Eclectic FS Siena is a typeface with history, and not just in the sense of having its origins in classical Roman lettering. Fontsmith founder Jason Smith first committed it to tracing paper while still at college, instinctively redrawing letterforms based on Hermann Zapf’s Optima according to ‘what felt right’. When Krista Radoeva took up the challenge to edit and extend the typeface, she and Jason were determined to preserve its subtly nonconformist and eclectic spirit. Like a great dish, there are individual components throughout the character set that all add flavour, and need to be balanced in order to work together. The smooth connection of the ‘h’ ‘m’ ‘n’ and ‘r’ contrasts with the corners of the ‘b’ and ‘p’. The instantly recognisable double-storey ‘a’ – the starting point of the design – contrasts with the single-storey ‘g’ and the more cursive ‘y’. And only certain characters – ‘k’, ‘w’, ‘v’ and ‘x’ in the lowercase and ‘K’, ‘V’, ‘W’, ‘X’ and ‘Y’ in the caps – have curved strokes. Transitional FS Siena is a contrasted sans-serif typeface, blending classical elegance and modern simplicity. Its construction and proportions are descended from classical broad-nib calligraphy and humanist typefaces, with a high contrast between the thick and thin strokes. The angle of the contrast, though, is vertical, more in the character of pointed-nib calligraphy and modernist typefaces. This vertical stress helps to give FS Siena a strong, cultured presence on the page. Idiosyncratic italics The italics for FS Siena were developed by Krista to complement the roman upper and lower-case alphabets first drawn by Jason. Many of the letterforms are built differently to their roman counterparts: there’s a single-tier ‘a’, a looped ‘k’ and connections more towards the middle of stems, such as in the ‘m’, ‘n’ and ‘u’. These distinctions, along with generally much narrower forms than the roman, give the italics extra emphasis within body copy, where the two are side-by-side. In editorial, especially, the combination can be powerful. To cap it all… In his original draft of the typeface, Jason found inspiration in Roman square capitals of the kind most famously found on Trajan’s Column in Rome. In keeping with those ancient inscriptions, he intended the capitals of FS Siena to also work in all-upper-case text, in logotypes for luxury consumer brands and property developments, for example. A little added space between the upper-case letters lets the capitals maintain their poise in a caps-only setting, while still allowing them to work alongside the lower-case letterforms. The caps-only setting also triggers a feature called case punctuation, which adapts hyphens, brackets and other punctuation to complement the all-caps text.

While watching a 1920s Charlie Chaplin short film, Jeff Levine was taken with the unusually modern looking lettering of the title cards in that silent movie. The lettering was not only right for its time, but could also be adapted to both Art Deco and Techno applications. From this classic film comes the font Two Reeler JNL, a bit of yesterday with an eye toward the future.

1920s-era sheet music for "Tangos Pour Manon" from Brussels, Belgium had the title hand lettered in an unusual style. The alphabet was square, had serifs and the thick-and-thin stroke weights that were more popular in the upcoming Art Deco years of the 1930s and 1940s. This became the working model for Torrid Tango JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

HOKKIEN is an all caps sister to my other font Penang. It was inspired by some old pieces of Art Deco signage I had discovered in Penang Malaysia, The font is available in one weight for now. The font is loaded with plenty of foreign extras and currency symbols. I have also included an alternate cap S which works better visually in blocks of copy.

London Oatmeal - a new stylish font duo, an elegant modern art-deco inspired sans with a lot of ligatures with retro look stylish brush script. It's nice font pair for use it in blogs, posters, magazines, logo’s or greeting/wedding cards. The sans has caps lowercase, so you can combine them in many ways. More than 100 OpenType features as Alternates, Swashes and Ligatures.

Sheet music featuring a song from the 1933 film "Torch Singer" starring Claudette Colbert was the basis for Dine and Dance JNL. A multi-line Art Deco design, it epitomizes both the typographic style and the night life of the time, when supper clubs featuring big bands were at their peak. Torch Singers were female vocalists who typically sang melancholy love songs of lost love and heartbreak.

For a pulp magazine called Spicy Western Stories, it was unusual that the January 01, 1939 issue had its cover title hand lettered in an extra bold Art Deco style rather than Western influenced lettering. This did not stop the lettering from being used as the design model for a digital type revival. Pulp Magazine JNL, is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Art Museum JNL is yet another take on the classic Art Deco "solid letter" fonts that emulate the style of Futura Black. This version comes to you through the courtesy of a vintage WPA (Works Progress Administration) poster promoting national parks and Winter sports. Take note of the unusual inverted middle crossbar on the 'E' and 'F' as inspired by the poster's hand lettering.

