No prizes for guessing this font family was inspired by the 1950s - the sounds (Buddy, Eddie, Elvis), the styles (polka dots, petticoats and Dior's New Look), and the kitsch, from furry dice above the dashboard to plaster ducks over the mantlepiece! A particular point of reference is the furnishings and fabrics of the Fifties (with their distinctive kidney shapes and angular curves) as showcased in the Festival of Britain 1951. See also my other fun fonts Barrowboy, Calypso and Pier Arcade.

Steve Jackaman. In the early 1980's, Steve worked at Typographic House in Boston, Massachusetts. At the time, 'Typo' House, as it was affectionately known, was the largest type house in New England. This font was designed and produced during his tenure. The design was so popular that it became available commercially through VGC, and was known as TH Alphabet Soup. Completely redrawn and remastered, Alphabet Soup Pro contains all the high-end features expected in a quality OpenType Pro font.

Dean Martin starred in four movies as Matt Helm, the titular character in a series of spy novels by Donald Hamilton. Martin’s version of the government counter-agent followed his TV persona – a fun-loving ladies man who (in this case) just happened to be a spy. The movie poster for 1966’s “The Silencers” has its title hand lettered in an extra bold sans serif stencil style. This is now available as Spy Stencil JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Bannertype is – at least for my feeling – the most German of all fonts. It was used heavily mostly in newsprint and advertising in the early 1900s. I designed a dirty version of the narrow font in 4 stages of dirtiness, plus one free shadow font. Since the font has too many points I cannot generate a OTF-version, I am over the limit for that. But I have tried this TrueType version and it works like a jiffy in MacOS 10.8.2!

The Luxx font was born in 2010 and in the 2013 has been redesigned. Luxx is based on a style of lettering often seen on Italian art deco posters and advertising of the 1930s. This font is very modern, and is inspired by the “velocitá-speed” of this artistic period. TheLuxx is perfect for when you want to use eye-catching big texts for anything from posters and retro-advertisements, and art, but it´s especially striking for printed projects.

This series of faces was designed initially by Morris Fuller Benton, circa 1900. The design is a refinement of Taylor Gothic from 1897. It features a sans serif thick and thin design with angular stems. Pre-dating art deco, this design feels quaint, yet it still has a touch of modernism. Frederic Goudy designed a bold version of Globe Gothic in 1905 for ATF. The Bold and Bold Italic digital versions have been added to the LTC library in early 2007.

HGB Memento was designed to replace 12 bronze plaques with the names of those who died in World War I. The 12 plaques were stolen in 2016. Stone tablets were made on which the original writing was engraved using sandblasting. Memento is therefore suitable for commemorative plaques and for texts of a sacred nature. Extremely short ascenders and descenders allow very narrow lines. The design language of the Memento comes from the 1920s with echoes of Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

Open, outline or inline faces became very popular in the 1940's. By removing the usual weight, a clear-cut letterform is achieved. In Caslon Open Face, the right-hand strokes are accentuated, providing a slightly three-dimensional effect. The ascenders of Caslon Open Face are large and the overall design of this version does not relate to Caslon 3 Roman. This Caslon Open Face font is good for personal stationery, or sentences where a decorative but distinguished result is sought.

Morris Fuller Benton's Hobo [designed in 1910] is one of a number of fonts which have been so over-used that many designers shy away from it altogether. However, Jeff Levine had often wondered what the design might look like it given a serif treatment. The result is Rail Bum JNL, named for the hobos and transients who hitched along on freight cars to ride the rails across the country during the years when trains were the mainstay of American transportation.

Never let it be said that a good pun and a good font name can't work well together. The vintage sheet music for a 1920s-era song called "King Tut" (not to be confused with the novelty tune by comedian Steve Martin) presented an oddly-interesting block font which is now available in digital form as Type Uncommon JNL. The pun derives from the font's name of "Type Uncommon", which is similar in sound to King Tut's full name (which is Tutankhaten).

The first Century typeface was cut in 1894 by Linn Boyd Benton in conjunction with T L DeVinne for the Century Magazine. It was a blacker, more readable face than the type previously used. Morris Fuller Benton designed the Century Expanded version in 1900 for American Type Founders to meet the Typographical Union Standard of the day. The 'expansion' was in the vertical plane. Century Expanded is a useful font family for text setting in magazines, books, presentations and newsletters.

