Up until the late 1920s, it was a popular habit in American songwriting to use African Americans as the topic of compositions using denigrating themes, words and even exaggerated character illustrations on the covers of the published sheet music. One such example of what was considered "entertainment" for its time was a piece entitled "Little Black Me". While this now socially and morally unacceptable piece of forgettable tripe is collected by some only for the historical documentation of the times they reflected, one good "positive" came out of this negative chapter of our country's musical heritage: The beautiful floral ornamented letters in the song's title has yielded Fancy Free JNL. Originally hand-lettered on an arc, these spurred Roman letters have been re-drawn, and are offered in both the regular design and a companion version with the ornamentation removed for lettering that is less ornate.

Toward the end of the 1920s, Art Deco influences were starting to creep into modern design. The hand lettered title on the cover of the1928 sheet music for “Fascinatin’ Vamp” not only embraced the new Deco movement, but sent it on a wild typographic ride. Letters of mixed thicknesses and stylings made up the two word title, and this unusual group of letter shapes became the inspiration for Free Form Deco JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

German type designer Hans Reichel created this sans FontFont in 2004. The family has 6 weights, ranging from Light to Black and is ideally suited for editorial and publishing and small text. FF Dax Compact provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, fractions, super- and subscript characters, and stylistic alternates. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths. This FontFont is a member of the FF Dax super family, which also includes FF Dax and FF Daxline.

Das Grotesk was inspired by earlier nineteenth-century grotesques, but it is much more related to American gothic designs such as those by M.F. Benton. Due to their pure geometric structure, most grotesque typefaces tend to have a rather monotonous and lifeless appearance, thus failing to express the ideals of the modern creed. Das Grotesk on the other hand is a lively design with several distinguishable characteristics which attract attention when set at large sizes, whilst they become subtle and blend evenly at small sizes, fostering a neutral identity. This is a very legible and space-saving typeface with a narrow structure. It was designed with slanted curved ends and sheared terminals applied on several straight strokes. It has two-storey ‘a’ and ‘g’ but includes single-storey alternates. The family consists of 14 weights ranging from Extra Thin to Black (including true-italics). It provides simultaneous support for Latin, Cyrillic and Greek and is loaded with several advanced typographic features such as small caps. Download its complehensive PDF Specimen Manual for further details.