A popular hobby in the 1950s and 1960s was creating your own wallets, belts and other items from leather do-it-yourself kits. Stamped or carved initials, names or phrases were often added to the leather with special tools and templates - many featuring a Western-styled alphabet with a hand-lettered look. Leathercrafter JNL recreates that same look in a digital font format, complete with the unusual and contrasting letter shapes.

Rileno Sans is sharp with geometric forms and strong personality. It is constructed in a geometric manner and inspired by the constructivist typefaces of the 1920s with a humanistic quality. It comes in 6 weights, 6 uprights and their matching italics. Rileno Sans is equipped with opentype features like Alternate charates, Fractions, Monospace Numbers, Superscript/subscript, Arrow, Roman Numbers, Ligatures and More.

Pigalle Swing is a very elegant script from the 1950s which I found some time ago in a similar but not so elegant version on Place Pigalle in Paris. I designed lots of alternate capitals and lowercase letters to make the font more usable and interesting. Enjoy!

Koehler Sans JNL was inspired by a set of cardboard sign kit letters made by the Koehler Sign Company of Missouri (presumably) in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Not much is known about them, other than the letters looked interesting enough to turn into a font.

Figuratika with its cut out letters is a bold geometric Art Deco inspired stencil font with a retro 1920 1930 feeling. It was designed as a display font and is best for shorter texts, titles, logos, posters etc. Figuratika has multilingual support for most European languages.

Techno Retro JNL looks like a design straight out of the 1980s, but it actually appeared as hand lettering on a sheet music cover for the circa-1940s edition of the song "To You Sweetheart, Aloha", proving the old saying that "everything old is new again".

Spiral is a digital transcription of a design by Joseph Blumenthal (1897-1990) which was hand-cut by Louis Hoell and cast by the Bauer foundry in 1930. The design with an italic added was later cut for Monotype and issued in 1936 as Emerson 320.

Smena was based on the lettering of the so called 'calligraphic style' that was very popular during the period 1940-1970. The style was used in logos, book and magazine headlines, posters, signage etc. For use in advertising and display typography. Licensed by ParaType in 2006.

Modeled from an example in the book “Lettering” by Harry B. Wright (1950), the poster alphabet shown was reminiscent of the kind of style used in the early 1900s by sign painters and show card artists. Vintage Poster JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

A 1940s sheet music edition of an early 1900s song entitled "You Taught Me How to Love You, Now Teach Me to Forget" was set in a popular metal type slab serif face. It is presented digitally as Elite Resort JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Unique and decorative signage for many drive-ins, motels, food stores and other businesses of the 1940s had what was referred to as “privilege signs” provided by one of the major cola brands. Consisting of the brand’s emblem on a decorative panel, the remainder of the sign would carry the desired message of the storekeeper (such as “Drive-In”) in prismatic, embossed metal letters. Inspired by the Art Deco sans serif style of those vintage signs, Privilege Sign Two JNL recreates the type design in both regular and oblique versions. The typefaces are solid black, but adding a selected color and a prismatic effect from your favorite graphics program can reproduce the look and feel of those old businesses. This is a companion font to Privilege Sign JNL, which recreates the condensed sans serif lettering of other privilege signs from the 1950s and early 1960s.

Jugo Script is a Koziupa/Paul near-parody of the soft and speedy late-1980s, early-1990s display scripts. Though it essentially is one of the usual exhibits of Koziupa's calligraphic skill, its individual shapes and overall construct show a mischievous wink at Oz Cooper and the hundreds of lens-blurred film types he inspired in the 1970s and 80s. Koziupa's unique sense of letterform and proportion is on full display in the uppercase and the figures, while the lowercase is an eccentric exercise in single stroke lettering, complete with quick and subtle wrist bends, minimal pausing, and hurried exits. Jugo Script's softness and internal call-and-answer structure make it a natural for comfort food packaging, especially the sweet stuff.

