Imagine America in the 1930s. A gangster flick with Al Capone, a crime novel featuring Philip Marlowe. Our hero in a fedora sits in a classy bar, orders a double bourbon, lights a cigar and eyes the evening paper. He turns the pages, reading about a bank heist over on Third Avenue, a scandal involving a baseball player, a small ad for a general practitioner and a large spread about a famous law firm. What do the bottle of booze and the majestic facade of the bank have in common? The elegant baseball uniform and trustworthy attorneys? - Copperplate Gothic - When Frederick William Goudy created his legendary typeface in 1901, it went on to literally become the symbol of early 20th century America. Tiny serifs, characteristically broad letterforms, and particularly bold titles decorated calling cards at 6-point size, enormous bronze-cast logos, newspaper headlines, restaurant menus and more. This was the golden age of Copperplate, lasting up until the arrival of die neue Typografie and monospaced grotesques in the 1960s. Then the typeface almost completely disappeared. It made a partial comeback with the advent of the personal computer; digitizations of varying quality appeared, and one version even became a standard font in Adobe programs. This may have played a role in Copperplate later being used in DIY projects and amateur designs, which harmed its reputation. Copperplate New has been created to revive the faded glory of the original design. Formally, the new typeface expands the existing weight and proportional extremes. The slight serifs are reduced even further, making the typeface sans-like at smaller point sizes and improving readability. In contrast, at large point sizes it retains all of its original character. Decorative inline & shadow styles have been added and both have been created in all five proportions, making it easy to adapt the typesetting to the format you need. Despite these changes and innovations, Copperplate New remains true to Goudy’s original design and represents a snazzy way to evoke a golden era in American culture. Specimen: http://carontwice.com/files/specimen_Copperplate_New.pdf

Designed to be set in big, large and huge sizes in classic TNT (tight-not-touching) style, Benguiat Caslon is dynamite for a wide range of display demands. We also included outline and drop-shadow versions as well as numerous swash caps, ligatures, contextual alternates and automatically-shifting punctuation. Ed Benguiat originally designed this alphabet for the Photo-Lettering library during his tenure as the legendary type house’s art director. When we purchased Photo-Lettering in 2003, one of the first things we did was start picking some of our favorite films to digitize as fonts. Photo-Lettering partner Christian Schwartz chose this expressive serif specimen for its high contrast strokes that stand up to the most vigorous display typography demands without withering against pesky design limitations like screen resolution, ink spread and dot gain. FEATURES: Alternate characters, ligatures and contextual substitutions add an unexpected flair to words and phrases. We also provided a drop shadow to add depth and dimension. Shifting punctuation marks take care of those optical tricks so you don't have to. A delicately expressive outline version adds color even in black and white. BENGUIAT CASLON CREDITS: Typeface Design: Ed Benguiat Typeface Digitization: Christian Schwartz, Bas Smidt Typeface Production: Ben Kiel, Jason Campbell Like all good subversives, House Industries hides in plain sight while amplifying the look, feel and style of the world’s most interesting brands, products and people. Based in Delaware, visually influencing the world.

Here I am, once again digging up 60-year sign lettering and trying to reconcile it with the typography of my own time. The truth is I've had this particular Alf Becker alphabet in my sights for a few years now. But in the typical way chaos shuffles the days, Buffet Script and Whomp won the battle for my attentions way back when, then Storefront beat the odds by a nose a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, revisiting Alf Becker’s work is always a breath of fresh air for me, not to mention the ego boost I get from confirming that I can still hack my way through the challenges, which is something I think people ask themselves about more often as they get older. You can never tell what may influence your work, or in this case remind you to dig it out of dust drawers and finally mould it into one of your own experiences. On my recent visits to the States and Canada, I noticed that quite a few high-end steak houses try their best to recreate an urban American 1930s atmosphere. This is quite evident in their menus, wall art, lighting, music, and so on. The ambience says your money is well spent here, because your food was originally choice-cut by a butcher who wears a suit, cooked by a chef who may be your neighbour 20 minutes from downtown, and delivered by a waitress who can do the Charleston when the lights dim and who just wouldn't mind laughing with you over drinks at the bar later. So Steak is just that, a face for menus and wall art in those places that see themselves in the kind of jazzy, noirish world where one-liners rule and exclamation points are part of a foreign language. As is usual with my lettering-inspired faces, there is very little left of the original Alf Becker alphabet. Of course, the challenges present in bringing typographic functionality to what is essentially pure hand lettering gives the spirit of the original art a hell of a rollercoaster ride. But I think that spirit survived the adventure, and may in fact be even somewhat magnified here. This font is over 850 glyphs. It’s loaded with ligatures, swashes, ending forms, alternates, ascender and descender variations, and extended Latin language support. Steak comes in 3 versions. According to your taste you can choose Barbecue, Braised or Smoked. It’s up to you!

Adinah is a lively brush script with a strong sense of rhythm. Adinah’s expressive letterforms are based on pointed brush calligraphy with a hint of sign painting. This Sign painting influence reveals itself the further you dig into the family styles. Eight combined styles are complimented by a sub family of Six Layered Font options.

Belvedere is an Italian word that translates as ‘beautiful outlook’ and describes a pavillion or summer house on high ground with commanding views. It has grace, style and a touch of class, all of which I've tried to incorporate in this font family. The snazzy graphics are by my friend and colleague Dan Austin.

Bellissa is a beautiful Calligraphy font designed with an incredibly modern feel. This font is PUA encoded which means you can access all of the glyphs and swashes with ease! It features a varying baseline, gorgeous glyphs and stunning Swash. Use this gorgeous and unique Calligraphy font to bring any DIY project to life!

The Nov. 26, 1921 issue of “The Moving Picture World” carried an ad for the dramatic film “For Your Daughter’s Sake” (originally tilted “The Common Sin” and produced in 1920). Hand lettered in an Art Nouveau sans serif style, the ad copy inspired Movie Drama JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Madisonian has been found in a catalogue of the New York Bruce type-foundry, dated 1859. The lower cases have the feeling of a Bodoni Italic and the initials have a "spencerian" touch. This font did exist originaly in a single weight. The family has been extended with a bold and an engraved version.

An old ad for Cointreau Triple Sec Liquor featured a bolder variant of the lettering style found in a set of vintage tin stencils that were the model for French Stencil JNL. This is now available as Belle Epoque Stencil JNL, in both regular and oblique versions. “Belle Epoque” means “beautiful era” in French.

Another of the “must have” wood types for those doing poster work with an old-time flavor. Very readable, therefore very useful. We did ads for an old western tourist railroad, and used this often. William Page was a prolific designer of wood types, and his fonts were at every poster print shop we visited.

Aulletta is a beautiful and flowing script font. Its modern and classy look makes it the perfect font for creating outstanding DIY projects! This font is PUA encoded which means you can access all of the cute glyphs and swashes with ease! It also features a wealth of special features including alternate glyphs and ligatures.