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.

Books Script — this is a good-hearted font, which was created based on the books of the Soviet period between 1960 and 1970. This font is perfect for illustrators and books which are designed for children. Scope: emotionality, uneven rhythm, display, titles, illustrations, soviet, USSR, poetry, ipad apps, fairy tale, epic poem

Mixed Drinks JNL derives its look from a set of gold foil self-adhesive letters made by a company called Cameo for the Schenley distilling company circa the late 1950s or early 1960s. The letters were used to personalize bottles of whiskey for your own bar or to give as a unique gift.

With the name Helvetica (Latin for Swiss), this font has the objective and functional style which was associated with Swiss typography in the 1950s and 1960s. It is perfect for international correspondence: no ornament, no emotion, just clear presentation of information. Helvetica is still one of the best selling sans-serif fonts.

Gia is 7 weights, true small caps and unicase options, designed after iconic letterforms of the 1960’s to 1980’s. In the early years of the American tech revolution, when Silicon Valley was more closely identified with Dallas, Texas, a curious type of letterform began to appear—strict in geometry, and curiously minimal in geometry and stroke, making it easier to be read by machine-readers, and people more used to reading machine-generated typography. Coders! As the years went on, this kind of sinewy, curved letterform began popping up in logotypes and music videos and upright video games: NASA, The Buggles, Atari, Pong, Sega, Namco, Stern, Devo, Apple. Gia pays homage to that letterform, and is named after Gia Carangi, the iconic face of early 1980’s pop fashion.

Oakland is a Streamline era design inspired by some hand-drawn lettering on a 1930's French poster advertising a certain brand of Car (Automobile for our American cousins). It's ideal for giving poster and design work that late 1930s to mid 1950s feel. Make a bold statement with this all capitals typeface!

This set of initial letters was inspired from French renaissance decorated letters. It is a typical pattern, one among dozen quite similar, but this one was in use in Paris, unchanged, for centuries, and was still in use in the beginning of 1900s. This explains the difference between I and J, U and V. These characters were engraved years after the original set. Our font was inspired from a late 1800s publication. It can be used as well with Humane fonts (like our 1543 Humane Janson or 1592 GLC Garamond) as with modern fonts like our 1820 Modern or 1906 French News.

Latin music was all the rage in the United States from the 1930s through the 1950s and songs with a “South of the Border” or “Old Mexico” theme were plentiful. The 1940 sheet music for “Make Love with a Guitar” evoked the idea of serenading one’s lovely lady on horseback while strumming the guitar. ..at least if you went by the by the illustration under the song’s name. As the hand lettered title was rendered in an Art Deco design, it became the basis for Jazz Guitar JNL [which seemed a more befitting name], and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Mocombo JNL is a slightly modified version of one of the numerous alphabets created by the late Alf R. Becker for Signs of the Times Magazine during the period of the 1930s through the 1950s. Tod Swormstedt of ST Media—who is also the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio—supplied Jeff Levine a wealth of source material from which this font is derived. The angular style of this typeface was originally referred to as “German Poster Lettering” by Becker, but it can represent many styles from 1940s night clubs to African safaris and just about anything in-between.

A handsome German art deco design that fits in well with other types of the 1920s and 1930s. Originally without a lowercase, so we drew one for it, extending its usefulness.

Moving Van JNL is a classic sign painter's block Roman with angled [instead of rounded] corners and slab serifs. This style of lettering was most popular in the 1920s and 1930s.

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.

This beautiful roman style typeface is inspired from an E.C. Matthews book. Although the book we have is dated 1967, the style appears to have been created in the 1920s or 30s.

Roundpoint Pen JNL is based on instructional lettering found in an old Speedball® Pen textbook. The effect of a round nib pen letter evokes the charm of the 1920s or 1930s.

From a vintage textbook on "modern" lettering circa the 1930s or 1940s comes a simple chamfered sans with oddly irregular shapes. Amateur Lettering JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The lettering for Fine Dining JNL was inspired by the opening titles for the 1940 Barbara Stanwyck-Fred MacMurray film "Remember the Night". A stylized Art Deco sans, the typeface conjures up images of elegant dining, being out on the town and all we warmly associate with the night life of the 1930s and 1940s.

Samuel Welo’s “Studio Handbook for Artists and Advertisers” was a popular book of inspiration for sign painters, graphic artists and designers from the 1920s through the 1960s. Many digital revivals of Welo’s hand lettered typography have been made available. Formal Notice JNL is one such revival, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Frantic Pace JNL is based on hand lettering found on the lid of a late 1950s or early 1960s edition of the Print Craft alphabet printing set once manufactured by the Superior Marking Equipment Company of Chicago. The free-form spurred serif lettering is fun and casual; giving the impression of movement or action.

From the same page of a vintage German lettering textbook entitled “50 Alphabete fur Technikur und Fachschulen” (loosely translated to “50 Alphabets for Technicians and Specialized Schools”) that inspired Trippy Hippy JNL comes Eleckatrical Banana JNL. It’s another novelty, free form Art Nouveau hand lettered alphabet that works well in recreating 1920s period pieces or for designing a retro-inspired rock and roll concert poster reminiscent of the 1960s. The name of the typeface is from a line in the 1966 pop hit “Mellow Yellow by Donovan (Leitch), and his extended pronunciation of ‘electrical’: “…E-lec-a-tric-cal’ banana is going to be the very next craze…” Caps only Fonts. Eleckatrical Banana JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

This family was inspired mainly (Normal and Italic style ) by a Didot pattern font used in Rennes (France, Britanny) by Cousin-Danelle, printers, for Antiquités historiques et monumentales ‡ visiter de Montfort ‡ Corseul, par Dinan... Saint Malo... etc. an historic guidebook for a journey through a part of (French) Brittany in 1820, and many other books. The present version contains 1820 Modern Normal and Italic, 1820 Modern Large Normal and 1820 Modern Narrow Normal, each style with small caps. This font may be used together with 1906 French News and/or 1906 Titrage.