Popular music of the early 1900s included a genre called two step; round dances utilizing a sliding step with a tempo in either march or polka time. 1911's "Daughters of the American Revolution" was one such march/two step. The cover of the sheet music had the title hand lettered in a slightly rounded sans serif type design in the Art Nouveau style popular during that era. It is now available as Two Step Nouveau JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Die Brücke was a group of German expressionists which formed in Dresden in 1905. Members of the group include Erich Heckel, Fritz Bleyl, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Much of the group's work was influenced by primitivism and medieval woodblock printing. Die Bruecke font was based on a printed invitation for an art exhibition from 1906. Although the font is all caps, upper and lower case glyphs differ and can be interchanged. Of course Die Bruecke comes with extensive language support.

Meninas are the new comprehensive collection of innovative craft alphabets and ornaments researched in rare cross-stitch booklets from 1850 to 1930. This alphabet and ornaments series was entirely designed by hand, without use of auto-tracing, by Iza W, from Intellecta Design. Keep your eyes wide-open, because we will launch more amazing alphabets in this collection. “Menina” means “Girl” in Portuguese. Menina Graciosa is a Graceful Girl. See too her sister fonts: Menina Formosa , Menina Carinhosa , Menina Poderosa Ornaments , Menina Espinhosa .

Designed by Les Usherwood. Digitally engineered by Steve Jackaman. Originally designed by Frederick Goudy for the original Life magazine, circa 1908. Because of delays in production, the face was never used by the magazine. However, Gimbel Brothers, the famous New York department store, opened in 1910, around the time of the release of the typeface, which was used almost exclusively for its advertising and was often known as Goudy Gimbel, but the typeface was better known by the Monotype series number Goudy 38.

Meninas are the new comprehensive collection of innovative craft alphabets researched in rare cross-stitch booklets from 1850 to 1930. This alphabet series was entirely designed by hand, without use of auto-tracing, by Iza W, from Intellecta Design. Keep your eyes wide-open, because we will launch more amazing alphabets in this collection. "Menina" means "Girl" in Portuguese. Menina Formosa is a Beautiful Girl. See too her sister fonts: Menina Carinhosa, Menina Poderosa Ornaments, Menina Espinhosa, Menina Graciosa Ornaments.

Linotype Matthia is part of the Take Type Library, which features the winners of Linotype’s International Digital Type Design Contest from 1994 to 1997. Dieter Kurz designed Matthia as a slender, flowing brush font. Its characters are in a handwritten style yet stand almost straight, making Matthia a mixture of reserved and lively, of static and dynamic. The font is reminiscent of advertisement typefaces popular in the 1950s and extremely versatile, suitable for short texts in small point size or headlines on posters.

This humanistic sans serif design was inspired by a conversation that David Quay had with renowned type designer Hans Meyer, during ATypI in Paris, 1989. Meyer revealed that Sabon, designed by Jan Tschichold, was the inspiration behind his Syntax font. This approach formed the basis for the design development of The Foundry's very first sans serif typeface family; the inspiration for Foundry Sans comes from Stempel Garamond. Foundry Sans was the second typeface to be released for The Foundry typeface library in 1990.

The capitals of Register share a similar construction to Morris Fuller Benton’s 1930 Bank Gothic for American Type Founders, but iron out the broader curves and add ‘ink traps’ to emphasise the machine aesthetic. Register also provides the lower case missing from Bank Gothic. Available in two main widths, each in five weights plus reweighted italics with cursively-derived letterforms, plus a bold condensed, Register has been used for the Sochi Winter Olympics, Source magazine and releases from Transient Records.

Franken Jr. Pro was inspired by the title screen from the 1966 Hanna Barbera cartoon titled, "Frankenstein Jr." The original titling had a unique presence to it, overflowing with charm and offbeat personality. The addition of a Small Caps set, Unlimited Fractionals, Superiors & Inferiors, and Ordinals gave the a bit more serious, but not too serious) titling stance to the Franken Jr. Pro typestyle. Franken Jr. Pro truly embodies the comic lettering of its time, and gives designs a lively retro spark.

