The typography on a 1964 children’s activity book published by Whitman entitled “Build with Stencils” was in a bold, condensed design. The only problem was that the ‘rails’ [the parts that divide a letter into stencil pieces] were too narrow and would disappear at smaller point sizes. Widening the ‘rails’ just a bit greatly improved the appearance of the stencil characters. Play Day Stencil JNL is now available in both regular and oblique versions. In its day, the Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin published dozens of activity books for children, including a number of them with stencils. The company was a division of Western Publishers from the early 1900s through the 1970s, but went through a number of sales and name changes. Currently [as Whitman once again] it is owned by Anderson Press, and is known for its line of coin folders and books on coin collecting.

The talented designer of the well-known Formata typeface, Bernd Möllenstädt was born on February 22, 1943 in Germany. He has lived in Westfalia, Berlin and Munich, Germany, and now permanently resides in Munich. From his earliest years he was interested in typography, first studying as a typesetter (1961-64) and then a student of graphic design (1964-1967). In 1967 Möllenstädt joined the Berthold typefoundry and his career as one of the leading type personalities began. One year after joining Berthold, he became the head of the type design department. For 22 years he worked as the head of that department, under the leadership of Günter Gerhard Lange. Upon Lange’s retirement in 1990, Möllenstädt ascended to the type directorship of Berthold where he was responsible for type design and font mastering. Möllenstädt designed two typeface for the Berthold Exklusiv Collection, Formata (1988) and Signata (1994). Under license from Berthold, Adobe marketed Formata as part of the Adobe Type Library. Formata is now one of the most successful sans serifs in the world, used both in American and European magazines, as well as newsletters in the Far East (Gulf New Kuwait). Formata also was chosen as the corporate typeface of Postbank, Allianz, VW Skoda, Infratest Burke, etc. In addition to his work for Berthold, Möllenstädt has lectured at local Munich schools on typography and graphic design, and designed corporate type identities and diverse logos for major corporations, including Allianz, Commerzbank, Mauser Officer and Hoepfner. Möllenstädt continues his association with Berthold as a designer. He most recently completed small caps and fractions for Formata. He also has substantially contributed to Berthold's Euro symbol program (e.g. adding the Euro symbol design-specific to the most popular families). Möllenstädt currently is working on a new Berthold Exklusiv design.

The Journal Sans typeface was developed in the Type Design Department of SPA of Printing Machinery in Moscow in 1940–1956 by the group of designers under Anatoly Schukin. It was based on Erbar Grotesk by Jacob Erbar and Metro Sans by William A. Dwiggins, the geometric sans-serifs of the 1920s with the pronounced industrial spirit. Journal Sans, Rublenaya (Sans-Serif), and Textbook typefaces were the main Soviet sans-serifs. So no wonder that it was digitized quite early, in the first half of 1990s. Until recently, Journal Sans consisted of three faces and retained all the problems of early digitization, such as inaccurate curves or side-bearings copied straight from metal-type version. The years of 2013 and 2014 made «irregular» geometric sans-serifs trendy, and that fact affected Journal Sans. In the old version curves were corrected and the character set was expanded by Olexa Volochay. In the new release, besides minor improvements, a substantial work has been carried out to make the old typeface work better in digital typography and contemporary design practice. Maria Selezeneva significantly worked over the design of some glyphs, expanded the character set, added some alternatives, completely changed the side-bearings and kerning. Also, the Journal Sans New has several new faces, such as true italic (the older font had slanted version for the italic), an Inline face based on the Bold, and the Display face with proportions close to the original Erbar Grotesk. The new version of Journal Sans, while keeping all peculiarities and the industrial spirit of 1920s-1950s, is indeed fully adapted to the modern digital reality. It can be useful either for bringing historical spirit into design or for modern and trendy typography, both in print and on screen. Designed by Maria Selezeneva with the participation of Alexandra Korolkova. Released by ParaType in 2014.

