Minnesota Plaid is the baddest plaid ever! It may not be the choice pattern for golfers' slacks or bagpipers' kilts, but it has a City-like flavor with its own twist, a stylish ruggedness & toughness that could even be described as a sort of formal graffiti, thanks to the art deco swash of many of its strokes. It’s the kind of look that would be perfectly at home with hip hop or rap music, football and other sports, cars and trucks, power tools, and other manly, masculine usages. Of course, women are just as capable of having the aforementioned interests, too. Minnesota Plaid is the kind of font that can get stuck on you! Digitized by John Bomparte.

Whenever I've stayed in Munich my friend Michael Bundscherer and I go on a typographical expedition. When we talk about that, we remember the bygone world of sign painter. On one of the facades of a furniture shop in Munich, you can discover the lettering of the name in golden letters. This one convinced us because of the simple elegance Art Deco. These letters on the facade are in any case the character set, which forms the basis of this document. The missing (especially the lowercase letters and the numbers) were modeled. The "OPEN" called version tries to replicate the 3-D effect. The font is particularly suitable for shorter texts and headlines.

A typographic conundrum presented itself with the hand lettered title on the cover of the 1919 song "I Am Always Building Castles in the Air". The capitalized portion ["Castles in the Air"] was a hybrid mix of a few Art Nouveau-influenced rounded letters, yet along with this were squared letters with rounded corners (reflecting the upcoming Art Deco movement to take place in about another decade). As a complete alphabet, it didnít mix as well as in those few short words. What to do? It was decided to go with the squared look and save the rounder characters for a future project. The end result became Last Date JNL; available in both regular and oblique versions.

Pericles Pro is an attractive typeface for headlines and short passages of text which recall inscriptional lettering and playful, art deco design. There are two weights of Pericles Pro, Light and Regular, containing OpenType-enabled typographic features with alternative characters for creating eye-popping effects in headlines, book titles, banners, and greeting cards. Each Pericles Pro font includes 433 glyphs. This includes 12 stylistic alternates and 17 ligatures to mix and match with a full set of capitals, small capitals, superscript, subscript and petite small capital letters. Pericles Pro was developed to take advantage of the rich typographic OpenType features of applications Adobe Creative Suite, as well as Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and the forthcoming QuarkXPress 7.

The vintage sheet music for "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" yielded another bit of Art Deco-era lettering perfect for developing into a digital font. This time it wasn't the song title, but rather the name of the show it was from serving as the type inspiration - the Cotton Club's 1931 revue "Rhythm-Mania". Harlem's Cotton Club was an "exclusive, whites only" club; both famous for its talent and shows, yet infamous for hiring black acts but not allowing black patronage. On the sheet music, the show title was hand lettered in a bold, slightly stylized fashion which became the basis for Rhythmic Revue JNL; available in both regular and oblique versions.

Departura is a sans-serif family inspired by art deco travel posters in early 20th century, fused with modern & geometric touch. It comes in 18 styles, 9 weights and its matching italics. With those style variatons, Departura offers many possibilities to be applied in many graphic or editorial projects.The modernized retro-look makes this family great to presents any contents related to travel, history & culture in the present/modern way. Also thanks to the extended latin character set so that Departura supports 200+ latin-based languages plus Cyrillic (including the Bulgarian and Serbian characters). P.s.: The Bold Italic & ExtraLight styles are free to download, so you can use them for any projects free of charge.

Brolly Fight is a fun, slim line font with off-kilter lines. I had so much fun creating this one! It has a stick figure art deco feel. It's fun and playful, with lots of ligatures and alternates to play with. Mix and match lowercase and uppercase letters for a unique look. There are four alternate ampersands, and fun double letter ligatures, as well as playful ligatures for r, k + a, e, o, u combinations. That high lowercase o with an underscore has a twin lowercase a alternate you can access too! Mix and match capitals and lowercase (plus the ligatures & alternates) to create unique text designs. Now with a bold version!

Juicy is different… in a good way. An art deco-inspired, high-contrast, upright semi-script, layered typeface best describes the playful letterforms that make up Juicy Pro (semi-connected) and Juicy Simple (unconnected). Great care has been taken to provide a wide complement of options and intelligent letter combinations thanks to OpenType. And that’s right, Juicy *is* a layered semi-script typeface. Pro and Simple variants provide a full character set (yep, lowercase). Pro variants include a wide variety of Stylistic, Swash, and Titling Alternates to really allow the expressiveness of the typeface shine… and all characters are available in the layered font counterparts… no shortcuts were taken on the delivery of this typographic chimera.

