Branding Iron is similar to Barnum Block. Use the Branding Iron font for headlines, signs, menus and posters, especially where an American Western quality is desired.

A decorative Barnum-like design. Great for headlines with that circus type atmosphere; will also work for Christmas, western and children's books and ads.

Here's a wide, very light version of the widely known font P. T. Barnum (or French Clarendon, if you prefer). We have used this to good effect as secondary lines on old fashioned stationery. Reads well in very small sizes.

Johabu is based on Gebrochene Fraktur, a lighter softer sort of type, compared to the German forms of the same period. Johabu was drawn by Johannes Bureus, around 1620, cut and cast by Peter van Selow in Stockholm. Johannes Bureus, archaeologist and linguist, designed and let Selow cast runes in 1598, and he became the first Swedish keeper, archivist, of the National Record Office State Archives.

Animated types like this one have been around for fifty or more years. They certainly add a sense of liveliness to a headline. This one trades upon the "wrong way weights" of the old French Clarendon. Think of it as Barnum with Bounce.

An interesting, unusual and righteously funky variation on the classic “Barnum” style of lettering, this typeface was originally named "Dado". As any woodworker knows, dado is also the name of a slot ploughed, chiseled or cut in wood: in other words, a groove thang. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin and 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan) character sets.

A page from an 1880s type specimen book presented a unique "Barnum"-like design with top horizontal lines much thinner than the bottom ones. Titled "Ten Line Antique Compressed No. 7", the design transcends the years; for it's not only an antique wood type font, but is also reminiscent of the 1960s hippie counterculture movement. Antique Unique JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

This idea of "wrong way weights" was originally called French Clarendon by the Americans, Italienne by the French, and American by the Italians. Sounds like nobody wanted to own up to it. When it was revived by ATF in 1933, it was given the name P. T. Barnum. Many variations have appeared. Dime Museum is an old wood type.

Modesto is a loose-knit family based on a signpainters lettering style popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. It evolved from the lettering I used for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Logo. The Modesto family was not planned. It just happened, a few fonts at a time over about fifteen years. In 2014 four new Italic fonts were added. There is a downloadable MODESTO USER MANUAL PDF in the Gallery section for this family.

Modesto Open is now a Chromatic Font Family. The old font Modesto Open has been improved, renamed Modesto Open Primary and joined by four new fonts that ornament and augment the Primary font in many different ways. All Caps. Modesto is a loose-knit group of Font Families based on a signpainting lettering style popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. It evolved from the lettering I used for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Logo. The Modesto family was not planned. It just happened, a few fonts at a time over about fifteen years. In 2014 seven new Italic fonts and two Chromatic families were added.

Funny Nature is not a typeface but a collection of small, comic-like symbols. Lüdicke used to work often for a supplier of gardening equipment etc. He had to come up with new, original and vivid ideas for the design of catalogues and ads. He designed Funny Nature, a wonderful collection of illustrations. Can you hear the humming and buzzuing, can you smell the flowers?

The Modesto Text Family is text in name only. It’s called Text because it has a Lower Case, and also to distinguish it from the rest of the Modesto clan. Modesto is a loose-knit family based on a signpainters lettering style popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. It evolved from the lettering I used for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Baily Circus Logo. The Modesto family was not planned. It just happened, a few fonts at a time over about fifteen years. In 2014 seven new Italic fonts and two Chromatic families were added. There is a downloadable MODESTO USER MANUAL PDF in the Gallery section for this family.

Modesto Initials had existed as a single font for several years. I recently added a fill font to put color in the Inlines. The Inline font still works by itself. The Fill font works alone too, as an ultra Modesto on steroids. They work best together. Modesto is a loose-knit family based on a signpainters lettering style popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. It evolved from the lettering I used for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Logo. The Modesto family was not planned. It just happened, a few fonts at a time over about fifteen years. In 2014 seven new Italic fonts and two Chromatic families were added. There is a downloadable MODESTO USER MANUAL PDF in the Gallery section for this family.

