Here’s a collection of border elements taken from the pages of nineteenth and early twentieth century type specimen books of various American foundries. Download the PDF provided for each font for simple guides to constructing various borders. All characters have identical widths, so use spaces between left and right-side elements. For best results, set solid (no extra leading) and use flush left, flush right or center justification to assure proper alignment.

Centennial appeared in 1986 in honor of Linotype’s 100th birthday. The roman and light cuts of the font are reminiscent of the Century typeface, particularly on that of Linn B. Benton and Morris F. Benton, designed around the turn of the 19th century for the American Type Founders. Like Century, Centennial too embodies a cool, reserved neutrality.

Freda Sack and Colin Brignall collaborated to produce the Victorian typeface. Their work was inspired by late 19th century display letterforms, and they sought to create a new ornate font in the same style. Victorian superbly reflects the refinement of the late 19th Century. Victorian Inline Shaded was designed by Nick Belshaw. He was inspired by late 19th century display letterforms, and sought to create a new ornate font in the same style. Victorian Inline Shaded superbly reflects the refinement of the late 19th Century.

Wilton's "Benjamin-Regular" is a delightful twist on a classic - reminiscent of Franklin Gothic, Helvetica and Frutiger with it's own contemporary twist.

An unconventional Gothic typeface with decorative caps and a whiff of fire and brimstone! Comes with a devilish compliment of European characters.

Modesta Sans is a Neo Grotesque sans serif typefamily of seven weights plus matching italics. Inspired by Didone serif fonts and the first Sans serif types from the late 19th century and early 20th century, It reduces many of the eccentricities in order to make them more suitable to modern tastes. Every weight has more than 220 characters and includes uppercase, lowercase, numbers, special characters and a powerful opentype features. Perfectly suited for graphic design, headlines, advertisements, and any display use. It could easily work for editorial design, corporate, web, signage and many other uses in print and digital media.

Sheet music for the song “The Little Thing You Used to Do” (from the 1935 motion picture “Go into your Dance” starring Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler) had its title set in what closely resembled Bank Gothic Condensed. [Bank Gothic was originally designed by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders circa 1930.] This reinterpreted version is now known as Stenographer JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

New York to London via Europe The hardworking FS Koopman is a crossbred workhorse which draws inspiration from Swiss and Germanic grotesks, American gothics and early British grotesques, but refuses to fit neatly into any of these categories. Its neither one nor the other, but all of the above. Fontsmith designers Andy Lethbridge and Stuart de Rozario decided to take the characteristics they admired from each category and distill them down into one functional family. Neo meets Neue FS Koopman aims to swim against the tide of Helvetica-ish derivatives by bringing some personality and soul to a genre that all too often ends up feeling bland and sterile. FS Koopman subtly embraces the quirkiness and charm often seen in early twentieth century designs but pairs this with the functionality of later pioneers of the genre. It’s a grotesque isn’t it? The term grotesque surfaced around the early 1800s and refers to the early sans serif designs that many initially believed were strange or ‘grotesque’ due to their lack of elegant serifs. Later variations became known as neo-grotesques and this moniker stuck around even after they gained mass popularity. Some American variants became known as gothics. FS Koopman takes cues from all three categories and blends them into one cohesive design.

Arrowman is a strong and bold decorative font with a Gothic feel. It will surely turn any design project into an eye catcher.

An elegantly refined typeface with a subtle wedge serif, the character shapes of Acolyte STF set a rhythm of light and dark like windows in a cathedral. Standing tall (as in condensed!) and respectful, Acolyte STF is aptly named as a companion to any design, packaging and advertising. Acolyte will illuminate your designs with a display typeface reminiscent of European 20th century letterforms. Its distinctive letterforms are slightly chiseled and angular with curves in just the right places. Wrapped in an aura of mystery, Acolyte's origins are from condensed typefaces, with an understated gothic feel. Available for Macintosh and Windows, Acolyte will set an edgy tone for all of your design needs. Complete with an Adobe-standard character set, this font also includes the Euro and is cross-platform compatible.

Bougainville was inspired by many of my favorites and has been on the drawing board in excess of ten years. Only this year I decided to expand the original 1994 design to include other weight variants. The quirky Binner Gothic-inspired high axis and its funky g, rounded e, angled stroke endings together with the influence of contemporary designs such as Officina Sans, Din Mittelschrift and MetaPlus, Bougainville exhibits a similar flavor and compactness to Bodega Sans. This typeface family has been named in honor of the renowned eighteen-century French mathematician and explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville to whom we owe the naming of South Sea Islands and colorful tropical flora he discovered along his journey. Bougainville makes for effective headings at any size and is equally readable at semi-display sizes.

Lagermont is inspired by console games, labels and print media from the 19th century. With a strong and bold serif font style comes with an elegant, where every curve is made very gracefully and gently. It will be a perfect choice for graphic design, clothing, books, logos and many other visual displays

Cruz Quaste is a calligraphic medieval type, drawn by Måns Grebäck between 2018-2020. While traditional in character it is yet original, and could be described as a reinvented Gothic style. Its blackletter style it works great in historical contexts, or to give projects a tough feeling. Cruz Quaste contains OpenType features such as alternates and ligatures. The font is multilingual and supports all Latin-based European languages. It contains numbers, punctuation and all symbols you'll ever need.

