The American Sign Museum in Cincinnati houses an amazing collection of vintage signage from all kinds of sources and covering many eras of retail advertising. Someone visiting the museum posted online an image of one particular piece of glass with hand lettering saying “gold leaf” in a bold Art Deco stencil style. Etched Stencil JNL was inspired by that image and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Roadblock JNL is the solidified and slanted version of Patriotica JNL --a stars and stripes font based on lettering by the late Alf R. Becker as commissioned by Signs of the Times® magazine. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Publications, Inc. and the American Sign Museum in Cincinati, Ohio for providing source material for use as a work model.

Kanona JNL is modeled from one of the numerous alphabets created by the late Alf R. Becker for Signs of the Times magazine from the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to a wealth of source material provided by Tod Swormstedt of ST Media (and who is also the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio), Jeff Levine has been redrawing many of these alphabets and presenting them in digital form. The original variations in letter widths from Becker’s hand-painted alphabet have been left intact.

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.

Vrinda™ is an OpenType font for the Indic script Bengali. It is based on Unicode™, contains TrueType outlines and was designed by Raghunath Joshi (Type Director) Vinay Saynekar for use as a UI font. Copyright ™ 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Character Set: Latin-1, Bengali

The inspiration source for Brass Rules Grand is a collection of the brass rules from the 1889 “Convenient Book of Specimens” from Franklin Type Foundry in Cincinnati. This is a collection of basic utilitarian brass rules that has been created as combinable and endlessly expanding. Filling the Numerals and all Capital and Lowercase glyph slots are a total of 62 traditional Brass Rule designs, all extendable by combining with other rules, or by extending the pin line by simply typing a dash "-" or ".". A truly sleek and simple utilitarian font for invitations, menus, business cards, and whatnot. Download and view the “MFC Brass Rules Grand Guidebook” if you would like to learn a little more.

Patriotica JNL was inspired by some hand lettering designed by the late Alf Becker for Signs of the Times® magazine. The alphabet was modified and the character set extended in this digital version. Special thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Publications, Inc. and the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati for providing a copy of the original lettering for use as a work model. Patriotica JNL is available as a complete font or in a set of two layers (stars layer and stripes layer) for creating two-color graphics. As always, keep in mind that there are some slight variations between drawing programs, so some adjustments may need to be made in the alignment of the layers.

Police JNL was modeled from one of the many fonts created by the late Alf Becker exclusively for Signs of the Times magazine during the 1930s through the 1950s. This was a bit of a difficult design to translate into a digital font file, because the individual characters did not follow a formal structure as to the width and length of the cast shadows or the letter shapes—such is the way of the hand-lettered alphabet. Special thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Publications (and curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati) for providing the archival material to work from in creating this font. Police JNL has a limited character set. The basic A-Z character is on the upper and lower case keys, along with numbers, some punctuation and the dollar and cents signs.

Calder is a display typeface collection. It incorporates 10 styles and offers two distinctive voices: a playful semi-connected script and a selection of subtle yet authentic sans serifs. Designed to complement each other, they offer a unique and engaging visual tool. Inspired by the pursuit of the outdoors, Calder began as a personal experience and endeavor to express and share the spirit of adventure connected with this renewed, growing movement.

Alf R. Becker was a noted sign painter, designer and the creator of hundreds of unique alphabets which were published in the trade magazine Signs of the Times during the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media [and who is also the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati], Jeff Levine received some reference material on Becker's work. Becker displayed many of his type styles within decorative panels—a popular trend in the days when signs were hand-lettered. Using the reference material as a guide, Jeff has re-drawn twenty-six sign panels for adaptation to digital print work. While the designs in themselves are not thoroughly unique to Alf Becker, he has left behind some tangible examples of how sign painters embellished their lettering work. With the use of complementary colors and tones, these panels—joined with vintage lettering - classically recreate the warm and attractive advertising of years ago.

Our Englebert Pro draws inspiration from the title screen of the 1930's film entitled, "Der Blaue Engel", starring Marlene Dietrich. Playful but subdued, yet striking enough to catch the eye, this casual sans has a distinct signature look to it. The offbeat letterforms engage the reader, while the SmallCaps and extensive figure sets lend a wider versatility to the typeface. 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.

Avantgarde fonts Batory and Batoswash are monoline sansserifs designed by Bo Berndal. The futuristic Batory (think Bladerunner and Total Recall) and the spicier relative Batoswash come in three versions: Narrow, Middle and Wide. The font family is available in Truetype and Postscript for Mac and PC. Bo Berndal, born 1924, has been designing typefaces over 56 years, for Monotype, Linotype and other foundries. "Batory is a monoline reaction to my many calligraphic fonts", says Bo Berndal. "That is also the reason I did several widths instead of weights. Batory has short stems and high x-height. Batoswash is a Batory gone wild!" The successful Batory has already been used for logotypes, vignettes in magazines and as headline type.

Avantgarde fonts Batory and Batoswash are monoline sansserifs designed by Bo Berndal. The futuristic Batory (think Bladerunner and Total Recall) and the spicier relative Batoswash come in three versions: Narrow, Middle and Wide. The font family is available in Truetype and Postscript for Mac and PC. Bo Berndal, born 1924, has been designing typefaces over 56 years, for Monotype, Linotype and other foundries. “Batory is a monoline reaction to my many calligraphic fonts”, says Bo Berndal. "That is also the reason I did several widths instead of weights. Batory has short stems and high x-height. Batoswash is a Batory gone wild!" The successful Batory has already been used for logotypes, vignettes in magazines and as headline type.

Our Mouse Memoirs Pro was inspired by vintage Mickey Mouse, Beagle Boys, and Uncle Scrooge comic books put out by Walt Disney in the 50's and 60's. It nods to the Disney aesthetic with an all-around fun personality and truly animated look. The chipper letterforms engage the audience, while the SmallCaps and extensive figure sets expand the scope of use. 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.

Katiki Can is a bold, messy, painty display font inspired by all of the trashcans in the Outer Banks with names of rental homes painted on the side.

Prolexia is designed to make the font friendly towards those with dyslexia. All the characters are unique with no rotation or mirroring, this makes it harder for the mind to mix up similar glyphs. The characters are made with the illusion of perspective: this helps orient characters in the correct direction to make mental reorientation harder. Finally the o shape is somewhat flattened, this also helps to counteract mental rotation of characters.