Bellflower is a collection of highly ornamented letters contoured with flourishes and tiny bellflowers. Romantic and classic, this stylized collection looks like something straight out of a fairy tale typography garden and comes with a full set of extended accented characters. Accented characters are also included. This digital format allows colorizing of type and is a perfect font for publications that want to capture the feel of the Victorian and Art Deco eras. Article abstract: Bellflower is a collection of highly ornamented letters contoured with flourishes and tiny bellflowers. Romantic and classic, this stylized collection looks like something straight out of a fairy tale typography garden and comes with a full set of extended accented characters.

What do you get when you cross Industrial Revolution with Art Déco? The raw force of steam-powered vessels with the panache of dashing streamliners? A sturdy industrial grotesque with a swanky stylized sans? We don't know, but our Layfort is a strong contender. It's a contrasted sans-serif typeface with old-style proportions: varying letter widths create a more vivid texture than your usual contemporary sans, and the true italics are narrower than the uprights. Layfort is elegant enough for fashion, art, and luxury; yet sufficiently sincere for serious business. And at 16 styles & 750 glyphs, it's ready for complex typographic demands (try the round dots at SS09). Let your designs fly!

Future Bugler is a font based on the second logo created by Harry Warren in early 1975 for his sixth grade class newsletter, The Broadwater Bugler, at Broadwater Academy in Exmore, Virginia, on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. This font can convey several perspectives or moods. It can suggest a space-age vision of the future, or an art-deco perspective of the future as in the movie “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”. It also communicates the idea of high performance, or extreme sports, without the grunge. Also be sure to check out the upright version of this font, Future Bugler Upright, available separately. Digitized by John Bomparte. Additional tags: NFL, NFL Network, NFLN

MB Vinatage is a 6 weight font family with italics that has its roots based firmly in the type and font design of the early 20th Century. With some art deco touches in the standard caps like the N and the low bars on the E, F & H, by using the stylistic alternates these can be changed to give the font a more contemporary look. The same applies to the lower case letters, with an alternate a and g and a stylistic lowercase t. The family works great as a display font using the thin and heavy weights and just as well for smaller & bulk text. Stay traditional or go contemporary or mix it up.

Transat is a geometric sans serif typeface, with caps inspired by Art Deco signage — found inside the “Gare Maritime” (literally “sea station”) ocean liner terminals in both Le Havre and Cherbourg, France, in the early 1930s. The name “Transat” is the common shortening of “Compagnie Générale Transatlantique,” the company that operated majestic ocean liners like the SS Normandie out of Le Havre from 1862–1974. (Transat also has a more rational text-friendly companion font, " Transat Text ") Transat includes many OpenType features, such as ligatures (ff/ft/fft), small capitals, case sensitive forms, stylistic alternates, arbitrary fractions, and a full complement of proportional, tabular, and oldstyle figures. Transat is released in 5 weights plus including optically-corrected obliques.

Qi is a display sans-serif inspired, in part, by the art deco typefaces sometimes seen on old signs along rural American backroads. Unlike these signs, Qi is new, fresh, a little bit quirky, and not at all in need of repair or a fresh coat of paint. The family is comprised of six distinct fonts with more on the way. With an entire set of Central and Western European (and, of course, American) glyphs, plus a bunch of alternates and ligatures, Qi could be the perfect display face for your next sign, poster, newsletter, headline or, well, most anything else. Hey, the lowercase alone makes these fonts well worth the price.

Printers Drawer JNL continues building on a library of letterpress illustrations, cartoons, ad builders, Art Deco ad panels, ornaments, embellishments, and general miscellany. The images are re-drawn from vintage source material, and this font is jam-packed with 89 images spread throughout most all of the standard keyboard positions. This is officially the 1000th release from Jeff Levine Fonts since its inception in January of 2006. Jeff Levine Fonts aims to preserve the almost-lost artwork and lettering styles of the past within a digital type format, and often recreates the designs complete with their evident flaws, idiosyncrasies and eccentricities; allowing for a “real world” and nostalgic look to the computer generated art projects of today.