Found within the pages of the 1927 edition of the “Welo Studio Handbook - Letter and Design for Artist and Advertisers” is an elegant Art Deco multi-line alphabet. Digitally redrawn as Theater Alley JNL, it is available in both regular and oblique versions. The font takes its name from that of a street in New York, although the street’s name uses the old-fashioned spelling of “theatre”.

The opening credits to the original (1937) version of “A Star is Born” starring Janet Gaynor and Frederic March was hand lettered in an Art Deco style with rounded terminals that emulated the look of neon signage – alluding to the glitz and glamour of 1930s Hollywood. Screen Star JNL is the digital revival of that lettering, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Rudolph Ruzicka designed his font Fairfield as a legible text font. His philosophy: The reader expects optical assistance with reading. He does not want to be distracted while interpreting and understanding the ideas of a text." Fairfield font is based on the forms of Venecian Old Face fonts as well as on the designs and details of Art Deco, giving the font a distinctive appearance"

Inspired by fonts used in financial and law arenas. Bold style reminiscent of 1920s deco era. Great font for play cash or Monopoly-themed party invitations. Vibes of Wall Street movers and shakers. Includes letters from Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Cyrillic Alphabets - with some common diacritics. Also includes small caps and English feature words like "the", "of", "with", "and", etc. for marquee style accents.

My second font for 2009, Bling is a hoot. This vaguely Deco, sparkly sans is for those heads that need bling. This is the first font released in a long time without my complete feature set. It has lining and oldstyle figures, many wild ligatures, the x-height is too high to make a small caps set worth the effort. It's just for fun. Enjoy!

The 1929 sheet music for Cole Porter's "You Do Something to Me" (from the musical stage comedy "Fifty Million Frenchmen") has the name of the play hand lettered in a bold sans with an intersecting inline. This design was the inspiration for Suggestion Box JNL. Not quite Art Nouveau, and not yet Art Deco, the typeface is nonetheless timeless in its clean, appealing style.

“The Film Daily” issue for August 30, 1927 ran an ad for Tiffany Pictures in which all of the main text was hand lettered in a sans serif style displaying the beginnings of the Art Deco movement. With their rounded terminals, the characters were designed using a round nib lettering pen. Redrawn digitally as Silent Cinema JNL, it is now available in both regular and oblique versions.

Twentieth Century Poster, designed by Sol Hess for Lanston Monotype in the 1940s, provided the inspiration for this family of faces. Although, historically, the design falls outside the time period normally considered the Art Deco era, its sensibilities are pure Art Moderne. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

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.

Skyline Hotel is a brand new hand painted font from Dathan Boardman of Open Window. It utilizes Art Deco structures but is greatly amplified by organic paint brush strokes. The font would be best used in designs that require an organic degraded look and feel. Skyline Hotel… optimal for back alley graffiti mural or a poster to begin a political revolution. Geometric essentials betrayed by fluid expression.

Equa is a font based on strict grid rules. The name "Equa" comes from the equal widths of the vertical strokes, inner spaces and counters and spaces between glyphs. Its geometric construction gives it a technical look with an art deco sensibility. A system of three "weight-widths" based various sized grids gives flexibility in uses, from large condensed headlines to small blocks of text.

St Friska, based on old movie title lettering, is made just for headlines. It comes with a slight touch and feeling of art deco but it’s designed to be contemporary in 2010 and beyond. Friska comes with a big bunch of OpenType features, so a designer can play with it like Lego, using it alongside old or new typefaces. It has stylistic sets and lots of ligatures.

Song Publisher JNL features a design based on the 1945 Art Deco-era hand lettered sheet music title "When the Old Gang's back on the Corner (Singin' Sweet Adeline Again)". It's a good thing sheet music wasn't sold by the word count found in song titles, because this twelve word example would have been more costly than titles such as "Nola", "Tenderly" or "Ciribiribin".

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.

Punch was born because we wanted to create a stencil font. At first glance, Punch gives out an audacious persona with its bold shape and form. It’s softer side is revealed in it’s carefully cut stencil lines. The balance of heavy and refined gives the font family its very own charm. Punch Pro comes in six different weights; Slab, Bracketed, Wedge, Deco, Hairline and Sans.

Balcony Seats JNL is a different take on Jeff Levine's Aisle Seats JNL. The original font was modeled from Redikut die-cut cardboard letters - used in the 1940's and 1950's for display and show card work). Although the basic letter shapes are similar, the horizontal stroke weights have been narrowed, providing a type variation with a classic Art Deco "thick and thin" look.

