a diagonal stroke, symmetrical Y ,× and Ù, rare in modern typography. Another specialties: one alphabet and old style figures. Lower case consists of upper case letters except for some alternative variants of the capitals. For use in advertising and display typography.

Hand lettered Art Deco lettering for the title on the cover of the 1930s-era song "And I Still Do" provided the inspiration for Swing Era JNL. A bold, casual and friendly typeface, it features an intersecting inline through some of the characters. One could almost picture the hottest big band of the day promoted on a lobby card with this alphabet, beckoning all to come on in and "cut a rug".

Mi Casa is a new condensed version of our Home Style font which is a revival of an old 1800's classic ornate French font. This new 2021 condensed version takes this old classic to an all new level by adding small caps, italics and a new black version. Mi Casa is perfect for headlines and logos from advertising to product labels, t-shirt lettering and restaurant menus. Fill fonts are also part of this family, new to this font style is the half fill font for creating a two color effect on the letters, you'll need an application that works in layers to use the fill fonts in Mi Casa. The regular fill font for Mi Casa isn't meant to be used as a stand alone font so we've created a solid black version with thicker serifs on top and adjusted outlines throughout for a better appearance as a solo font. We hope you enjoy Mi Casa as much as we did making it. Mi Casa is a trademark of FontMesa LLC

Jochen Schuss designed Linotype Paint It in 1997 with exclusively capital letters and in two weights. The best way to describe the weight Paint It might be to compare it with a labyrinth in which the figures only become clear to the reader dedicated to finding them. The second weight, Paint It black, is almost the solution to this puzzle. The characters are black and stand out strikingly from the background. Linotype Paint It is particularly good for headlines in large point sizes or wherever a text should display a playful character.

Decalcomania JNL is based on examples of gold and black water-applied initial decals made by the Transfer Monogram Company of Chicago circa the 1940s. It is presumed the patterns for the letters were hand cut, possibly explaining the variations in line widths and character shapes. These eccentricities were left intact and followed through to the other characters in order to represent a more "authentic" digital version of these vintage decals. Decalcomania JNL is available in both the regular (outline) version, and a solid black version, as well as obliques of both styles.

The typeface LECO 1988 is another font family which belongs to LECO set. It is a display typeface, which is inspired by the title written on the bottle of lečo from 1988. Its typical features are embedded diacritics and significant black look with low contrast. Lower case is united with upper case and has several identical glyphs in both forms. Font contains alternative set of glyphs for letter „E“. Tabular numerals, superiors and inferiors and the full set of (glyphs - symbols) for languages using the Latin alphabet are also included in this font. LECO 1988 font family includes six specific styles: Regular, Blind, Gradient, Outline, Shadow and Stencil style. Those styles extend typographic options by mutual combination or overlapping, whilst every style share the identical metrics and kerning. Font format is Open Type with the support of several open type features. This typeface is suitable for creating logotypes, powerful posters or can be used as a headline display typeface.

Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, or Early Alphabetic) is found in a small corpus of c. 40 inscriptions and fragments, the vast majority from Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula, dating to the Middle Bronze Age. They are considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Phoenician alphabet, which led to many modern alphabets including the Greek alphabet. According to common theory, Canaanites or Hyksos who spoke a Canaanite language repurposed Egyptian hieroglyphs to construct a different script. The earliest Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are mostly dated to between the mid-19th (early date) and the mid-16th (late date) century BC.

Found on the back of some sheet music to promote another song was the hand-lettered title "The Snake Charmer". While not everyone likes snakes, many designers do like the lettering of the Art Deco era, so Charmer JNL is designed from that lettering.

Spotlight was created by British designer Tony Geddes in the tradition of the bold serif fonts of early 19th century England. It too is a robust alphabet exhibiting extreme stroke contrasts, however, Geddes gave his font a more relaxed feel by not filling in the strokes completely. Long white rays break up the otherwise dark black strokes, following the form of the outer contours and giving the figures a three dimensional look. Spotlight is also reminiscent of the decorative advertisements of the 1930s and of the glamorous revues and shows of this time. Spotlight is perfect for headlines and display in larger point sizes.

MTT Roma is designed to re-create the atmosphere of the city of Rome of the 21st century. The studio for the letterform evolved from the Trajan Column alphabet. Suitable for both display and body-text usage, stylistically MTT Roma aims to distance itself from the proliferation of geometric sans-serif families of its time. The result is a sharp, subtly humanist typeface inspired by modern day Rome, the city of contrasts and eternal beauty. Featuring an extended character set to support Central and Eastern European as well as Western European languages, the typeface comes with six weights – from thin to black — with matching italics.

Lucida Grande is a humanist sans serif font with a large x-height, clear letterforms, and space-saving economy. Its easy reading qualities make it legible for printing and screen displays even down to small sizes. Lucida Grande is part of the Lucida superfamily of fonts from Bigelow & Holmes. Lucida is highly regarded for legibility and its extensive range of type styles. The Lucida Grande family has eight fonts with weights from Thin to Black with matching italics. Each font has 674 glyphs and supports the W1G character set. This includes Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets to support many languages in Europe, the Americas, and worldwide.