An extremely versatile, intelligently restrained design by Robin Nicholas for Monotype in 1980. It works very well at small sizes thanks to its large x-height, sturdy serifs, and lack of ornament; yet it is not characterless. Nimrod has been used successfully in national newspapers and books. (The Guardian, London, from its late-1980s redesign until it was replaced by a Carter interpretation of Miller in 1998; the Concise Oxford English Dictionary in the typographically unsurpassed 1990 edition.)

German Designer Klaus Sutter digitized Mustang, a brush script typeface from the 1950s originally drawn by Imre Reiner (1900-1987) and published in 1956 by D. Stempel AG. Mustang is a right slanted brush type drawn with simple and strong strokes. It has a dynamic character, and could be perfectly applied for emphasis in headlines. Mustang has the character of Imre Reiner's handriting. Imre Reiner was a prominent book illustrator, painter, and typographer during the 1950s.

This blackletter font displays best the voluptuous coziness of South German Baroque. You almost automatically visualize Alpine villages and Swiss chalets, or buxom girls serving beer in steins or herding their bell-ringing cattle.

Sniplash is a lively font inspired by cartoons and comics of the 1960s and '70s. Casual and organic, this font features curly lines and irregular weights in Regular, Light and Bold styles. This design defies serious analysis and offers a fun attitude for lighthearted design. Excellent for parties, retro packaging or any number of uses.

The idea for Gummed Letters JNL came from an online auction of some foil-embossed gummed letters from the 1940s and 1950s. One particular set was of a sans serif face that hadn't been produced in decades, and Jeff Levine felt it was worthy of a digital treatment.

Based on the lettering used on Alan Turing’s famous code-breaking machine at Bletchley Park, the “Bombe”, and the subsequent British answer to the German Enigma machine, the Typex. Research done at Bletchley Park on their restored and antique machines provided the inspiration. The unusual shapes for the capitals have all been retained - the square O, the monospaced characters and other eccentricities that make it unique. This reference material was then extended to the numerals (which did not exist in the original) and a full international character complement. The initial design of the bombe was produced in 1939 at the UK Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park by Alan Turing, with an important refinement devised in 1940 by Gordon Welchman. It was based on a device that had been designed in 1938 in Poland at the Biuro Szyfrów (Cipher Bureau) by cryptologist Marian Rejewski, and known as the "cryptologic bomb" (Polish: bomba kryptologiczna). The Bombe was used to break the German Enigma code on a daily basis, and was a vital part of the Allied war effort. The British “Typex" (alternatively, Type X or TypeX) machines were an adaptation of the commercial German Enigma with a number of enhancements that greatly increased its security. It was used from 1937 until the mid-1950s, when other more modern military encryption systems came into use.

A new font inspired by vintage hand-painted paper grocery store signs. The Doorbuster Collection is based on retro hand-painted paper signs primarily seen in grocery stores from the 1920s through the 1970s. We meticulously hand-drew each font, modeling the spacing and uneven baseline found in vintage sign painting. The purposely organic ascenders and descenders, along with a huge set of ligatures/contextual alternates to avoid the same letters repeating when paired, give it a real hand-lettered look. Doorbuster Script is perfect for both vintage-inspired and contemporary marketing, branding, and packaging designs. Check out a few of the samples included in the thumbnails above.

Axelby JNL was modeled from a set of die-cut, self-adhesive cardboard letters from the 1960s. The design is reminiscent of some early wood type in the way it has letters of varying widths that do not conform to any set standard. The font is perfect for plain, easy-to-read and attention-getting headlines.

Sheet music for the song "My Ideal" (from the 1930 Paramount picture "Playboy of Paris" starring Maurice Chevalier) had the name of the movie hand lettered in an Art Deco, Broadway-influenced type design. This became the inspiration for Parisian Playboy JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Welcome Home JNL gets its inspiration from metal letters and numbers affixed to homes, posts and mailboxes in the 1920s and 1930s. The block style of lettering that was silk screened onto enameled rectangles of steel was especially popular during that time period. This font has a limited character set.

The main 20-th century handwritten display font in the USSR, usually performed with a flat brush or a wide poster pen for all kinds of signage during 1920-1990s. It had also many analogues in other countries, but never was that popular as in the Soviet Union, used everywhere.

