The first Tuscan lettering was penned in the mid-fourth century by the calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus. The style was still in common usage as calligraphy when Vincent Figgins designed the first Antique Tuscan for print in 1817. Antique and Gothic Tuscan woodtype fonts appeared in the 1830’s. By the 1850’s, Tuscan fonts had become popular in America. These styles continued in print use into the twentieth century. Tuscan Antique and Gothic styles, borrowed from print and calligraphy, were perfect for signs, posters, handbills and other large format advertising. Sign painter, Frank Atkinson demonstrated several Tuscan forms in his book Sign Painting, A Complete Manual. Modified & Spurred Tuscan Romans were inspired by this and other works of the same period.

Historical influences coalesce with a contemporary twist to form the striking slab serif typeface Regime. In the early 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution began to transform Britain, the slab serif was born. The impact of new technology created a demand for a visual language that was compatible with mass-production and that could capture the attention of a newly-literate consumer. The design of the first slab serif typeface is credited to British punchcutter and typefounder Vincent Figgins and was released under the name Antique in 1815. In the same year, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. The name Regime alludes to this moment in history, when Britain emerged as the principal naval and imperial power of the 19th century.

The hand composition typeface was developed at the Ossip Lehmann type foundry (St. Petersburg) in 1904-07 (after designs by Alexander Leo?). It was redeveloped at Polygraphmash in 1960s for slugcasting composition. Named after Russian Empress Elizabeth I (1709-61). Based on typefaces of George Revillon type foundry of 1840s, though some characters’ shapes were redrawn similar to Russian Academy of Sciences typefaces (mid-18th century). Sharp contrast, strong weight Modern Serif with archaic flavor. The typeface is useful in text and display composition, in fiction, historical, and art books, especially connected to the 18th or 19th centuries. It looks great in Russian classical literature such as Pushkin and Gogol works. The revised, improved and completed digital version was designed at ParaType in 2001 by Lyubov Kuznetsova.

Display Art One is a display font inspired by the art nouveau fonts popular at the turn of the 20th century. It is not intended for text use. It was designed specifically for display, headline, logotype, branding, and similar applications. Display Art One has upper and lowercase alphabets, numbers, and punctuation.

We know very little about this font. A printer in Lisbon had it, but said it came from England. Nicolette Gray shows it in her Nineteenth Century Ornamented Type Faces as Lord Mayor from the British Typefoundry. We never got the complete font, but drawing the missing letters was not difficult.

Warren Chappell named his font after the Roman emperor Trajanus, who ruled in the first century AD. The Roman capitals on Trajanus’ memorial combined with the lower case style from the time of Charlemagne formed the models for the font characters. Trajanus will give a text a classic, almost calligraphic, feel.

A quill pen-like joined script typeface which echoes the cartoon lettering of 17th Century court papers during the period of the English Civil war. A nifty feature of this font is that if you enter a vertical bar '|' character, it will turn off the exit stroke of a joining character.

The main 20-th century handwritten display font in the USSR, usually performed with a flat brush or a wide poster pen for all kinds of signage during 1920-1990s. It had also many analogues in other countries, but never was that popular as in the Soviet Union, used everywhere.

Elkdale is an Antique Tuscan typeface based on a series of wood types designed in the 19th century. Elkdale exudes the impactful ornamental designs found in posters, newspapers and signage of the day. With its wide complement of weights and widths, Elkdale should fill any space with attention-grabbing delight.

Designed at Polygraphmash Type Design Bureau in 1988 by Svetlana Yermolaeva. Based on Kirillitsa (1982), inspired by typographic poluustav of the Printing Office of the Russian Empire Academy of Science (late 19th century). Shadow style was added by Alexander Tarbeev in 1994. Latin alphabet was added by Oleg Karpinsky in 2009.

Boardley Script is a script-style display font in two layers, Boardley Script was the result of an exploration of mid-century American and European bold script lettering for advertising. is an attractive contemporary typeface drawn from scratch with brand-new, more vigorous detailing — and layerable variations for chromatic use.

WigWag Bold and Wigwag Deluxe are bold, informal lettering styles inspired by mid-20th century Showcard Lettering. Especially by the work of Speedball lettering artist Ross George, and also the work of Cecil Wade and Samuel Welo. Designed around 2001 by Jim Parkinson, Wigwag has recently been refreshed and re-released.

Hoosier Daddy is based on Foundry Type samples from various mid-19th century specimen books. This shaded slab serif was made by conforming several different cuts of the styles, filling out the character set, and adding a few contemporary touches for freshness. This is a display face. Use it big.

This 1935 design from Monotype is an extremely condensed display font that has a slight flavor of nineteenth-century wood type. Runic Condensed font is tall and lean with a huge x-height and hairline serifs. It is an ideal display type for eccentric pieces where space is at a premium.

Axteroid was made to look like something that was teleported from a computergame from way-back in the 80s. To make it more 21st century-like, I have spiced the font up with some OpenType alternate letters and ligatures! You will need to use OpenType supporting applications to use the autoligatures.

This quintessential nineteenth-century offering is based on a typeface from the 1912 American Type Founders catalog called Lining Central Antique. Quaint, yet crisp and clean, it is equally suitable for headlines or body copy. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Stuttgart Gothic is based on early 20th century hand lettering samples developed by Ernst Schneidler at the Stuttgart School of Design. It is a very bold style in the gothic tradition, but with additional characters for modern users. It is at once both quintessentially gothic and uniquely modern and decorative.

Lettera – Delivering 20th-century penmanship vibes, this monoline script font accomplished with rounded nib carries the soul of a romantic naive hand. Connected letterforms Illustrate a charming revival of handwriting. With 400 glyphs including alternates, swashes and ending forms, this typeface is perfect to create beautiful decorative custom headlines and wordmarks.