PiS Wanderlust is inspired by specimens from the book „Die Schriften des Malers“ from 1950 and by vintage hand painted signposts and guides found on hikes in the outskirts of Vienna and rural Austria, hence the name Wanderlust! Although classic, constructed modernist it features some charmingly unfashionable quirks and is available in rounded for a smooth and warm feel. Lace up those hiking boots, don't forget to pack some Landjäger and cool drinks and enjoy the view from above the treeline!

Our Purple Purse Pro draws its inspiration from a vintage Ivory Soap ad from the 1950’s. Somewhat of a cross between Bodoni and Pixie, this font finds that it never truly takes itself seriously. The fun little bounce within the typeface gives it a perky personality. Opentype features include: - SmallCaps. - Full set of Inferiors and Superiors for limitless fractions. - Tabular, Proportional, and Oldstyle figure sets (along with SmallCaps versions of the figures). - Stylistic Alternates for Caps to SmallCaps conversion.

The script equivalent of the cool, header font. This font is essentially embedded, by its styling, in the 20th century. Inspired by fragments of some pre-20th century script fonts, I modernized it and added lower case characters. The result captures the cool elegance of the 1920s & 30s, yet also embodies the free optimism of the 60s. Aqua Casual is a fully professional font, carefully letterspaced and kerned. All upper and lower case characters, punctuation, numerals and accented characters are present.

The 1930s-era French alphabet collection entitled “La Lettre Dans le Decor & La Publicite Modernes” (which somewhat translates to “The Letter in Modern Decor and Advertising”) has page after page of attractive and unusual type interpretations. One particular Art Deco design puts an entirely different spin on the classic “rounded terminals and geometric design”. Unusual character shapes add a fresh new/old take to the “Streamline Movement”. The aptly-named Deco Francois JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Toward the end of the 1920s, Art Deco influences were starting to creep into modern design. The hand lettered title on the cover of the1928 sheet music for “Fascinatin’ Vamp” not only embraced the new Deco movement, but sent it on a wild typographic ride. Letters of mixed thicknesses and stylings made up the two word title, and this unusual group of letter shapes became the inspiration for Free Form Deco JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Edits and Credits JNL is a cheerful sans serif typeface modeled from ceramic letters in a movie titling set from the late 40s or early 1950s. In the original kit, letters would be lined up accordingly against a contrasting background and photographed for home or professional movie and slide titles. Note: The cap height is slightly smaller than normal for the respective point size. This will give the effect of wider line spacing - similar to that of home movie titles.

Occasionally a type design is started - then set aside for whatever reason - before eventually being completed. More often than not, the original source material is forgotten, so proper attribution cannot be made. Such is the case for a hand lettered Art Nouveau alphabet likely found within the pages of an early Speedball lettering book from around the 1920s. This playful and casual design is now digitally reproduced as Nouveau Signage JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Vladimir Script is a brush-style font, similar to the kind of lettering found on old hand-painted department store signs during the 1950s. The letters have a steep slant, and the uppercase letters and the numbers are rather informal. Many of the letters' strokes end in looped terminals, some with dynamic amounts of contrast. Vladimir Script is best used in larger point sizes, where its subtle details can dance across the page. The typeface looks fabulous on signs and cards.

Ano Angular was originally designed for a fashion company. It was to be used as a headline type, half way between the logo we had designed — made up of straight lines only — and our circle-based Ano typeface, which was to be used for text. Its design is based on the idea of mixing circles with triangles into letter shapes in a modular, constructed way. The effect is digital, mathematical, remeniscent of the typography of 1980s arcade games such as Asteroids.

The typeface was designed at the Polygraphmash type design bureau in 1940-56 (project headed by Anatoly Shchukin) based on Erbar-Grotesk typeface of Ludwig & Mayer company, 1929 by Jakob Erbar, and on Metro typeface of Mergenthaler Linotype, 1929 by William A. Dwiggins. A sans serif of geometric style. For use for text and display typography. In 2014 designer Olexa Volochay made some corrections in original digital data and extended character set. The family was rereleased in ParaType in 2014.