Compendium is a sequel to my Burgues font from 2007. Actually it is more like a prequel to Burgues. Before Louis Madarasz awed the American Southeast with his disciplined corners and wild hairlines, Platt Rogers Spencer, up in Ohio, had laid down a style all his own, a style that would eventually become the groundwork for the veering calligraphic method that was later defined and developed by Madarasz. After I wrote the above paragraph, I was so surprised by it, particularly by the first two sentences, that I stopped and had to think about it for a week. Why a sequel/prequel? Am I subconsciously joining the ranks of typeface-as-brand designers? Are the tools I build finally taking control of me? Am I having to resort to “milking it” now? Not exactly. Even though the current trend of extending older popular typefaces can play tricks with a type designer’s mind, and maybe even send him into strange directions of planning, my purpose is not the extension of something popular. My purpose is presenting a more comprehensive picture as I keep coming to terms with my obsession with 19th century American penmanship. Those who already know my work probably have an idea about how obsessive I can be about presenting a complete and detailed image of the past through today’s eyes. So it is not hard to understand my need to expand on the Burgues concept in order to reach a fuller picture of how American calligraphy evolved in the 19th century. Burgues was really all about Madarasz, so much so that it bypasses the genius of those who came before him. Compendium seeks to put Madarasz’s work in a better chronological perspective, to show the rounds that led to the sharps, so to speak. And it is nearly criminal to ignore Spencer’s work, simply because it had a much wider influence on the scope of calligraphy in general. While Madarasz’s work managed to survive only through a handful of his students, Spencer’s work was disseminated throughout America by his children after he died in 1867. The Spencer sons were taught by their father and were great calligraphers themselves. They would pass the elegant Spencerian method on to thousands of American penmen and sign painters. Though Compendium has a naturally more normalized, Spencerian flow, its elegance, expressiveness, movement and precision are no less adventurous than Burgues. Nearing 700 glyphs, its character set contains plenty of variation in each letter, and many ornaments for letter beginnings, endings, and some that can even serve to envelope entire words with swashy calligraphic wonder. Those who love to explore typefaces in detail will be rewarded, thanks to OpenType. I am so in love with the technology now that it’s becoming harder for me to let go of a typeface and call it finished. You probably have noticed by now that my fascination with old calligraphy has not excluded my being influenced by modern design trends. This booklet is an example of this fusion of influences. I am living 150 years after the Spencers, so different contextualization and usage perspectives are inevitable. Here the photography of Gonzalo Aguilar join the digital branchings of Compendium to form visuals that dance and wave like the arms of humanity have been doing since time eternal. I hope you like Compendium and find it useful. I'm all Spencered out for now, but at one point, for history’s sake, I will make this a trilogy. When the hairline-and-swash bug visits me again, you will be the first to know. The PDF specimen was designed with the wonderful photography of Gonzalo Aguilar from Mexico. Please download it here http://new.myfonts.com/artwork?id=47049&subdir=original

The lettering found on an 1878 Salt Lake City advertisement for the Forepaugh’s Circus inspired Faux Pas JNL, which is a bit of a pun on the circus’ name and also a commentary on how this unusual lettering style seems to break all of the rules on stroke width and balance. According to Wikipedia: “Adam John Forepaugh (February 28, 1831 - January 22, 1890) was an American entrepreneur, businessman, and circus owner. Forepaugh owned and operated a circus from 1865 through 1890 under various names including Forepaugh's Circus, The Great Forepaugh Show, The Adam Forepaugh Circus, and Forepaugh & The Wild West. In 1889, Forepaugh sold his circus acts to James Anthony Bailey and James E. Cooper and he sold his railroad cars to the Ringling Brothers. The Ringlings used the equipment to transform their circus from a small animal-powered production to a huge rail-powered behemoth, which later purchased the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Thus, in liquidating his circus assets, he indirectly contributed to the demise of his arch-rival.” Faux Pas JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Over the past couple of years I received quite a number of unusual and surprising requests to modify my type designs to suit projects of personal nature, but none top the ones that asked me to typeset and modify tattoos using Burgues Script or Adios. At first the whole idea was amusing to me, kind of like an inside joke. I had worked in corporate branding for a few years before becoming a type designer, and suddenly I was being asked to get involved in personal branding, as literally “personal” and “branding” as the expression can get. After a few such requests I began pondering the whole thing from a professional perspective. It was typography, after all, no matter how unusual the method or medium. A very personal kind of typography, too. The messages being typeset were commemorating friends, family, births, deaths, loves, principles, and things that influenced people in a deep and direct way, so much so that they chose to etch that influence on their bodies and wear it forever. And when you decide to wear something forever, style is of the essence. After digging into the tattooing scene, I have a whole new respect for tattoo artists. Wielding that machine is not easy, and driving pigment into people’s skin is an enormous responsibility. Not to mention that they're some of the very few who still use a crafty, hands-on process that is all but obsolete in other ornamentation methods. Some artists go the extra mile and take the time to develop their own lettering for tattooing purposes, and some are inventive enough to create letters based on the tattoo’s concept. But they are not the norm. Generally speaking, most tattoo artists use generic type designs to typeset words. Even the popular blackletter designs have become quite generic over the past few decades. I still cringe when I see something like Bank Script embedded into people’s skin, turning them into breathing, walking shareholder invitations or government bonds. There’s been quite a few attempts at making fonts out of whatever original tattoo designer typefaces can be found out there - wavy pseudo-comical letters, or rough thick brush scripts, but as far as I could tell a stylish skin script was never attempted in the digital age. And that’s why I decided to design Piel Script. Piel is Spanish for skin. In a way, Piel Script is a removed cousin of Burgues Script. Although the initial sketches were infused with some 1930s showcard lettering ideas (particularly those of B. Boley, whose amazing work was shown in Sign of the Times magazine), most of the important decisions about letter shapes and connectivity were reached by observing whatever strengths and weaknesses can be seen in tattoos using Burgues. Tattoos using Adios also provided some minor input. In retrospect, I suppose Affair exercised some influence as well, albeit in a minor way. I guess what I'm trying to say is there is as much of me in Piel Script as there is in any of the other major scripts I designed, even though the driving vision for it is entirely different from anything else I have ever done. I hope you like Piel Script. If you decide it to use it on your skin, I'll be very flattered. If you decide to use it on your skateboard or book cover, I'll be just as happy. Scripts can't get any more personal than this. Piel Script received the Letter2 award, where they selected the best 53 typefaces of the last decade, organised by ATypI.

