Mark van Bronkhorst’s MVB Sacre Bleu was inspired by an example of French handwriting from the 1930s. With a goal to keep the script as authentic as possible, the font includes a number of ligatures to avoid letterform repetition. The year it released, MVB Sacre Bleu was selected as one of Typographica’s Favorite Typefaces, where reviewer Joshua Lurie-Terrell deemed it “stylish, memorable, and decidedly unkitschy.”

Dutch type designer Erik van Blokland created this script FontFont in 1990. The font is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, festive occasions, editorial and publishing as well as poster and billboards. FF Erikrighthand provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, fractions, and super- and subscript characters. It comes with proportional oldstyle and tabular oldstyle figures.

Bugleboy started as a digitized version of "Wood Grotesk," a 1970s film typeface by LetterGraphics. It started with a bare bones character set which we added swash alternates for Capitals, Stylistic Alternates for a Unicase look, and crafted a Sans version without serifs. The Sans style lacks swashes but keeps Stylistic Alternate Unicase forms. See the last graphic for a comprehensive character map preview.

This lettering style is unusual in that combines aspects of several lettering styles. It is essentially a Germanic Blackletter but with many romanized capital letters and also features an italic slant along with some italic lower case traits. It is evocative of “old world” craftsmanship and early 20th century romanticism. The font was developed based on the logo of the Lakin Company of Buffalo, NY circa 1900.

Cuisine originated from a how-to lettering book from the 1950s. It suggests the script style found on food and beverage labels in the early 20th century. This creamy font does for food advertising what Bodoni does for haute couture. Its simmering, hand-scribed charm captures the complexity of wine and the robust energy of coffee. It shines on luxe food packaging or high-end menus

This rather quirky typeface is based on a design by Collette and Dufour, originally called "Independant", for the Maison Plantin foundry of Belgium. Ultramodern (by 1930s standards, at least) and ultrabold, it takes up a lot of real estate, and commands a lot of attention while doing so. Both versions of this font include the complete Unicode Latin 1252 and Central European 1250 character sets.

Magic Spell is a mystical, fun font based on a handlettered alphabet in an old 1930s book on lettering. It captures that old world feel of magical wizards and fairy tales. Conjur up some fantastic designs with this bewitching font! Jukebox fonts are available in OpenType .otf format and all fonts contain basic OpenType features as well as support for Latin-based and most Eastern European languages.

Corpulent is a display font whose forms are extremely thick, up to the extent of being nearly illegible. In the 1980s, these construction principles were explored to their very limit. So if the lyrics of Eyes Without a Face resonate in your mind, the feet turn numb in super-tight trousers, and you fancy a big hair style, this font is the one for you.

Flavium is the reconstruction of the typographic character used in the engravings of the marble street name sign of Rome from about 1970 until the end of the eighties. It is an uniquely uppercase Roman font whose letters are confined within the space between the baseline and the caps line. Its style is severe but elegant, very useful for expressing authority and officialdom with simplicity.

Sky Clipper JNL is a bold, Art Deco sans serif typeface derived from the hand lettered title on a 1940s-era “Big Little Book” entitled “Flying the Sky Clipper with Winsie Atkins”. The design is available in both regular and oblique versions. “Big Little Books” were published by the Whitman Publishing company and featured short stories printed in a tiny sized book format for young children.

Inspired by bold and rounded typefaces on signs from the 1970s, Salsiccia can promote both your hot dog stand and your international toy store enterprise. Its boldness and roundness is combined with classical proportions, with wide letters — like the O — next to little nubby ones — like the T. This not only looks nice, but helps us even out the white spaces across words and sentences.

Many alphabet style examples from the Speedball Textbook on pen lettering have offered amateurs and professionals a source of inspiration since its first publication in 1915. A 1940s edition presented a simple sans serif design rendered with the style ‘B’ round nib pen point, and has been recreated as the digital type face Pen Sans Rounded JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Ad Lib designed by Freeman Craw for the American Type Founders (ATF) in 1961. A bold Grotesque with irregular rectangular counters in round characters. This type was designed by cutting the letter images out and thus has some wood-cut character. Some lower case characters have slight inclination. Initially numerous alternative characters were provided. Unusual shapes make this typeface useful for advertising and display work.