The Face2Face (F2F) series was inspired by the sound of 1990s music, personal computers, and new font creation software. For years, Alexander Branczyk and his friends formed a unique type design collective, which churned out a substantial amount of fresh, new fonts, none of which complied with the traditional rules of typography. Many of these typefaces were used to create layouts for the leading German techno magazine of the 1990s, Frontpage. The typeface F2F OCRAlexczyk is one of the Face2Face fonts in Linotype's Take Type Library. It is based on the popular computer font OCR A, which was developed by the American National Standards Institute in 1966 as a system of letters that both humans and machines could easily read. Alexander Branczyk made a more 1990s/techno version, which later became this font.

POWERPLAY a monospace lowercase alphabet with a 3D twist. Designed by André Toet in 1976 (during his study at Central School of Art & Design, London, UK) and he redesigned this in 2011. The name Powerplay is based on the Battersea Power Station, London. The remarkable architecture of the building is also used as a decor for films and for one of the covers by Pink Floyd (Animals, the flying pig). Concept/Art Direction/ Design: André Toet © 2017

Honest draws inspiration from the serif fonts prevalent in print media during the 1970s and 1980s. Its letter shapes are well-suited for prominent uses like logos and striking headlines due to their distinctive style. The font's large x-height makes it suitable for tight leading in headlines. Honest offers a variety of options, including seven different weights and two styles: Standard and Italic.

Roadstar is a script designed in the style of the classic American advertising font from the 1940's-1950's. Roadstar is a retro brush-style script designed for logotype, packaging, posters, T-shirts, signage & design projects with a retro & vintage feel. Roadstar comes with two styles that both contain all upper and lower case characters, punctuation, numerals and mathematical operators, as well as all accented characters.

From alphabets created for book illustrations in the 1970s to lettering created for a book jacket in the 1990s, the Mentor family of typefaces has developed along its own slow and circuitous path. Always present in its evolution, though, has been the influence of three 20th century design giants: Eric Gill, Reynolds Stone, and Hermann Zapf, as filtered through the meticulous sensibility of Michael Harvey.

Although less prevalent today, a cover charge was added to better class night clubs of the 1930s and 1940s to discourage patronage by people of questionable social graces. The general idea was that the lower strata of society (meaning the "average Joe" or "hoi polloi") would balk at paying an extra fee just for entrance to a place of good entertainment and fine dining.

For decades, spot illustrations - whether by hot type, photoengraving, clip art or (in later years) digital means provided decorative and often lighthearted breaks in reading printed copy. This collection of twenty-six cartoon images has been meticulously re-drawn in digital format from 1920s-1930s era source material. By adding a simple caption underneath a design, your ad copy can be enhanced with these wonderful period pieces.

Mayak is a geometric sans serif inspired by the Soviet constructivist fonts of the 1920s-1930s. It contains traditional upper and lower case characters as well as small caps and a great number of stylistic alternates. The font comes in 12 styles: 4 weights in 3 widths. Mayak was designed by Yana Nosenko with contributions from Dmitry Kirsanov and released by ParaType in 2017.

Balcony Seats JNL is a different take on Jeff Levine's Aisle Seats JNL. The original font was modeled from Redikut die-cut cardboard letters - used in the 1940's and 1950's for display and show card work). Although the basic letter shapes are similar, the horizontal stroke weights have been narrowed, providing a type variation with a classic Art Deco "thick and thin" look.

This typeface is inspired from the old display fonts that used to decorate the world around us, but just because we don't see such beautiful signage these days, doesn't mean we should lose the great typefaces used. Foreman is a condensed serif display typeface, with hard geometric lines inspired from fonts used in the 1930s and 1940s, and very much used by the American Art Deco movement.

Neue Rinjani is a all-caps sans serif with Wide Stretch contemporary typographic, vintage futuristic art-deco touch Streamline influence of the 1930s and 1940s. A mix from the old Euro-American signage/advertising letters and modern clean sans serif, carefully mousecrafted to bring you the genuine feel of the era. If you're into classic/vintage letter designs, then this typeface suits best for you.