The origin of the word Codswallop is uncertain, but it might have something to do with a 19th century English soft drink brewer named Hiram Codd. Codswallop is a beautiful hand drawn font. A little weird, a tad grotesque and a wee bit over the top, but fun and useful nonetheless.

Legasov is an original font family designed for logos, titles, book covers, and branding identity. You can also use it for small text fragments. Legasov is a modern geometric grotesque inspired by the Ukrainian modernism of the last century. It has a dynamic shape of characters and an avant-garde nature.

Inspired by the sans-serifs of the late 19th and early 20th century, Korbin is a legible and versatile text and display face available in five weights. It mixes geometric and humanist traits to achieve a modern, clean, friendly appearance. The italic variations include bespoke characters for a more flowing look.

Display Art Two is a display font inspired by the art nouveau fonts popular at the turn of the 20th century. It is not intended for text use. It was designed specifically for display, headline, logotype, branding, and similar applications. Display Art Two has an uppercase alphabet, numbers, and punctuation.

Display Art Three is a display font inspired by the art nouveau fonts popular at the turn of the 20th century. It is not intended for text use. It was designed specifically for display, headline, logotype, branding, and similar applications. Display Art Three has an uppercase alphabet, numbers, and punctuation.

Rataczak is a stiff, awkward serifed font that was inspired by similar fonts from the 19th century. It is legible as a text font but not graceful. In addition to plain, italic, bold, bolditalic, extrabold, condensed, and condenseditalic styles, there is a striped style and a font of swash capitals.

Type that preserves the over- and under-inked textures of true old-fashioned wood faces, now available without ink on your fingers straight from your keyboard. Based on samples taken from early and mid Nineteenth century Clarendons, the font carefully preserves all the battered idiosyncracies of vintage print shop type.

Ghiberti is a contemporary interpretation of the bold Florentine lettering style used with marble inlaid and bronze cast inscriptions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The font, consisting of caps and small caps, was designed by Paul Shaw and Garrett Boge in 1997. Ghiberti is part of the LetterPerfect Florentine Set.

This is a decorative font containing the letters A-Z, numbers 0-9, and enough punctuation to make invitations, playbills, posters, and the like. It is meant to have the feel of the theatre district early last century. "Roaring 20s" comes in three styles: regular/engraved, hollow/white, and black. Enjoy!

An authentic collection of engineered fonts, constructed in East London. Docklands is a handmade font family inspired by the creation of the London docks in the early 18th century. The rough edged sign written style is evocative of the era when iron works and boatbuilding wharfs lined the River Thames.

A stylish cartoon sans reminiscent of lettering by Harvey Kurtzman on early issues of Mad, or other casual mid-century types. The three widths give full versatility for expressive, customised headlines and layouts, while the lighter weights can be used for text. Conveys an approachable, light touch with style and finesse.

Draughtsman Engraved, inspired by hand drawn 19th century lettering, is an open shadowed display face, with an extensive range of OpenType features, including ligatures, stylistic alternates, petite and small capitals and old style numerals. Draughtsman Engraved is ideal for headings, initial capitals and anywhere a touch of distinction is needed.

What would happen if one took a rather crude, squared-serifed typeface of the type popular in the 19th century and added medieval and calligraphic ornamentation? Maybe the result would be Medieval Gunslinger. The MedievalGunslingerShadOverlay font is spaced so that it can be layered with MedievalGunslingerShadow to produce bicolored lettering.

Acadami is an experiment toward what will hopefully be my masterwork (probably named Hackberry). It's also the font used as I get used to FontLab 5. The serifs are stronger and sharper. It's modified with the feel of my memory of Century Schoolbook (without ever looking at CB for a reference.

Chevalier LP is a revived decorative face with a European lineage. Its patterned and shaded 'fatface' letterforms exhibit the continent's 19th century fascination with elaborate engraving techniques, often used on currency as a deterrent against counterfeiting. It is not without reason that Chevalier conjures up images of bank notes and finance.

Tuskcandy is a decorative Tuscan font in which the prominent split serifs are made of two balls. It is available in two weights and also an inline style. It has a nineteenth century feel to it though it is not a copy of any particular font from that time period.

Poetically Dark is a font created to recall a certain type of dark and romantic writing from another century. Well-groomed letters, but written instinctively, as if in the throes of a creative frenzy. In a clash between the refined taste of the past and the ever-present speed of communication.

Auldroon was inspired by the pseudo-medieval fonts that were fairly popular in the late 19th century. Auldroon comes in two variants. Auldroon-Eld was designed first and is a bit more compact than the regular version. Both are decorative and distinctive and neither was created with a specific use in mind.

Mazette is a modern display typeface with a distinctive elegant look. Inspired by the refined forms of a nineteenth century Didot, Mazette offers the freedom to break contours in the manner that a stencil font would. Its sharp construction logic and great readability make it an ideal display font for publishing or branding.

Encorpada Classic, designed by Eduilson Coan, brings the best features of the Didone genre, but with a 21st century look and feel. With smooth details Encorpada Classic is an elegant choice for your type library. The family has three widths – compressed, condensed & normal, support for more than 40 languages and opentype features.

Figaro is a very condensed slab serif design of the kind associated with nineteenth century advertising. The Figaro font has considerable weight contrast in the strokes, with a marked weight emphasis on the horizontal elements, including the serifs. Use the Figaro font for display and advertising and for 'Wild West' style posters.

LeBeau is a new display typeface designed by Steve Matteson. LeBeau is an all capital letters font, and is based on brush-lettering from the turn of the 20th Century. The Lebeau font has an amusing, art nouveau attitude and can be used for festive posters and fliers, greeting cards or invitations.