The Legal typeface family grew out a sans serif project that Hellmut G. Bomm began in the 1970s (his HGB Grotesk). This refined, industrial type family is well suited for short amounts of text, headlines, corporate identity and logo design. In small sizes, the typeface works like many other sans serifs, but with better differentiation between characters. The Legal family includes oldstyle figures and true italics.

This playful Art Deco classic was inspired by one of many posters produced by the WPA by anonymous artists during the 1930s. An inline version has been added to spice up the visual interest and add a touch of class. Both versions of the font include complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1524 character sets, with localization for Moldovan, Romanian and Turkish.

A poster circa 1930s-40s designed for the WPA Federal Art Project promoted free band concerts at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York. Its headline (“Free Band Concerts”) was hand lettered in a dual line Art Deco sans serif design. Now recreated digitally, the font takes its name after the poster’s topic. Band Concert JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Here’s a futuristic face with a neo-retro twist, based on the logotype for the 1990s tank-warfare videogame for the Mac, Spectre. Whether you're going back to the future or resurrecting a blast from the past, this face will get you there in style. Both versions of this font include the complete Unicode Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets.

A 1910 collection of piano sheet music called “Presser’s Economy Group” had that name hand lettered in a fancy serif lettering style that could fall somewhere between Art Nouveau and semi-calligraphic. No matter the label you attach to the style, it makes for a wonderful digital type revival. The end result is Piano Music JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

One of countless variations possible from the modular lettering system called "Super Veloz", developed by Spanish type designer Joan Trouchut-Blanchard in the 1930s. The name is a play on the old G.I. acronymn FUBAR, translated politely as "fouled up beyond all recognition". Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 Latin and Unicode 1250 Central European character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

A little ditty from France circa the 1940s called "J'ai Rêvé Dans Tes Bras" (which loosely translated means "I've Dreamed in Your Arms") offered up its title hand lettered in an interesting Art Deco sans. This formed the basis for French Pastry JNL, a tasty typographical tidbit further preserving the wide choice of lettering styles hand-crafted for popular sheet music of past decades.

The Kaktis collection features eleven typefaces that have spikes or spines. Some have short spikes, some long, some sparse spines and others abundant spikes. They are novelty fonts with limited uses, but there can be times when a typeface of this sort may be appropriate, perhaps for a sharp rebuke or a pointed reminder. These faces were constructed in the mid 1990s using a font distortion program.

Developed by Adrian Frutiger for Bauer in 1966, Serifa is a slabserif based on the principles that led to the success of Frutiger’s 1956 sanserif, Univers. Glypha, designed by Frutiger for Stempel in 1979, is a version of Serifa with a moderately larger x-height; Stempel has paid royalties on Glypha to Neufville since 1984. Serifa® font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Gelateria is characterized by its dots and tails. This font is as a whole smooth and elegant. But because its dots and end of the tails are little points, Gelateria impressed you very much. Holiday Type Project offers retro hand drawing scripts. Inspired by retro script on shopfront lettering, wall paint advertisements in Italy around 1950s. Check out the script fonts from Holiday Type!

This bouncy beauty was inspired by Walnetto Casual, designed by Dave West for Photo-Lettering, Inc. in the 1970s, and takes its name from a mythical West Texas beastie. This version has been thoughtfully designed to use Contextual Alternates to avoid unsightly serif collisions for best possible visual effect. Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252 and Central European 1250 character sets.

A 1920 Dutch poster for Public Placement Services by Johan Dijsktra provided the inspiration for this crisp geometric typeface. Instead of the normal underscore (_), this font features a set of parallel lines flush to the tops of the caps and small caps, which offers some intriguing design possibilities. Both versions of this font include the complete Unicode 1252 Latin and Unicode 1250 Central European character sets.

