The font DXAngelusMediaval was developed on the basis of the Angelus Mediaval font, which was issued by Russian type foundry from the beginning of the 20th century (type foundry of G. Bertgold, St. Petersburg and Moscow, before 1904). Probably, the font is a reworking of the DeVinne font (1892 (?), Designer Nicholas J. Werner) of the American Central Type Foundry. For the reconstruction, we used examples of font prints: Cyrillic from the catalog "Art Fonts", 1929, Latin part - Chicago font, from the catalog "La Fonderie Typographique Francaise" (FTF) 1924. In addition, in the font are available Digits of the old style and ligature.

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.

Sign and Display JNL is a long-overdue companion font to 2009’s Sign and Poster JNL. The original design models were Art Deco influenced die-cut cardboard letters and numbers manufactured by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago. Square in shape with rounded corners, the thick cardboard letters were used for making show-cards and other display signage. Subsequently, Duro used the same style of lettering to manufacture water-applied decals for boat identification and other uses. It was a set of these decals (with a black outline and yellow interior) that inspired the outline typeface Sign and Display JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Oswald Bruce Cooper designed Cooper Black, an extra bold roman face, based on the forms of his earlier typeface Cooper Old Style, which appeared with Barnhart Brothers & Spindler Type Founders in Chicago. Copper Black was produced by Barnhart in 1922 and acquired in 1924 by the Schriftguß AG in Dresden, where it was later completed with a matching italic. Although Cooper Black appeared in the first third of the 20th century, it still looks contemporary and it can be found on storefronts in almost any city scene. The flowing outer contours create forms that are both strong and soft, making Cooper Black an extremely flexible font.

Kansas Casual offers a more upright, gothic, and modern alternative to the conventional sign painter's one stroke. Kansas provides a completely unique take on a overdone classic with proportions and crossbar heights inspired by the more friendly Chicago style. This all-caps set provides six weights so that you can adjust size with weight to maintain that authentic single brush weighted look. The proofing process included projecting, tracing, and then painting the letters out to see how true the small details were to the medium. The set also includes wide language support, opentype fractions, and arrows. You can learn more about its development here.

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.

Based on the type style used for the Superior Sign and Chart Printer No. 929, this simple and clean sans serif font was perfectly suited for use by teachers in the classroom and for businesses and organizations that needed to make signs, price cards, charts and notices. Digitally redrawn as Schoolroom JNL, it is available in both regular and oblique versions. The Superior Marking Equipment Company [formerly of Chicago] was not only a major supplier of materials for the rubber stamp industry, but for most of its existence manufactured date and numbering stamps, sign and chart printers (such as the one used for this font), and a line of children’s printing toys (amongst other items).

Ronde Script (Ronde meaning "A kind of script in which the heavy strokes are nearly upright, giving the characters when taken together a round look.") is based on the original design named Parisian Ronde released in 1878 by the Chappelle Foundry in Paris. Other versions of this script include Inland French Script, French Script, French Plate, and Typo Upright. Different type foundries tied to the releases of this design include Mayeur (Paris), Stephenson Blake (London), Bernhardt Brothers & Spindler (Chicago), and ATF (Elizabeth, NJ). This style of script has been a very popular choice in designing wedding invitations and so many other formal announcements for over 130 years. Its very readable, formal and elegant with an antique or retro feel.

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.