Condensed Gothic. Great for tight-fitting headlines and other condensed titling situations such as headlines, ads, invitations, captions, packaging, bulletins, posters, and greeting cards.

handloween was inspired from gothic, scary, protest, and horror nuance. Features: Uppercase, Lowercase Punctuation & Number, Support in Mac and Windows OS Multilingual Support ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝ

Condensed Gothic. Great for tight-fitting headlines and other condensed titling situations such as headlines, ads, invitations, captions, packaging, bulletins, posters, and greeting cards.

Condensed Gothic, great for tight-fitting headlines and other condensed titling situations. Applications include Headlines, ads, invitations, captions, packaging, bulletins, posters, and greeting cards.

Condensed Gothic. Great for tight-fitting headlines and other condensed titling situations such as headlines, ads, invitations, captions, packaging, bulletins, posters, and greeting cards.

Condensed Gothic, great for tight-fitting headlines and other condensed titling situations. Applications include Headlines, ads, invitations, captions, packaging, bulletins, posters, and greeting cards.

Quarion is a clean, neo-humanist sans with a contemporary geometric approach. Its design started as an exploration of geometric fonts from the early 20th century, like Futura, Neuzeit Grotesk or Recta which allows the typeface to generate an inviting but sophisticated feel on the page. Although, less contrasting, geometric designs have been quite popular around type designers until today, Quarion finds its niche by combining circular elements with a medium stroke contrast, resulting in a versatile and robust workhorse for any analog or digital application.

Joane Pro is a new typeface based on Joane (2018). This project has its roots in French typography from the 16th century, Dutch models from the 17th century, and English typography from the 18th century. The result is a high-contrast typeface with sharp features which provides an organic texture. Joane Pro is a contemporary typeface with 79 styles that work in display and small sizes.

Every design project needs fonts, and the WUSHIN Blackletter font is ideal for any that calls for a gothic touch. A great place to look for fonts for your most recent logo, label, badge, music video, or film is the WUSHIN Blackletter font! This font is ideal for any project that requires a bit of gothic flair. Its various lovely and harmonious shapes let you select the perfect word for your project.

Moderna Sans, a modern sans-serif inspired by the American culture, is a clean and contemporary interpretation of American Gothic typefaces like "Alternate Gothic". Moderna Sans comes in 5 weights, with matching italics, and 3 widths—condensed, standard and extended. The font's character set supports over 200 Latin-based languages. Moderna Sans is an excellent choice for branding and corporate design and a versatile 3-width workhorse suitable for newspaper or magazine headlines and subheadings.

Subyep is a unique bitmap font with subtle serif and has almost a neoromantic/gothic look. The best size to use it is 17 pt.

Franklin Stencil JNL is based on the classic and perennial workhorse design of Franklin Gothic Condensed and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Kansas Casual offers a more upright, gothic, and modern alternative to the conventional sign painter's one stroke. Kansas provides a completely unique take on a overdone classic with proportions and crossbar heights inspired by the more friendly Chicago style. This all-caps set provides six weights so that you can adjust size with weight to maintain that authentic single brush weighted look. The proofing process included projecting, tracing, and then painting the letters out to see how true the small details were to the medium. The set also includes wide language support, opentype fractions, and arrows. You can learn more about its development here.

Benton Modern was first prepared as a text face by Font Bureau for the Boston Globe and the Detroit Free Press. Design and proportions were taken from Morris Fuller Benton’s turn-of-the-century Century Expanded, drawn for ATF, faithfully reviving this epoch-making magazine and news text roman. The italic was based on Century Schoolbook. These display cuttings were prepared by Dyana Weissman and Richard Lipton; FB 2008

Introducing mid-century modern font family – Halau Serif. Classic mid-century serif with characteristic cartoon look. Straight for your summer projects. More fun, more sun and more retro-modern! Play with it and get really cool retro-lettering style. Also, you can use some alternates (A, E, K, R, Y, a, g, l, k). Also, you get Mid-Century Modern style graphic objects set as letters and numerals alternates (36 Total).

A single-stoked gothic font with UltraLight, Light, DemiBold, Bold and Extra Bold weights. Usage recommendations: Captions, packaging, cards, posters, ads, book jackets, manuals, menus, fashions.

Spiegel Sans combines the shapes and proportions of an American-style gothic – the ultimate industrial typeface – with subtle diagonal stress and almost imperceptible traces of handwriting.

The Kennedy family is a completely original design, inspired by lettering discovered by George during his exploration of 16th century cartography, some years ago. The charm exhibited by these beautiful artifacts is as much reflected in the letterforms they employ as in the drawing style or content they present. After familiarizing himself with the offerings of the various printing centers of that period, George began work on a design which he called Marconova. This design continued to evolve until it began to take on the look of Dutch Oldstyle typefaces of a later period. At this point George re-christened his work-in-progress Kennedy, and added the Book, Book Italic and Small Cap companion typefaces. Only a small trace of its design ancestry is evident in the resulting typeface family. There is enough, however, to make them a unique entry in the collection of distinguished contemporary designs.

Volcano is titling family of four is broken down into a gothic and island style. The island style features a "toothed" look that gives it a very unique look that can be used for a variation of project styles: Jungle, Island, Cruise, Vacation, Tiki, Retro, and Comicbook. The gothic style features a more industrial look and was inspired by gaspipe lettering styles. Each style features a different inline font file that can be layered over to produce striking headlines.