Because of the need for a new condensed serif font family, Jack Yan created this individualistic style of typefaces complete with one of the largest collections of unusual ligatures available at the time of launch in the mid-1990s. As well as the usual selection of double-f and ct, JY&A has provided gr, gt, ty, and other ligatures for JY Integrity Roman and Italic.

Pochoir is a sweet stencil antiqua typeface with round and thick serifs. Once, on a university trip to Paris, Yanone saw some spray-stencil street art. This inspired him to redraw Underware’s Dolly (with permission) in a spray-stencil style, making many adjustments to weight and character shapes to bring about Pochoir. The art form of stencils have first appeared in Paris in the 1980s.

Browsing online auctions and other webs sites often unearths wonderful examples of lettering from the past. A perfect example is Ritz Stencil JNL, modeled after a page from a 1930s-era lettering book. Although this font has similar characteristics to other better-known designs, there are enough unique differences to let it stand on its own as a great example of the Art Deco era.

Slatterine is a retro-futuristic family, inspired by the second streamline era of the 1950s It's ideal for any design work that needs to suggest bygone visions of the future, or to have a retro-space-age effect. Slatterine's horizontally shaded glyphs give a strong sense of motion, whether coupled with the regular form's sharply leaning oblique angle, the perpendicular form, or the reverse leaning 'Lefty'.

Americana is a transitional typeface with very rounded, open characters. It was designed in 1967 by Richard Isbell for American Type Founders. Americana is a wide and open face with short, wedge serifs and a rather large x-height. Typical uses for this typeface are advertisements, short pieces of text, such as greeting cards and leaflets. The Americana font family is also ideal for headlines.

A circa-1940s textbook for the Esterbrook Drawlet Pens (similar to Speedball pens) offered numerous samples of lettering that could be obtained by following the simple directions and using the book as a guide. One example was a classic Art Deco design made with a round nib pen, and it has been redrawn digitally as Lettering Book JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Fire up the incense and break out the love beads! A 1968 poster for a Doors concert by legendary artist Gary Grimshaw provided the inspiration for this wild, far-out and funky romp through the alphabet. Use it liberally to add a little trippy hippie charm to your next project. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Power, speed and modern creature comforts characterized rail travel in the 1930s. To reflect those characteristics, legendary French poster artist A. M. Cassandre employed strong graphic elements and a chiaroscuro letter treatment to the 1939 poster lettering that inspired this font. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 Latin and Unicode 1250 Central European character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

The pattern for this graceful, subtly modulated Art Deco typeface was designed by Willard T. Sniffin for American Type Founders in the 1930s. True to the original design, the Swash Caps version features Sniffin's twelve decorative variants. The Postscript and Truetype versions contain a complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252); in addition, the Opentype version supports Unicode 1250 (Central European) languages as well.

Digital Sans Now combines and completes the many diverse requests and requirements by users of the past years. By now, 36 versions for over 70 Latin and Cyrillic languages have become available, including Small Caps. Digital Sans Now is also available as a webfont and reflects, with its simplified and geometric construction and its consciously maintained poster-like forms as well as with its ornamental character, the spirit of the decorative serif-less headline typefaces of the 1970s. The basic severity of other grotesque typefaces is here repressed by means of targeted rounds. Exactly these formal breaks allow the impression that it could be used in a variety of visual applications. Short texts, headlines and logos of all descriptions are its domain. It is because of this versatility that the typeface has become a desirable stylistic element, especially in such design provinces as technology, games and sports, and that, for many years now, it appears to be timeless. Additional weights designed on the basis of the original, from Thin to Ultra, the Italics, Small Caps and alternative characters allow for differentiated “looks and feels”, and, with deliberate usage, give the “Digital Sans Now” expanded possibilities for expression. The basis for the design of Digital Sans Now is a headline typeface created in 1973 by Marty Goldstein and the Digital Sans family which has been available from Elsner+Flake since the mid-1990s under a license agreement. The four weights designed by Marty Goldstein, Thin, Plain, Heavy and Fat, were originally sold by the American company Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC) under the name of “Sol”. Similarly, the company Fotostar International offered film fonts for 2” phototypesetting machines, these however under the name “Sun”. The first digital adaptation had already been ordered in the mid 1970s in Germany by Walter Brendel for the phototypesetting system Unitype used by the TypeShop Group, in three widths and under the name “Digital Part of the Serial Collection.” Based on the versions by VGC, Thin, Plain, Heavy and Fat, new versions were then created with appropriate stroke and width adaptations for data sets for the fonts Light, Medium and Bold as well as for the corresponding italics