A piece of British sheet music for “You’re Sweeter than I Thought You Were” [from the 1935 film “Jack of All Trades” starring Jack Hulbert] provided inspiration for a digital typeface based on the credits for Hulbert and the film that rather than the song’s title. What’s interesting is the lettering style was influenced by Art Nouveau at a time when Art Deco was gaining in popularity. The result is Sweet Treats JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. (According to Wikipedia, John Norman ‘Jack’ Hulbert (April 24, 1892 – March 25, 1978) was a British actor, director, screenwriter and singer, specializing primarily in comedy productions, and often working alongside his wife Cicely Courtneidge.)

Make the right statement with the elegant Sabler Titling. This showstopping font features an inherent grace combined with the classic style of the Art Deco period. The subtle beauty of its letters is highlighted by the typeface’s stems, which taper towards the baseline highlight--a feature that adds clear distinction to your design. Originally inspired by a WPA poster, this typeface has been expanded to include three equally elegant proportions. Sabler Titling includes more than 60 free alternative forms, including support for most Latin-based languages. Add a hint of seduction to your work with Sabler’s high-contrast letterforms--ideal for magazines, advertisements and books on fashion, fine arts, and luxury goods of all kinds.

Celebrity is a new execution of a film type concept put forth by Willy Wirtz in 1971. The original idea, called Latus, had many irregularities and unfit characters that are now fixed and expanded in this digital version. Celebrity's construct combines extreme thicks with hairline thins to build forms that contribute to a type totality that is at once modern and techno, as well as retro-deco. Eye catching and memorable, Celebrity is ideal for use on posters, book covers, media sleeves and packaging. It also has enough geometric appeal to inspire unique logos and set attractive titling. Celebrity comes in all popular font formats, and includes a very expanded Latin character set.

Xylo is a rugged, no-nonsense typeface that was originally designed in 1924 by the Benjamin Krebs type foundry in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Even back then, Xylo must have been very popular; the design made it at least as far as England. In 1995, after finding its design in an old London printer's reference book, the Letraset Type Studio faithfully converted Xylo into digital format. A time-proven display face, Xylo will convey a feeling of power and strength in any application. Best used big in headlines or logos; Xylo exudes an expressionistic and art deco spirit that just as much at home today as it was during the roaring 20s!

CHICAGO MOONSHINE is an Art Deco serif All Caps display font. Please note that this is primarily for headlines, logos posters in large size. The character set contains Western and Eastern European latin languages, basic symbols and punctuation. The Capital letters has geometric patterns and in place of lowercase letters there are filled in Capitals. Inquiries, feedback, customisation requests and/or extra characters please contact@rolandhusedesign.com or via rolandhuse.com * * * Background image (taken from Unsplash) credits: Chicago at night : Prafulla Chandra https://unsplash.com/@prafulla90 Moon I photoshopped onto the night skyline: Jason Darrell https://unsplash.com/@zebedeerox Moonshine Enjoy & Cheers : bartender holding a shot of liquor by Joel Herzog from unsplash https://unsplash.com/@joel_herzog Street Sign: Bruno Martins https://unsplash.com/@brunus

Straits is an oddball fun ALL-CAPS font, a modern take / re-imagining of some old Art Deco signage and a sister to my other font Penang. The font is available in 2 weights for now, a light and a medium. In general I think ALL-CAPS steal 26 characters from you, so each letter in each case is a little different, however subtly. This being an ALL-CAPS font I imagine it will work best in Headlines and other bold statements, but buy it and find out. The font is loaded with plenty of extras and glyphs. This was designed to be fun, so I hope you can have some with it.

Cover art for the 1933 sheet music of Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler's "Stormy Weather" (from the musical production "Cotton Club Parade") listed the cast of the show in a condensed hand lettered sans that typified the 1930s and the Art Deco era. This served as the inspiration for Uptown Review JNL; available in both regular and oblique versions. The Cotton Club was a whites-only night club which showcased black acts, and was originally located on 145th Street in Harlem from 1923 to 1935, then existed for a short time in the New York theater district from 1936 to 1940. After the Broadway incarnation of the club closed, its space was taken over by the Latin Quarter.