Esencia, a CastleType original, was inspired by a Spanish stock certificate from 1941 with 11 beautiful art deco style letters for the words "PERFUMES y ESENCIAS". Slender, elegant, with a Spanish flare. Uppercase only with numerals and punctuation. Supports all European languages that use the Latin alphabet, as well as modern Greek and most languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet. Includes alternate E, F, and S.

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.

Sky Clipper JNL is a bold, Art Deco sans serif typeface derived from the hand lettered title on a 1940s-era “Big Little Book” entitled “Flying the Sky Clipper with Winsie Atkins”. The design is available in both regular and oblique versions. “Big Little Books” were published by the Whitman Publishing company and featured short stories printed in a tiny sized book format for young children.

Modern Caps—and lowercase, too—was how Ross George described the pattern for this typeface in his Speedball Text Book. Not surprisingly, the design was used on the Beatles' original Magical Mystery Tour album, which suggested the current name. Art Deco meets Psychedelia! Both versions include the complete Unicode Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, with localization for Moldovan and Romanian.

Constellation started with a simple geometric concept in the manner of Art Deco which gradually developed to a complete typeface, both upright and italic, total of seven weights. The concept allowed the font to be designed from Ultra Light in both very light and quite black styles. This Pro font is packed with all European and Cyrillic alphabets, small caps, variable figure sets and features .

This playful Art Deco classic was inspired by one of many posters produced by the WPA by anonymous artists during the 1930s. An inline version has been added to spice up the visual interest and add a touch of class. Both versions of the font include complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1524 character sets, with localization for Moldovan, Romanian and Turkish.

Neue Rinjani is a all-caps sans serif with Wide Stretch contemporary typographic, vintage futuristic art-deco touch Streamline influence of the 1930s and 1940s. A mix from the old Euro-American signage/advertising letters and modern clean sans serif, carefully mousecrafted to bring you the genuine feel of the era. If you're into classic/vintage letter designs, then this typeface suits best for you.

A poster circa 1930s-40s designed for the WPA Federal Art Project promoted free band concerts at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York. Its headline (“Free Band Concerts”) was hand lettered in a dual line Art Deco sans serif design. Now recreated digitally, the font takes its name after the poster’s topic. Band Concert JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The design for Kiddie Show JNL is based on the hand lettering for a piece of sheet music from 1946 entitled "Wee Marionettes". While basically an Art Deco-flavored monoline typeface, it contains characters with intersecting lines and assembled parts that give it an eccentric, playful look. Available in both regular and oblique versions to add a bit of playfulness to your next project.

A little ditty from France circa the 1940s called "J'ai Rêvé Dans Tes Bras" (which loosely translated means "I've Dreamed in Your Arms") offered up its title hand lettered in an interesting Art Deco sans. This formed the basis for French Pastry JNL, a tasty typographical tidbit further preserving the wide choice of lettering styles hand-crafted for popular sheet music of past decades.

Motto is a beautiful Art Deco font in the tradition of the Italian Futurismo of the early 20th Century. Please Note: Combining Bicolor A and B you will create astounding multicolored pieces of typography. To achieve the two-tone effect shown in the samples, you need to use an application that supports layers such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe PhotoShop, CorelDRAW or Quark.

Sheet music for the 1939 song “On the Paraña” featured Art Deco hand lettering in a classic “thick and thin” style, with many stylized characters. The publisher of the song was the Theodore Presser Company of Philadelphia, so the name “Presswork” aptly fit this typographic design. Presswork JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions. For trivia buffs, the Paraña is a river in Brazil.

Mesclo is our personal take on the geometric typefaces genre. With mono-linear appearance, humanistic elements and subtle hints of Art Deco, Mesclo is a timeless typeface with dramatic oblique terminals and a welcoming, friendly roundness. The outstanding dynamic rhythm and legibility of the text contrasts with the inflexible geometry of the unusual complementary caps-only typefaces, specially developed to fulfil and enrich this type family.

Browsing online auctions and other webs sites often unearths wonderful examples of lettering from the past. A perfect example is Ritz Stencil JNL, modeled after a page from a 1930s-era lettering book. Although this font has similar characteristics to other better-known designs, there are enough unique differences to let it stand on its own as a great example of the Art Deco era.

Although many pieces of sheet music used standardized backgrounds and metal type for their titles and information, there are hundreds of songs with innovative illustrations and clever typography beckoning potential buyers with their cover art. Whether the era was Post-Victorian, Art Nouveau or Art Deco, the sheer variety of eye-catching images offered visual enticement to the potential customer whilst browsing the local music shop.