While in the same vein and spirit as Burgues and Compendium, Bellissima began from an entirely different thread from those fonts. It started with Alex Trochut generously showing me a gorgeous lettering book from his grandfather’s library: Bellezas de la Caligrafía, by Ramón Stirling, 1844. Stirling was one of the Latin calligraphy pioneers who introduced a refined version of English calligraphy in Spain and made it popular in the nineteenth century. Some scans from that book served as initial basis for the caps in my Poem Script. But it was always in the back of my mind that I should do a copperplate, and the Stirling model was the perfect source. My intention was to veer away from Stirling’s exuberant ornamentation, and work within simplified forms of his ideas. As it usually is with most of my projects, Bellissima became its own bird and shaped its own flying patterns. Suddenly there were many ligatures, multiple endings and swashed connections, hundreds of alternates for both uppercase and lowercase. Bellissima has an effusive energy that appeals much beyond its sourcing. It’s intended for these modern times of appreciation for old crafty things like stationery and letterpress, where its origins help it shine brightly. Bellissima Script Pro is a complete font with almost 2000 characters full of alternates, swashes, ligatures & ornaments covering a wide palette of latin languages and Bellissima Script Redux is a random sample of glyphs totally usable with a reduced price.

Lycia (Lycian: 𐊗𐊕𐊐𐊎𐊆𐊖 Trm̃mis; Greek: Λυκία, Lykia; Turkish: Likya) was a geopolitical region in Anatolia in what are now the provinces of Antalya and Muğla on the southern coast of Turkey, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, and Burdur Province inland. Known to history since the records of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age, it was populated by speakers of the Luwian language group. Written records began to be inscribed in stone in the Lycian language (a later form of Luwian) after Lycia's involuntary incorporation into the Achaemenid Empire in the Iron Age. At that time (546 BC) the Luwian speakers were decimated, and Lycia received an influx of Persian speakers. Ancient sources seem to indicate that an older name of the region was Alope (Ancient Greek: Ἀλόπη, Alópē). Lycia fought for the Persians in the Persian Wars, but on the defeat of the Achaemenid Empire by the Greeks, it became intermittently a free agent. After a brief membership in the Athenian Empire, it seceded and became independent (its treaty with Athens had omitted the usual non-secession clause), was under the Persians again, revolted again, was conquered by Mausolus of Caria, returned to the Persians, and finally fell under Macedonian hegemony upon the defeat of the Persians by Alexander the Great. Due to the influx of Greek speakers and the sparsity of the remaining Lycian speakers, Lycia was rapidly Hellenized under the Macedonians, and the Lycian language disappeared from inscriptions and coinage.

Feel Script is based on lettering that calligrapher and logo designer Rand Holub created for Intertype for his face Monterey. Fortunately, I didn’t have the technological limitations today that Intertype had back then. Holub’s lettering is presented in its entirety within Feel Script. Some letterforms were redrawn from vintage American magazine ads (some by Holub himself), along with many new alternates, ligatures, ending forms, and strangely beautiful character combinations. The experience I’ve accumulated from my previous calligraphy typefaces (Ministry Script, Affair, Buffet Script, Burgues Script, et al.) made it easier for me to apply Holub’s lettering in a new context using OpenType technology. The usual extended treatment was given to Feel Script, all the way into the implementation of three-letter ligatures and the dreamiest swashes I could imagine. I changed some of the connections between the lowercase letters in order to fit Holub’s calligraphy as opposed to the limited Intertype metal attempt. I hope you like Feel Script. I also hope what I contributed to this particular Holub design is somewhat of a happy ending to a calligraphy story that crosses many technologies. From the pen to computer Bézier. My part of this story stops here ... and yours begins. Feel Script has more than 1200 glyphs including: stylistic alternates, contextual alternates, titling alternates, swashes, and ligatures. Check out the PDF!

Mymra fonts – an upgraded version of Mymra Forte and Mymra Mono (2009), with a careful re-dress of glyph shapes, and the extension of glyph amounts – which enables support of more Latin languages. One more weight – Black – has been added to the original three of Mymra Forte fonts. Fonts are intended for use in a vast variety of publications.

Ceundah font is inspired by thick and thin Hand Sketches. This font can be used for film titles, magazine titles, newspaper front pages, billboards, or company brands.

Searching for a font that resembled true children's handwriting, this font's creator designed a font from his own first grade penmanship assignments. Ideal for anything related to children.