The hand lettering found on a small catalog sheet for decorative decals from the 1930s-1940s era was the perfect source material for Crestview Six JNL. Handmade typefaces or signage from past decades offer a wonderfully humanistic change from the perfectly-crafted designs of printer's type (or digital type in the modern era). The font's name comes from the old alpha-numerical phone exchanges of the past.

This big family summarizes and develops the tradition of boldface squared-off 45° shear sanserifs. Known from the middle of 19th century and actively used in different times (1920s, 1970s) is still usable now, thanks to its brutal expression, monumentality and possibility to fully maximize the flatness without loss of readability. This font is especially good for filling letters with photos or to create geometrical “constructivist” compositions.

Originally presented as an alphabet suitable for movie title cards, this font is based on a 1920 work by showcard artist E. C. Matthews, and named after the eponymous 1940s radio show about a local saloon and its never-present owner. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

Liturgisch was created by Otto Hupp for Klingspor foundry in 1906. The basis of this font is a publication in the magazine "Das Plakat" of October 1921. The font contains contextual alternates, ligatures, discretional ligatures for use in German, ornamental bullets and other OpenType features. It supports all the European languages using Latin alphabets (including slashed S and slashed longs used in Latvian old orthography till 1930s).

Karaoke JNL is one of the many alphabets created by the late Alf R. Becker that was showcased in Signs of the Times magazine from the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media (and who is the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio) for providing Jeff Levine the research material from which this font design was modeled.

General Chang JNL is one of a number of fonts redrawn by Jeff Levine from the creative output of the late Alf R. Becker. Becker's alphabets were a monthly feature of Signs of the Times Magazine from the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media (who also is the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio) for the resource material.

Picadilly family was made after my short visit in London and huge impression of Edward Johnston works. I've designed family of 20 modern typefaces with strong personality.

Originally developed as a logotype proposal for the Metropolitan Hotel in Park Lane, London. Available in upper case only, Metropolitan is a pure, streamlined, contemporary display typeface.

Broad pen script typeface based on late 1960s Turkish signage.

Broad pen script typeface based on late 1960s Turkish signage.

The Times Europa Office family is designed after the model of the original serif family produced by Walter Tracy and the Linotype Design Studio in 1974. A redesign of the classic Times New Roman typeface, Times Europa was created as its replacement for The Times of London newspaper. In contrast to Times New Roman, Times Europa has sturdier characters and more open counter spaces, which help maintain readability in rougher printing conditions. Times Europa drastically improved on the legibility of the bold and italic styles of Times New Roman. Overall, text set in Times Europa is easier to read, and quicker to digest. Akira Kobayashi, Linotype’s Type Director, brought Times Europa up to speed for the new millennium in 2006. Now optimized for office communication instead of newspaper design, Times Europa Office offers a familiar yet refreshingly new appearance for serif text. Because of The Times of London’s specific printing conditions in the early 1970s, Times Europa originally had some intentional errors built into its letterform design. These inconsistencies created an even image in newspaper text in the long run. However, these design elements bear no role on modern office communication and its needs. Kobayashi redrew these problem forms, eliminating them completely. Now Times Europa’s font weights appear clearer and easier to read than ever before.

An image of an antique metal marking stencil [circa late 1890s or early 1900s] reading “Folck’s Roller Mills #196 New Surprise manufactured by Wolfe Brothers, Cumberland, MD” had the words “New Surprise” rendered in a Western/Victorian typeface. Those letters served as the model for Old Trail JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Brick Lane is an picture font consisting of 52 detailed, hand drawn illustrations of people seen on Brick Lane, a street in the heart of the Bangladeshi community in the East End of London. It has over the last few years become the home of parts of the creative industries in London, mainly media, fashion and graphics. All illustrations are based on photographs taken on location over a period of time. The photographs are then hand traced to create high quality, detailed silhouettes.