The Face2Face (F2F) series was inspired by the techno sound of the mid-1990s, 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. Branczyk and his fellows would even set in type at 6 points, in order to make it nearly unreadable. It was a pleasure for the kids to read and decrypt these messages! The three fonts in the F2F Czykago family, F2F Czykago Light, F2F Czykago Semi Serif, and F2F Czykago Trans, were all inspired by the Apple system font Chicago. The F2F Czykago family, along with 38 other Face2Face fonts, is included in the TakeType 5 collection from Linotype. Branczyk designed 16 of these himself."

Softrobo Pro is the further development of Softrobo font provided by Koval Type Foundry in 2008. Provided in 3 most popular formats: OpenType PS, TrueType and Type1. Fine-built, straight but not official, with soft corners is suitable for short texts, placards and advertising. It was inspired by the 1970s when people were mad about robots, space and so on. I decided to create a font as if it were a progressive font of the 1970s. This font supports the Latin-based languages: Albanian, Basque, Bielorussian (Latin), Breton, Catalonian, Chamorro, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch (with Flemish), English, Estonian & Setu, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Gaelic (Irish), Galician, German (incl. eszett), Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maori, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Romanian, Saami (Lule & South), Slovak, Slovene, Sorbian Lower, Sorbian Upper, Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, and Turkish. It also supports the Cyrillic-based languages: Belorussian, Bulgarian, Crimian Tatar (Cyrillic), Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian, Also included: ligatures, superior & inferior numbers set.

The award-winning Scala family (1990-1993) is a worldwide bestseller and has established itself as a ‘classic’ among digital fonts. It was one of the first serious digital text fonts to support small caps, ligatures and different set of numbers. In fact Scala and Scala Sans (1990-1993) are two different typefaces sharing a common form principle: the skeletons of both Scala and Scala Sans are identical. Scala’s dark colour and low contrast works to prevent the thin parts from breaking up. The generous length of Scala italic’s serifs gives it a strong rhythm. The bold weight has the same character widths as the normal weight, so changing a text from normal into bold does not affect the set width. Another part of Scala is very popular among its users: Scala Hands, containing more than one hundred decorative hands and pointers, is a free bonus. Scala Jewels is a set of four highly decorative typefaces, based on the bold capitals of Scala.

The Face2Face (F2F) series was inspired by the techno sound of the mid-1990s, personal computers and new font creation software. For years, Alessio Leonardi 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. Leonardi and his fellows would even set in type at 6 points, in order to make it nearly unreadable. It was a pleasure for the kids to read and decrypt these messages! F2F Mekanik Amente appears as if it had once been a normal font whose letters were horribly attacked by a pair of scissors. This font could be a very creative choice for headlines. F2F Mekanik Amente is one of 41 Face2Face fonts included in the Take Type 5 collection from Linotype GmbH. Leonardi designed 11 of these himself."

Spillsbury was inspired by some examples of 1920s signwriting (principally seen on the side of some vintage vans-good thing they were in a photograph and not on the move!). Spillsbury draws inspiration from these sources to provide a unique combination of legibility and flair, which echoes the charm of advertising and publicity material from the halcyon days of the 1920s. A basic range of four display faces os offered - Regular, Plain (not all that plain really!), Shaded and Shadowed. In a new departure for Greater Albion, three pairs of 'Duo' faces are also offered. These are designed to be used in pairs-and only sold on that basis for little more than the cost of a single face-to provide for two-coloured typographic design, enabling the recreation of those evokative two coloured blocked lettering styles that were used to such good effect in the past. Take a trip back to more colourful times today with Spillsbury!