The Vtg Stencil fonts from astype are based on real world stencils from several countries. The Italian stencils that I chose as a model for this font are roughly based on classic French stencil letters. Please compare the figures (numbers) with their French counterparts. However, the Italian stencils are made with a different production technique. The design of the letters is clearly not punch-cut into the plates, maybe they are drilled, milled or etched. Details such as the serifs look bold and clumsy, and when using the stencils as they are meant, with viscous sign paint, smaller details easily fade away. So I took my freedom to design a font close to the original design but adding several typographic tweaks to let it shine, hoping to get closer to the intended design idea of these Italian stencils. Enjoy the vintage!

According to Wikipedia, Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The name originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in Manhattan. With this in mind, Tin Pan Alley JNL, a typeface based on the bold hand lettering from a vintage piece of sheet music is aptly named.

Our main purpose while developing this typeface was to reconstruct, in the most precise way, the first ten plates of the “Arte de Escribir”, in a chapter named “Enseñanza de la letra italiana, y sus principales variaciones, autores, sistemas, &c.”, dedicated to the analysis of the Italian Script. We decided by this plates because those are the few that don’t refer, directly or indirectly, to any author in particular. We strongly believe that these plates reflect the freedom of his very own calligraphy and are closely related to the calligraphic style that was a success among the spanish calligraphers: the Spanish Bastarda.

Unlike previous dingbat fonts released from Lanston Type Co., Archive Ornaments derives from a unique collection of brass ornament plates that were originally used in creating the matrices for casting metal type. Using the plates as a reference point allowed for a more precise rendering of the ornaments. Letterpress prints were made directly from the brass plates, which were then re-drawn and digitized. Each character has been optimized for the combination of decorative borders and patterns as well as individual accentuation. The completed digitized font contains over 100 glyphs, ranging in style from geometric to organic designs.

Vehicle JNL is a condensed block font similar to that found on many state auto license plates.

The Vtg Stencil fonts from astype are based on real world stencils from several countries. The US No. 4 design was derived from a typical antique US-American stencil-plate. This revolving stencil-plate was invented by Eugene L. Tarbox and patented in 1868. It was a mass factored product and a very common tool in the United States until the success of the interlocking stencils. In case of US No. 4 an original early stencil plate from New York Stencil Works was used. The Regular font style is a clean font design featuring an extended Latin glyph set including some typical stencil ornaments and tabular figures. The Paint font style is made from true stenciled letters and features all the letters of the stencil-plate only. If you like the later interlocking design have a look to my Vtg Stencil US No.2 font. More info: pdf specimen

Based on an engravers’ pattern plate, this outline form deriving from an English roundhand was fitted to linecasting matrices by Intertype about 1940.

A light roundhand with mildly clubbed terminals on the capitals. It was expertly transferred from an engravers’ pattern plate to the Fotosetter Intertype about 1955.

This is a revival font from an Image of a plate made from Eleventh Century initial letters. The "numerals" are Roman numbers done as ligatures.

Charles Wright is a full typeface in the style used for British vehicle license plates. The standard Bold weight is based on the condensed bold ‘2001’ style with an uppercase which conforms to UK registration plate specifications for character heights of 79mm and widths of 50mm. The 9 font family also includes previously unavailable Medium and Regular weights, Obliques , and a newly designed lowercase. For platemakers, the wider '1935' and lighter 'Motorcycle' fonts are also included.

Driver Gothic is based on the typeface used for Ontario license plates. Although unique among Canadian provincial license plates, this face is very similar to, if not outright identical with, the face used on car plates in 22 American states: Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia. Driver Gothic is available in all popular font formats, and is comprised of a very extended character set (over 750 characters) covering a wide range of languages, including Central and Eastern European languages, Greek, Cyrillic, Esperanto, Turkish, Baltic and Celtic/Welsh. Driver Gothic Pro, the OpenType version, contains class-based kerning and push-button stylistic alternates for use with apps that support advanced typography. Buckle up!