Stencil Work JNL was re-drawn from a vintage paper stencil with one inch high Roman letters and numbers, often found in stationery, drug and variety stores in the 1950s through the 1980s.

Gramercy Eight JNL is an outline and drop shadow treatment of Crestview Six JNL, inspired by some 1930s-1940s era Art Deco hand lettering spotted on a sales flier for some decorator decals.

Venecian Old Face fonts had a strong influence on typeface design in the 1930s and 1940s in England. Such influence is evident in the font Electra, designed by William A. Dwiggins for Linotype in 1935. Electra combines its classic roots with the Zeitgeist of the 1930s, also displaying characteristics of the Bauhaus and Art Deco styles.

We have created this family inspired from the hand-drawn letters used from the late 1800s until beginning of 1900s for notices, advertising, posters and also early comic titles. It is a hand-made font, with little imperfections that give it its special poetic note. It can be used together with 1906 French News, 1906 Titrage and 1820 Modern.

Movie Night JNL was modeled from one of a number of ceramic home movie titling kits on the market that were popular during the 1950s and 1960s. The camera buff would set up the letters against a colored background and photograph clever titles to describe their 8mm home movies of vacations, sightseeing or their darling children (or grandchildren).

Vintage packaging for Frosty Stencil Flock contained the hand lettered term “spray flock” which served as the basis for Flocking Stencil JNL; available in both regular and oblique versions. Commonly referred to as “Spray Snow”, these kits of holiday stencils and spray cans were a popular item in the households of the 1950s and early-to-mid 1960s.

At first glance, this unusual display face might appear to be a product of the 1960s, with its highly unconventional letterforms and its plastic, fantastic highlight treatment. However, this font is in fact inspired by a ca. 1930 poster for a Belgian beer of the same name. The uncredited Flemish designer was clearly a head of his time (ouch!).

Printing Set JNL by Jeff Levine comes from a toy rubber stamp printing set imported from Japan in the 1950s and 1960s that's been revived, but is now imported from China. The font has a serif letter so typical of import toys of the day, but actually reads quite nicely in short headlines and specialty ad copy.

The sinuous, organic forms of Bing first came into being on a poster for a Smithsonian Institution exhibit on Siegfried Bing, a German art dealer in Paris who figured prominently in the development of Art Nouveau towards the end of the nineteenth century. Inspired by the natural forms of Antonio Gaudi, and the Paris Metro stations of Hector Guimard, Bing can be used effectively in the modernist style of Art Nouveau and is equally at home in the 1960s psychedelic rejuvenation of that genre.

School Desk JNL is a block-style sanserif based on die-cut cardboard letters used in classrooms during the 1940s and 1950s for making various projects and teaching children the basic shapes of letters.

Sackers Gothic is part of the larger Sackers series, a collection of fonts drawn from templates for producing engraved stationery and social cards by Gary Sackers, a Charlotte, North Carolina intaglio printer. Many typefaces were made from similar sources, including Monotype’s Engravers series, as well as Jim Spiece’s ITC Blair, and Mark van Bronkhorst’s Sweet Sans. Sackers’ typefaces, which were initially made into photo-set type, were digitized by Compugraphic and released in the late 1980s. Sackers Gothic has since become a popular choice for conveying sincere and plainspoken language on dust jackets, posters, and of course, in stationery. The face pairs well with display faces of a disparate nature, and serves as a ready foil for anything requiring an air of typographic sophistication.

An offbeat, fun, and frightful serif typeface inspired by the 1969 Rankin Bass animagic classic titled, Mad Monster Party.

Although the early 1900s through the 1920s seemed to be the "Golden Age" of ridiculously long novelty song titles, it appears that even the decade of the 1940s had its fair share as well. Song Merchant JNL was modeled from the hand lettered [but exhausting] title of the sheet music for "Princess Poo-Poo-Ly Has Plenty Pa-Pa-Ya (and she Loves to Give it Away)". Despite the obvious double-entendre inferences of the title, the square block letters with rounded corners make for a useful headline font (even if the source material it was drawn from is quite forgettable). Available in regular and oblique versions.

On the Town JNL is a reworking of Parks Department JNL, giving it a classic "solid black Art Deco treatment". The wide monoline font of the original design was inspired by hand lettering on a WPA (Works Progress Administration) poster. Art Deco typography and the streamlined style it embraced often conjures up images of New York City in the 1930s and 1940s, thus On the Town JNL is named for the classic MGM musical starry Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munchen that was filmed on location in "the city that never sleeps".

A vintage set of die-cut letters and number by Village Toys (circa 1930s or 1940s) featured a playful, bold serif typeface. This is now available digitally as Toy Letters JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

The hand painted signage from a 1950s era photo of the Miami Diner Restaurant in Miami, Florida inspired the digital version of its 1940s-influenced lettering. Roadside Diner JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.