Soft Rock is a bold condensed sans serif with rounded contours that contrives to be gentle and dynamic at the same time: rather like the soft rock bands (Chicago, Air Supply, Fleetwood Mac etc) after which it is named. It's a warm, friendly font ideal for branding everything from soup to soft furnishings.

Paint Store JNL is the third in Jeff Levine's series of display fonts modeled from actual water-applied decals that were manufactured by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago (now Duro Art Industries). Duro Decals were sold in paint, hardware, variety and art supply stores, and even [in some cases] print shops.

Printed Letters JNL is from stamped impressions made by a children's sign making set by the Superior Marking Equipment Company of Chicago - circa the 1940's. The set consisted of individually mounted rubber stamps - easy enough for happy kiddies to print signs, name plates or (unfortunately for their parents) on the walls... Limited character set.

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.

The set of vintage brass alphabet stencils that inspired Stencil Mark JNL was manufactured by the Chicago Firm of Meyer and Wenthe. Pete Skoglund of Unadilla, NY was selling a set of these stencils on Ebay, and was nice enough to provide Jeff Levine some images to use as models for the design of this typeface.

Featuring condensed, block hand lettering, Informational Sans JNL was modeled from a selection of water applied sign decals once made by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago and is available in both regular and oblique versions. About fifty different small decal signs covered a wide range of general purpose information such as “Open”, Closed”, “Please Pay When Served”, etc.

Plastic Display JNL was sketched from photo examples in an old sales promotion sheet for the Movitex Do-It-Yourself Plastic Sign Kit. The set was manufactured by Pryor Marking Products of Chicago, and featured a board with pre-spaced holes in a grid to which the letters and numbers would be inserted to form the sign.

Folsom JNL is one of the many stencil fonts Jeff Levine has recreated from original sources. This particular design was modeled from a kit made by the Meyercord Company of Chicago. In the original, some of the letters were solid rather than stencil forms, but Jeff gave all of the letters the traditional treatment for continuity.

Jeff Levine acquired a set of original water-applied decals made by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago (now Duro Art Industries) and painstakingly recreated one of the classic hand-drawn typefaces from the Duro line. Named after the street where the company is located, Juneway JNL is an authentic reproduction for the computer-based designer.

Will Ransom designed the exemplar for this series for Barnhart Brothers & Spindler in the early 1900s. The typeface was originally named "Parsons", after the advertising director of a Chicago department store (evidently a very BIG customer of BB&S). Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

Signs of Yesterday JNL brings another twenty-six vintage signs inspired by a series of decals once made by the Duro Decal Company (now Duro Art Industries) of Chicago. This font complements the original twenty-six designs found in Too Much Information JNL. There are two blank sign panels on the parenthesis keys for use in creating custom retro signage.

This revival of Harry is based on the original design by Marty Goldstein (and C.B. Smith). Goldstein, born in Chicago in 1939, was the co-founder of the groundbreaking Creative Black Book. He graduated from the Pratt Institute in 1960. Harry, first published by VGC in 1966, was named for his father. ITF has added four new weights to the original six.

Retro Signs JNL collects nearly 50 designs modeled from old water transfer sign decals once manufactured by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago, Illinois and adds in a generous amount of additional phrases newly-drawn in the same hand lettered style. These vintage sign panels are perfect for creating nostalgic signage to fit projects centered around the 1950s and early 1960s.

Bold, muscular, vaguely oriental, Wedge Gothic ML is the original name of this font released by Barnhart Bros. and Spindler of Chicago in 1893. The straight-forward, no-nonsense name tells us exactly what to expect: sans-serif letterforms based on wedge-shaped vertical strokes. The typeface was dropped for awhile -- it does not appear in the 1907 catalog for example -- but reappeared in 1925 as Japanette. What is the opposite of "straight-forward" anyway? According to McGrew, Wedge Gothic was originally created for the Chicago Herald newspaper. The designer is unknown. A distinctive display face, useful when a strong and unusual statement is desired. Wedge Gothic ML features: 1. Glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Western Europe, the 1254 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. Total of 335 glyphs. 2. OpenType GSUB layout features: pnum, ornm, hist & salt. 3. 66 kerning pairs. 4. Both tabular & proportional numbers. 5. Alternate bullets. The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

A series of lettering guides called “Mimeostyle” for the A. B. Dick Company of Chicago (produced for use in making mimeograph machine printing stencils) were custom manufactured by the Wright-Regan Instrument Company (Wrico). One design featured a sans serif letter produced in Shadow relief, with a touch of Art Deco flair. This is now available as Template Shadow JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Among many of Alf Becker’s contributions to Signs of the Times magazine was 1 1935 offering named Chicago Modern Thick and Thin, which provided the inspiration for this face. It’s a perfect choice for friendly headlines with an Art Deco vibe. Both versions include the complete Unicode Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, as well as localization for Lithuanian, Moldovan and Romanian.

Sheldrake JNL is the second in a series of display fonts modeled from actual water-applied decals that were manufactured by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago (now Duro Art Industries). The font's name derives from the actual phone exchange for Duro, back in the days when a telephone listing had a name-number assignment for recognition. In this case, their number began as "SH(eldrake)-3".

A vintage matchbook advertising the New York Liquor Mart – oddly enough, located in Chicago, Illinois – featured a pen and ink line drawing of the store’s exterior. The Art Deco lettering on the mansard was portrayed with a straight left shadow (as opposed to drop cast or extruded), making for an interesting multi-line typeface design. This is now digitally available as Packaged Goods JNL.

WAVE is characterized by curved lines and intricate details. Each character was individually made in Illustrator and Type Tool using my original illustrations. Wave is a decorative font best used for titles or short bursts of texts in large point settings. The typeface is based on the uppercase letterforms, but I have also created lowercase letters, numbers, and glyphs. The motion lines used in the making of Wave mirror an art deco-style. Inspired by an illustration of a large wave, I was fascinated that by using only lines and solid colors we as artists can depict the translucency and ever-changing movement of waves. I began by delicately sketching out all of the letters using graph paper and micron pens. My work always begins with traditional media. I'm an illustrator, freelance artist, and graphic designer from Chicago, IL. I studied at Texas Christian University, and received my Bachelors of Arts in Graphic Design from Columbia College Chicago. Visit www.jennyddesigns.com for more! :)

Do It Yourself JNL was modeled after self-adhesive vinyl letters and numbers manufactured by Duro Art Industries of Chicago - formerly the Duro Decal Company. The hand-drawn look of the original lettering was retained by Jeff Levine to stay true to the design, and the rectangles that border each glyph represent the pieces of self-adhesive vinyl onto which the characters were silk screened. Limited character set.

The front page of a late-1940s sales catalog for the [now defunct] Duro Decal Company of Chicago had its company name hand-lettered in a tall, condensed chamfered sans serif type design. Although chamfered lettering had been popular for decades, the way the "R" was shaped gave the letters a bit of an Art Deco influence, and this influence was carried through in the creation of Durable JNL.