From 1958 to 1964, one of ABC-TV’s popular shows was the detective series “77 Sunset Strip”. Based in Los Angeles, the fictional detective agency was located next door to Dino’s Lodge, (partly owned by Dean Martin and actually located at 8532 Sunset). It was originally known as the Alpine Lodge. The adjacent building where Stuart Bailey and Jeff Spencer’s private detective service was located in fact housed a popular modeling agency. The ‘77’ address did not exist outside of the realm of the series. However, a wonderful sign with Art Deco-influenced lettering graced the set (on the wall of the office foyer) saying “Bailey & Spencer Private Investigators Suites 101-102”. A screen capture of this sign served as the working model for Private Eye JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

IronType (formerly known as Ironman) is an extra bold geometric titling face in the Art Deco poster tradition. A warm sense of strength and playfulness runs throughout this design. Triangular-shaped crossbars are some of its distinguishing characteristics. The face also contains some very amusing alternates. The tails of the alternate cap K and R extend below the line and the alternate cap N has a hump instead of a diagonal stroke. A handy set of lowercase letters with lining and smaller figures are also included. IronType Extra Bold is now available in the OpenType Std format. Some new characters have been added to this OpenType version. These advanced features work in current versions of Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

Tusque is a layered chromatic type family with a Tuscan flavor. Regular, Circus and Tooled can stand alone, while Highlight and Deco are purely for layering up multicolored gorgeousness. Tusque lends itself to fairy tales, wine labels and boutique logos, and makes some particularly delectable drop caps. Although it’s all caps, the lower case slots are all different from the upper case so you can mix and match to your heart’s content. There are also a bevy of swash alternates and ligatures at your disposal. The contextual alternates feature cleverly substitutes alternate versions of more triangular glyphs like A and V to give a better fit. The ordinal feature changes ‘a’ and ‘o’ to the feminine and masculine ordinals for Spanish etc. but also changes ‘c’ and ‘ac’ to superscript lowercase versions for names like McBride and MacDonald.

Naïve Inline is a layered serif handwritten font designed by Fanny Coulez and Julien Saurin in Paris. Our goal was to draw a font with finely irregular lines that give a human and whimsical feeling. We designed three weights to assure a good readability whatever the size. They can be enhanced with five different interior patterns and three shadows to improve your designs and bring a charming and unusual feeling. To do so, you can simply superimpose the layers with a compatible software like Photoshop, the weight above and the pattern(s) below, then choose a color for each. This font is part of our Naïve superfamily that contains lot of variations: Line, Inline, Serif, Sans Serif, and a special Art Deco one. Just click on our foundry name to see them all! We hope you will enjoy our work. Merci beaucoup!

Hollywood Revue JNL gets its design inspiration and name from a vintage movie poster for "The Hollywood Revue of 1929". The letter style shows early Art Deco influences, yet the hand lettering was done in the late 1920s toward the end of the Art Nouveau period. MGM produced this early "talkie" all-star musical with a cast that included Jack Benny, John Gilbert, Conrad Nagel, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Polly Moran and many others. This is the motion picture where Cliff ("Ukelele Ike") Edwards introduced "Singin' in the Rain" (composed by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown). Years later, Freed was a producer at MGM and gathered up many of the songs he and Brown wrote during the 1920s to form the musical core of the 1952 Gene Kelly-Debbie Reynolds-Donald O'Conner musical "Singin' in the Rain".

Waite Park JNL is based on the smallest of the die-cut letters and numbers contained in the Webway Sign Cabinet - once manufactured by the Holes-Webway Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The largest of the set's sizes (2 inch) was the model for Sign Kit JNL, the medium size (1-1/8 inch) was used to make Sign Production JNL and this font is a version from the 3/4 inch size. Each size of alphabet and numerals have their own unique characteristics, although they all follow the same basic font style, which is reminiscent of classic Art Deco-era sanserif typefaces. The name Waite Park JNL was derived from a division of Holes-Webway that (for some reason lost to time) distributed their sign kits under the name Waite Park Sign Company, located in the Minnesota city of the same name.

Introducing "Riseria" – a bold and avant-garde typeface that seamlessly blends the raw power of brutalism metal with the intricate elegance of blackletter, enhanced by haunting thorn decorations. This font is a striking testament to the fusion of divergent design elements, resulting in a visually arresting and unique typographic experience. With 839 meticulously crafted characters, Riseria stands as a versatile typeface that transcends conventional boundaries. Its design exudes an industrial and unapologetically bold aesthetic, drawing inspiration from the robustness of brutalist architecture and the mystique of blackletter scripts. The fusion of these elements creates a harmonious balance between strength and intricacy, making Riseria an ideal choice for projects that demand a powerful and visually captivating presence. The font boasts a comprehensive set of ligatures, allowing characters to seamlessly merge and create a fluid and organic appearance. Alternatives provide additional flexibility, enabling users to experiment with different stylistic variations for a truly customized look. Riseria's multilingual support ensures its adaptability across a wide range of languages, making it a globally accessible and inclusive typographic tool. One of the most distinctive features of Riseria is its spine-chilling thorn decorations. These frightening adornments add an element of darkness and mystique to the font, elevating it beyond mere letters and transforming it into a visceral and evocative design element. The thorns, intricately intertwined with the characters, create an otherworldly aura that is both mesmerizing and unsettling. In essence, Riseria is not just a font – it's an artistic statement that pushes the boundaries of conventional typography. Whether used in branding, album covers, posters, or other design projects, Riseria is sure to leave an indelible mark with its brutalist metal aesthetics, blackletter charm, and spine-tingling thorn decorations.

To Rafaella, a menina dos cachos. We, designers, have grown accustomed to seeing that lowercase letters—not only in calligraphy but also in typography (1)—may be very playful and decorative. Almost every part of them can become a potential swash, ligature or decorative accolade (2) if the designer has some expertise regarding this matter. However, since we are living in an era that elevates the status of handcrafts, lettering has gained a lot of ground in different kinds of mediums, and with it there’s a sort of overuse of capitals. This may be due to the reason that lettering pieces need a high impact to convey their messages and many times why big capitals are the only solution. With this in mind, I started Rafaella: A font consisting entirely of capitals which go from unadorned to very decorative. Rafaella has ductus and forms vaguely based on the 1970s Bookman-like styled fonts. The presence and behaviour of serifs and ball terminals in this style were the perfect excuse to make really attractive aternates which the user can choose from the glyphs panel. The result is a font full of life. Able to be both very playful and formal due to its roman style which can be combined with (and between) a wide range of other styles of expressive scripts or geometric fonts with nice results (3). Also try Rafaella Shade Solo combined with Rafaella or Rafaella Bold for a layer effect to emphasize any given word or phrase. NOTES (1) See my fonts Erotica from 2013 or Dream from 2014. (2) Accolades is a wonderful word that refers to the ornaments made around the words in the spencerian style of calligraphy (3) Combinations often seen in different pieces of lettering were usually a contrast of style is wanted.