The 1960’s and 1970’s are the inspiration for Sugarbang! Everything from music packages, beach party movies of the 60’s to cereal box art of the 1970’s are reflected in the kooky style that this font evokes. Sugarbang! is built on a random baseline so letterforms bounce up and down adding to the “zany” look of the design. Look to the second font, Koo Koo Puff, to be the next release in the Cerealboxx collection. Available now. It is a minimal font set which includes uppercase and lowercase letterforms. Suggested uses for the font would be above 42 points in size. Please note its normal tight spacing and that cap “T” and cap “L” have been specially kerned to account for the overhang of certain other letterforms. Sugarbang! - just add milk and it’s sugar frosted font goodness.

For many decades, the fashion magazine “Vogue” featured superbly illustrated covers before photography became more commonplace. During the 1930s and 1940s those illustrations were accompanied by many creative styles of hand lettering for its monthly issues. The January, 1930 cover had the magazine’s name lettered in an Art Deco geometric monoline, which became the inspiration for Vagary JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. A vagary [in a simple sense] is when something or someone changes in an erratic or unexpected way (as the wind’s direction or in a person’s mood or whim)… and thus seemed the fitting name for this type style.

History, as it's said, tends to repeat itself. The round-point pen lettering used in the 1920s logo and ads for Dodge Brothers cars (pre-General Motors) is an early predecessor to the techno type styles of the 1980s. Square in shape, with unique stylization to some letters, Jalopy JNL can cross the decades and be used for a 1920s period piece and still look fresh in an ad for computer parts. Rather than round out the inside lines of the characters to fully emulate the strokes of a lettering pen, the inside lines have straight intersections for the contemporary side of this font's design.

The successful Gill Sans® was designed by the English artist and type designer Eric Gill and issued by Monotype in 1928 to 1930. The roots of Gill Sans can be traced to the typeface that Gill's teacher, Edward Johnston, designed for the signage of the London Underground Railway in 1918. Gill´s alphabet is more classical in proportion and contains what have become known as his signature flared capital R and eyeglass lowercase g. Gill Sans is a humanist sans serif with some geometric touches in its structures. It also has a distinctly British feel. Legible and modern though sometimes cheerfully idiosyncratic, the lighter weights work for text, and the bolder weights make for compelling display typography.

McKnight Kauffer is a casual sans derived from poster and book cover lettering by the American designer, Edward McKnight Kauffer, who mainly worked in England through the 1920s and 1930s. The style owes much to Louis Oppenheim's Fanfare of 1927, but without the Germanic blackletter inflection. The two display fonts, regular and outline, have a playful art deco feel, and share spacing and kerning so can be overlapped for bicolor effects.

Three Day Pass JNL is another addition to the large collection of stencil fonts from Jeff Levine. This design was based on a 1980s clone of a popular lettering guide first sold in the 1950s. To the untrained eye, many of the stencil designs look the same - but there are subtle nuances in the shapes of the letters and numbers that makes each font unique and slightly different.

A nostalgic font referencing the 1920s and 1930s during the Golden Age of Hollywood, art moderne and the rise of luxury items. Highly geometric with wild variations in glyph widths that demand attention. Smart Deco is a display font with clean simple lines, tall ascenders and expressive Capitals that descend below the baseline. The intention is to create a sleek elegance that symbolizes the sophistication of a bygone era.

Inspired by a retro Art Deco poster as well as many of the true classic Art Deco type designs of the 1930s and 1940s, Deco Revisited JNL is a bold, black, stencil-influenced design with no counters. Although being a contemporary design, its use in any retro project will truly evoke a feeling for the “streamline” era. Deco Revisited JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The Federal Art Project of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) employed artists to create posters for various subjects including health, tourism, safety, patriotism, theater and the arts during the Great Depression years of the 1930s on through the early 1940s. One health-related poster had the word “against” in a thin Art Deco monoline which served as the basis for Wellness JNL, which is available in regular and oblique versions.