Palatino is the work of Hermann Zapf and became available in the late 1950s from D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt am Main. Zapf optimized Palatino’s design for legibility, producing a typeface which remained legible even on the inferior paper of the post World War II period. Zapf named the font after Giambattista Palatino, a master of scripts from the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Palatino is an Old Face font which proves that classic forms can still be used to create new typefaces.

What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Nothing really. Love and Peace is an Art Nouveau style typeface inspired by Eckmann-Schrift by Otto Eckmann in 1900. Love and Peace is filled with ethereal elegance and it's great for posters, magazines and psychedelic LP covers. Love and Peace is equipped with few Contextual Alternates and Standard Ligatures to prevent characters from colliding. In addition it has Stylistic Alternates for lowercase a, k, r and s, and Swash Alternates for ampersand and dollar sign.

Estimo is an unusual, yet elegant type family of three styles in five weights. Originally developed as upper-case-only family, Estimo was inspired by the works of Bulgarian type and graphic designers in 1980’s. It is characterized by its lack of diagonal strokes (wherever possible), thus experimenting with letterforms without losing legibility. This unique typeface is suitable for all kinds of creative and editorial works, creating impact for headlines of all sizes, as well as readability for text blocks.

Pelle Piano is the stage name for Per Ellstrom, a musician in Stockholm with an interest in irregular and informal lettering. ITC Coolman was inspired by lettering styles of the 1950s. “I have a passion for old '50s type lettering,” says Piano, “as seen on posters from B-movies and pocketbooks and cartoons.” Although ITC Coolman is not a script face, its caps work best with the lowercase, rather than together. The funky, bouncy look of Coolman cries out for beach movies.

Heirloom grew from an interest of soft and friendly forms from the 1970s, with respect to the time's chill vibes and natural earthy roots. Its refined approachable characteristics allow it to be very readable carry a modern relaxed attitude. Available in 3 weights: Light, Regular and Bold. Any weight can be used as a display type, logotype and/or headlines, and lighter weights would work in bodies of text. The font pairs well with natural, historical or vintage graphic elements.

I came across a photo of Al Capone and some of his henchmen when searching the internet for something completely unrelated. We don’t have a history of notorious gangsters in Holland, so I was intrigued by Capone all of my life. Packing Heat is 1930’s slang for ‘carrying a gun’, which I thought befitted this handmade font with an early 20th century look. Packing Heat comes with multilingual support and a set of alternates for the lower case glyphs.

Italian type designer Maurizio Osti and American type designer Jane Patterson created this display FontFont in 2003. The family contains 4 weights and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, music and nightlife as well as poster and billboards. FF Folk provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, and stylistic alternates.The font was based on the original alphabet created by Ben Shahn in 1940. It comes with proportional lining and tabular lining figures.

Meninas are the new comprehensive collection of innovative craft alphabets researched in rare cross-stitch booklets from 1850 to 1930. This alphabet series was entirely designed by hand, without use of auto-tracing, by Iza W, from Intellecta Design. Keep your eyes wide-open, because we will launch more amazing alphabets in this collection. "Menina" means "Girl" in Portuguese. Menina Carinhosa is a Loving Girl. See too her sister fonts: Menina Formosa, Menina Poderosa Ornaments, Menina Espinhosa, Menina Graciosa Ornaments.

Rasteroids Monospace is a typographic flashback to computing of the mid 1980s, when 9-pin dot-matrix printers were the state of the art, and most home computer displays were TVs hooked up to RF modulators. Rasteroids not only captures the dot-matrix printer look, but recreates the rasterized appearance of text on those lower-resolution monitors. Because of its fixed character width, Rasteroids Monospace is intended for use in accents or small areas of copy rather than long documents.

Road Picture JNL was modeled after the hand lettered title and credits for the 1940 Bob Hope-Bing Crosby semi-musical comedy “Road to Singapore”, and is available in both regular and oblique versions. Although the lettering design doesn’t resemble anything that was probably used in Singapore at the time, its faux “exotic” look still makes for an interesting revival. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby made a total of seven “road” pictures, hence the homage in the name of this type font.