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.

Bronzino’s roots lie in the Arts and Crafts movement, and in the traditions of letterpress printed fine quality books. It’s ideal for legible headings which have just that hint of charm and difference outside of the normal and mundane. It’s formal enough to go anywhere yet it has a spirit of fun, it brings a world of bygone care and quality to the modern age.

TradaSerif is a new addition to the Trada family. Crisp and clear in appearance, it preserves the same formal spirit and the principal structural elements of TradaSans. TradaSerif offers a wide range of styles, from tenderly thin to thundering black. It also affords excellent text qualities and works brilliantly as a distinctive headline face. TradaSerif consists of 20 well-tuned weights and is well-equipped for advanced typography. It comes in OpenType format with extended support for up to 80 languages. All weights contain small caps, ligatures, superior characters, proportional lining figures, tabular lining figures, proportional old style figures, lining old style figures, matching currency symbols, fraction- and scientific numerals, matching arrows, and alternate characters.

Introductory Klose Slab Another Vintage Typeface from Studio Sun (SUN014) for your Fonts collection. Klose comes with 4 style (condensed, normal, semi expanded, and expanded) also available in Variable Font format (for customize widths). Perfect for logotype, head text, displayed text, and many more). Klose support more 75 language (Latin pro).

Stefania Antique is an aged version of Stefania, an elegant italic script. Stefania Antique is perfect for creating unique and ancient looking chancery manuscripts. A regular version and a more distressed alternate are available. Stefania Antique includes 64 OpenType ligatures that are used to automatically replicate the natural appearance of letterpress printing. Stefania Antique works great in conjunction with insigne Splats!

Quache is a flexible sans-serif, created by Måns Grebäck between 2018 and 2020. It has unique, stylish curvatures and is clear, legible and sharp with open letter forms. The font family consists of six weights and four widths, totaling in 28 main styles: Thin, Light, Regular, Bold, Black, Heavy and Condensed, Normal, Expanded, ExtraExpanded It supports Latin-based languages, and contains numbers and all symbols you'll ever need.

Introducing Losta Bonita A modern, vintage, and retro serif family. Consists of 9 weights from thin to black and variable format. The stylistic alternates allow many different unique shapes that give your lettering idea a well-looking look.

Zawlbuk is a type inspired by Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura. The Letters are drawn using a flat nib pen on a paper, scanned and drawn into a vector format.

Phillip Kelly first drew the Croissant typeface in 1978 for Letraset. Back in the 1970s and 80s, Letraset's rubdown lettersheets were a popular means of designing with type. Today, many of these nostalgic classics are available in digital format. Linotype is pleased to re-present Croissant. This experimental typeface is built up out of round, brush-like strokes, creating heavy, and black letters. These forms are best used for display signage and headline text. If you are designing for a local bakery or donut shop, this typeface may be the perfect fit. The dark, heavy character that Croissant lends to the page is similar to Cooper Black , one of the most renowned American type designs ever produced. If you are looking for a typeface with Croissant's feel, but need to set smaller headlines or text, check out that family's offerings."

Alfina is a chancery typeface that shows a modern temperament, but is inspired by the eponymous town of Torre Alfina, one of the most beautiful medieval villages of Italy, situated on the edge of the plateau Alfina, a few miles from of Orvieto. The place where is the castle is steeped in history. Its roots date back to the Lombard kingdom (seventh century); later it was under the rule of Monaldeschi (1200-1700) and more recently (1880) the property of the rich French banker Count Edoardo Cahen of Antwerp, who was responsible for the present aspect of the Castle. Alfina has soft lines, very slender upper cases and thin overlapping strokes; The stylistic alternates are particularly important, and the type is enriched by many, different OpenType features.

Lots of Fall fun, many Halloween icons... black cat, haunted house, witch hat, ghost, scary masks, pumpkins, bat, BOO! and more. Plus back to school icons... bus, pencil, flashcards, paste, leaves and an apple for the teacher.

Ragazzi is well balanced serif with display impact. Contains 2 widths – Normal and Condensed and matching Italics for Normal in weight distribution from Light to Black. With gently rounded serifs, teardrop terminals, elegant hairline, equal ascender and descender heights, playful ear and smooth spur, Ragazzi represent distinctive serif family for respectable area of usage. Family's display elements are especially noticeable in headlines, but they handle longer paragraphs with same success, not effecting on legibility keeping right dose of display touch present. Ragazzi contains OpenType features: Small Caps, Initials, Standard Ligatures, Ordinals, Fractions, Superscript, Subscript, Oldstyle Figures, Tabular Figures and two decorative dingbats. Condensed and Italics font files don't contain Initials and dingbats. Ragazzi is our 104th release.

Présence is a modern sans serif with a light stroke contrast. The capitals are a bit narrow for a titling use which makes them space-economical without lack of legibility. The lower cases have a normal width for a fluid reading. Its wide range of weights allows it many uses.

Amongst some pages scanned and posted online of old wood type alphabets comes this lovely, ornamental design in a reversed style of white lettering on black rectangular boxes. This classic set of wood type is now available digitally as Wood Fancy Reverse JNL. There is a narrow blank box on the “less than” key for use as an end cap, and a wider blank box on the “greater than” key to use between words as a blank space if so desired.