The simple song title "May I", found on the sheet music from the 1934 Bing Crosby-Carole Lombard film "We're Not Dressing" was hand lettered in a blocky, ultra-bold Art Deco design that foreshadowed the techno look of the 1970s and 1980s. This became the basis for Art Techno JNL.

Kings in Disguise is a chunky, balloon font of the sort used extensively during the 1970s. It has a retro, disco feel and is ideal for signs and logos. The name comes from a great comic book series published in the late 1980s. The engraved style has a limited character set.

Performer JNL, is a typeface re-drawn from condensed hand lettering found on a piece of vintage sheet music. Fairly basic in style, there are still some hints of the Art Deco influence that permeated the 1930s and 1940s art, design and typography. Available in both regular and oblique versions.

Triborough JNL is the heavier-weight version of Wingate JNL, a narrow, all-caps font from Jeff Levine. Evoking the feel of 1930s and 1940s store and architectural signs, use Triborough JNL along with its counterpart for a nice dual-weight contrast... or by itself for an elegant Art Deco look.

The inspiration for Deco Eccentrique JNL was initially hand drawn contoured lettering from a mid-1920s piece of sheet music; the style of the letters showing influences of the upcoming Art Deco movement. This was made into a digital font entitled Poster Contoured JNL. Once all of the excess parts of the previous design were stripped away to only the inner letters, the pre-Art Deco influences remained along with characters of varying stroke widths and shapes. This non-conformist type face is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Western Adventure JNL is based on a classic lettering stencil of the 1950s. Part of a growing series of such stencil fonts by Jeff Levine, it's a perfect complement to Buckdance JNL.

The roly-poly serifs, inspired by West Banjo, designed by Dave West, add such irrepressible charm to this typeface that you just want to pinch its little cheeks, if you are so inclined. Equally at home in the 1960s, when it was originally released, as the 1860s, from which it drew its inspiration. The PC Postscript, Truetype and Opentype versions contain the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

Retro is in again! The distinctive font Kabif will give your work a vintage, extraordinary look. With its erratic, rounded, and geometric shapes, this font typifies popular culture from the 1960s and 1970s. A cool and simple font with an easy-to-see and easy-to-read typeface is called Kabif. The Kabif font works best for text, headlines, headers, signage, greeting cards, posters, flyers, invitations, packaging, book covers, printed quotes, album covers, and other visual elements.

In most cases, motion pictures with a Western theme have their titles and credits lettered in type styles that reflect the period of the Old West. In 1966, the titles and credits for “Texas Across the River” used casual sans serif lettering more suited to the 1960s than a Western taking place in the 1800s. Nonetheless, the lettering inspired a digital font entitled Adventure Film JNL and it is available in both regular and oblique versions.

It seems that after the 1960s, very few display typefaces were being produced that had the desirability to transcend generations, as did many type designs of the past. In 1970, a local television station embraced a lettering style for its logo that was a cross between round point pen nib lettering and the modular, techno look complete with squared characters in a futuristic "space age" style. News Crew JNL was inspired by the few examples found of this particular font [in use by the station at the time] and was pretty much created from scratch in order to capture the 1970s era of experimental typography. It is available in both regular and oblique versions.

A 1930s poster advertising horse racing at Havana, Cuba’s Oriental Park inspired Ninth Race JNL – a condensed Art Deco sans serif type face with rounded corners; available in both regular and oblique versions.

Neon Rounded is a rounded monoline typeface inspired by retro neon light bulbs often used in signage. Neon bulbs were first seen back in 1910 in Paris. They later became popular in 1930s New York, especially on Broadway and the Las Vegas strip. Although Neon Rounded was designed with eye-catching signs in mind, its possible usage is vast. Clothing brands, road signs, logos and advertising. The heavier weights lend themselves to children's books and toys, while the lighter weights provide a more modern, futuristic feel. The typeface contains lower and uppercases in five weights: Light, Regular, Medium, Semi-bold and Bold. There are also alternatives for most letters and all numbers. The glyph set includes all languages covered in Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement and Latin Extended-A scripts.