F.W. Woolworth was once one of the giants of the variety store chains, along with the likes of Kress, S.S. Kresge, McCrory’s, Neisner Brothers, Ben Franklin and others. In 1960, the company brought out a new corporate logo with a type design harking back to the Art Deco style of the 1930s and 1940s. A photo of one of their old store fronts (despite having only eight letters to work with) inspired the digital interpretation of the signage as Bargain Shopping JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

In the 1960s it was a popular trend to personalize one’s possessions with your initials. From wallets and handbags to eyeglasses; from luggage to even cars, initial personalization was the fad of the time. The British division of Gulf Oil offered for sale a set of gold metallic stick-on initials for 25 pence, complete with two Gulf logos so the company could get some extra advertising mileage out of the promotion. These extra-wide, bold initials served as the idea model for Personalization JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Stencils have played a number of roles over the years, from decorative patterns to military markings; from labeling shipping containers to a student’s school project. One unusual application of a stencil alphabet was some metal letters spotted for sale at an online auction site. These antique letters were used for promoting the current show on a theater marquee just as plastic ones are used nowadays. Following the auction images as a guide, the Roman stencil font from those marquee letters is now preserved digitally as Talent Stencil JNL; which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Catchland is a swashy script typeface. Drawn and created by Mans Greback in 2021, this baseball lettering has a vivid personality and a soft, curly style. With the appearance of a hand-painted calligraphic illustration, the font works great for creating a truly professional graphic or logotype in a vintage form. Use underscores _ to make a swash. Example: Brooklyn____ Use multiple underscores to make swashes of different lengths. Example: Dodgers________ (Download required.) Catchland is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from Scandinavia to the Canaries, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

Powerful and angular. Power Grid comes in four versions: Regular, Stencil, Inline and Rounded. Inspired by 1920s constructivist posters, it's perfect for industrial and bold applications. Power Grid is all caps and includes a handful of alternate glyphs. 8 fonts 4 styles: Regular, Stencil, Inline and Rounded Alternate characters

In the July 24, 1915 issue of “Dry Goods Reporter” is a demonstration of hand lettering rendered with the use of a “speed pen”. Two suggested examples cited in the accompanying article were the Payzant pen and the then-new Speedball pen. An ornate Art Nouveau serif alphabet is displayed, with some examples having delicate floral elements entwining the letters. The initial alphabet was auto-traced, then cleaned-up and modified to recreate the core design of the basic (unadorned) letters. The numerals, punctuation and all additional characters were then made from scratch. Nouveau Rose JNL is the finished result, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

A piece of British sheet music for “You’re Sweeter than I Thought You Were” [from the 1935 film “Jack of All Trades” starring Jack Hulbert] provided inspiration for a digital typeface based on the credits for Hulbert and the film that rather than the song’s title. What’s interesting is the lettering style was influenced by Art Nouveau at a time when Art Deco was gaining in popularity. The result is Sweet Treats JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. (According to Wikipedia, John Norman ‘Jack’ Hulbert (April 24, 1892 – March 25, 1978) was a British actor, director, screenwriter and singer, specializing primarily in comedy productions, and often working alongside his wife Cicely Courtneidge.)

Zoelander is an experimental geometric font. The distinctive feature of this font is having an irregular x-height. This will look unusual, but if you are looking for something unique and looks different, Zoelander can be an alternative to making an attractive typography. Zoelander comes in two versions, Zoelander Regular and Zoelander TF. Each has a bold and rounded style. Zoelander Regular is a sans serif font with irregular x-height but if you want the same x-height size, the stylistic alternates feature allows you to do it. While Zoelander TF is the development of a regular version where each letter is connected in a line at the baseline. Some of the other opentype features make it easier for you to explore more interesting typographic designs.

Silly Behavior JNL is based on a hand lettered alphabet found within the pages of the vintage lettering book “100 Alphabets Publicitaires” (100 Advertising Alphabets). The fun, haphazard arrangement of the letters and numbers convey a casual approach to titling.

The “Trixy Toy Educator” was a 1930s-era set of letters and numbers (along with a few animal shapes) for teaching children, and was manufactured by the Durrel Company of Gardner, Massachusetts. Die cut from thick cardboard, the 40 piece set also included a rack to display the characters, presumably for little ones to practice the correct order of the alphabet and basic numerals or to spell simple words like ‘dog’ or ‘cat’. Whomever came up with the idea, they used the most rudimentary and unusual ‘type design’ shapes in the A-Z and 0-9, but they were just odd enough to inspire a digital type version of them. School Age JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Skizzors is a family designed by Ethan Dunham created by cutting letters out of paper. The fonts have an irregular edge but are clean and legible. The bold version is almost black and complements the regular version nicely.

Misty - a two weight wild west style serif with numerous alternatives, swashes and irregular alternatives for numerous characters in SC style. Interchanging regular characters with alternatives and vice versa, it allow you to do slightly strange inscriptions. Plus deco style.

ITC Motter Corpus was designed by the Austrian type designer Othmar Motter in 1993 to combine the display advantages of a sans serif extra bold design with the legibility of a roman weight. The Motter Corpus is available in the weights regular and condensed regular. The capitals with their strong strokes display slight irregularities and natural looking outlines. When used in very large point sizes the tiny serifs become noticeable. Distinguishing characteristics of this typeface are the unusual design of the g with its upward reaching ear and that of the capital C, whose curve ends in an angular stroke in its upper third. Almost, but not quite, a sans serif, the typeface has diminutive serifs which, along with its modulated weight contrasts, make ITC Motter Corpus remarkable legible in display applications and will give text a nostalgic feel. A similar typeface is Linotype Bariton.