A 1930s WPA (Works Projects Administration) poster advertising a play entitled “Abraham Lincoln, The Great Commoner” had the play’s name done in a hand-lettered Art Deco sans. This is the basis for Art Project JNL. According to Wikipedia, “the Works Progress Administration (renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA) was the largest and most ambitious American New Deal agency, employing millions of unemployed people (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. In a much smaller but more famous project, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.”

Coil feels comfortable like a well-worn pair of shoes. It could easily pass for an assertive industrial European sans serif of the early 1960s with its slight reverse contrast, monotonous proportions, and squared-off curves, if not for its less predictable side. What appears initially as ellipses upon closer inspection turns out to be irregular shapes, closer to an inverted egg than an oval. The s looks topsy-turvy with its higher curve that is larger than the lower. Some terminal strokes overhang the bowl (as in the a), others open flat (as in the Q, the f, the j, and the t). The resulting effect shakes up this seemingly “retro” face just to make it new. Our midcentury recollections are slightly distorted and reinterpreted by this ironic typeface making it fresh while deceptively cozy and familiar. Coil’s high x-height and even texture make it readable even in small sizes despite its tight apertures. Available in four weights with their italics, with two sets of figures, fractions, and alternates for Extended Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Designed by Vyacheslav Kirilenko and Gayaneh Bagdasaryan, 2020-21.

Googie Architecture, also known as "Midcentury Coffee Shop Modern," was born in California during the Atomic Age. Martini at Joe's is based on lettering from several historic Googie sources - many of which no longer exist. The futuristic Martini at Joe's collection was named for Northern California's famous Italian-themed "Joe's" restaurants, some of which are still serving up large portions of charbroiled beef steak, canned buttered veggies and pretty decent martinis. Martini at Joe's contains many fabulous typographic extras – and is available in single font packages or as a 15 font interchangeable Megaset (with "italic-esque" obliques and "retro obliques"). Martini at Joe's is perfect for use as commercial signage, on the menu for your coffee shop, supper club, tiki bar, fish grotto, smorgy, space port or destination casino. It also holds its own in any vintage store, on greeting cards, t-shirts, hi-brow gallery announcements, product skins, your 'zine masthead, on the faceplate of your futuristic microwave oven, tv dinner packaging, at millionaire's conferences or even embellishing the fuselage of your latest jet airline venture. Martini at Joe's: there's no better way to say, "Hold the olive, I'm having a moment."

Stray might be the lonesome cowboy in this big odd world, but it's his just public façade. Stray is handsome player that works well with any team or in any environment. He doesn't have a horse, but he can be the one, he can carry any weight. OK, let's talk serious now: Stray is distinctive geometric sans serif family in 9 weights and matching Italics. By it's design, Stray flirts with humanistic typefaces in some elements, while on the other side, we can see vintage letter forms as well. It is well balanced typeface, fully legible in any (reasonable) size, with power to present versatile tasks and situations. Specific joining of letter stem and bowl is one of design characteristics of Stray, so it is not just another geometric sans family, it really differs in it's own details. Contains extended Latin character map support and Cyrillic (no localizations, sorry). As any serious working horse family, it is equipped with decent OpenType features like Small Caps (for basic Latin only), Fractions, Tabular Figures, Denominator, Numerator, Ordinals and Ligatures. It also comes with small interesting set of dingbats. This Stray is not homeless, he just looks for the proper job :-)

Chalky Spritely and full of personality, FS Sammy is a hand-drawn font with a chalky texture, available in one weight only. Give Sammy a run in branding, packaging or billboard advertising for a fresh, informal, honest personality. Calligraphic Too many script fonts have a rushed and thrown-together feel about them. It’s a deceptively complex feat to achieve forms that hold together neatly in text yet still have the breezy, natural air of real handwriting. That’s FS Sammy: considered and crafted. Pencil FS Sammy was originally drawn for a drinks manufacturer by Fontsmith’s calligrapher, Sehmi Satwinder, who made handwritten impressions with a large soft pencil on textured watercolour paper. The digital interpretation of Sehmi’s letters was pushed to its limits and, after a lot of experimentation, a balanced alphabet was achieved. Texture and spirit FS Sammy’s success and uniqueness within the script font category is down to its versatility. In the large text of billboard advertising or headlines, all of its texture comes to life, and small, on menus or booklets, it conveys all of the spirit and personality of a considered piece of handwriting.