An interesting hand lettered sans serif type style with a “brush stroke” feel was used for various article headlines in the October, 1938 issue of “Radio Stars” magazine.

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.

Titles from the 1938 movie "Service Deluxe" starring Vincent Price and Constance Bennett were the inspiration for the similarly named Art Deco typeface Service Deluxe JNL.

Sometimes the simplest ideas yield more than one result. The basic “dot matrix” design of aligned circles that was the basis for Transactive JNL also yielded Zera JNL (connected rings) and Pillow Puff JNL (fluffy and cloud-like lettering). One more design was originally cast aside. A separate file is available for filling in the letters with a colored background, however minute adjustments may be needed due to the fact that each drawing or design software program has its own characteristics and quirks. NOTE: DO NOT purchase the fill font as a “stand alone” type face because of the difference in spacing and alignment. For the dot matrix look in your work, please purchase Transactive JNL.

Call the lettering French Clarendon Condensed, call it circus lettering, wanted poster type or Old West letters, the style of this typeface is one of the most recognizable and evokes all of the above images and more. Tent Show JNL was re-drawn from examples of a vintage set of wood type, and contains all of the eccentricities that are present in these hand-routed classic letter forms.

Shipping stencils cut on an antique machine with its somewhat crude slab serif type design inspired Container Stencil JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Free-form hand lettering on a 1979 poster for the Washington, D.C. exhibition of watercolors and etchings by the Elie Abrahami inspired Art Director JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. This type of lettering was most popular in the late 50s through the mid-60s for movie titles, greeting cards and poster text.

Heller Sans JNL is based on the main letterforms of an experimental alphabet designed by Steven Heller; noted author of over 170 books on design and visual culture. Some modifications were made in turning his design into a digital font. In his own words, here is the background to this typeface: “I recently recovered this from the junk heap. It is a yellowing photostat of my first and only typeface design (1969-70). Total folly! At the time I was smitten by Art Moderne lettering. I called it “Klaus Boobala Bold” because I liked the K and B. I’ve lost the letters S through Z, which were made. The letters were drawn with compass, Techno pen (that frequently clogged). as well as a triangle and T-square. The inline and outline made no real logical sense. I based the design, in part, on Kabel, Avant Garde and it was a product of whatever I could accomplish with those tools. The caps-only alphabet was photographed and produced as a film negative that was cut in foot-long strips and spliced to fit on a Typositor reel. Sadly, the negatives made for the font were too brittle and the splice snapped apart in the Typositor. I worked on it for well over a month and used the face only once. I realized with this attempt, like so many other times I attempted different challenges, that type design — indeed mechanical drawing — was not my strong suit.” Heller Sans JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Another batch of vintage letterpress cartoons, cuts, dingbats and embellishments is offered in Print Sellers JNL.

Handmade Roman JNL is a simple and clean serif design. Perfect for headlines or titles, this condensed serif font gets attention without being overly formal.

The deep well of creativity that is the era of the hand lettered sheet music title page brings forth Nouveau Nights JNL. Re-drawn from a period example of the 1920s, this titling font perfectly captures the warm "human" look of pen and ink lettering, long before the advent of "perfect" digital type.

The hand lettering found on the cover of the 1912 sheet music for "Somebody Else is Getting It" featured a blockish Art Nouveau style with rounded corners and a very lurid title [although it likely had a more innocent meaning in those days than the casual observer might interpret today]. Now available as Nouveau Standard JNL, it is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Welcome Home JNL gets its inspiration from metal letters and numbers affixed to homes, posts and mailboxes in the 1920s and 1930s. The block style of lettering that was silk screened onto enameled rectangles of steel was especially popular during that time period. This font has a limited character set.

Oceanfront Property JNL was modeled from the hand lettered title on the cover of the 1932 sheet music for "There's Oceans of Love by the Beautiful Sea". A simple sans, it still reflects the beginnings of the Art Deco Era with its approach to letter forms and varying widths. This type design is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Pleasant Evening JNL was modeled after an Art Nouveau serif typeface named ‘Racine’ [found in the 1881 Barnhart Bros. & Spindler type specimen book] and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Van Wyck JNL was inspired by some old printing found in a catalog.

Wood Line JNL is based on a printed example of a vintage handmade wood type. This sans serif digital font 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.

Online auctions offer a myriad of unique, vintage and novel lettering devices – all which are fertile ground for typographic inspiration. In this instance, a set of stamped metal letters for outdoor signage was the basis for Stamped Metal JNL. Some of the non-traditional letter weights makes these simple block letters a wonderful change of pace for bold, attention-getting headlines.

Calendar Blocks JNL was inspired by old-fashioned wood type used to assemble calendar pages in the days of letterpress printing. The A-Z keystrokes contain the dates 1-26. The lower case a-z keystrokes have the remaining dates 27-31, along with the split dates 23/30 and 24/31 and blank boxes. The days of the week are located on the 1-7 keys.

Spring Fashion JNL was modeled after an example of hand lettering from an old book displayed on an online auction. Rendered in lower case only with basic punctuation, this type design was made specifically for headlines. Its light, airy personality adds charm to simple ad copy or titles.

Named for a Manhattan neighborhood, Morningside Heights JNL is based on lettering found on a 1920s-era piece of sheet music. Part of the charm of hand lettering from the Art Nouveau era is found in the non-standard line thicknesses, experimental character shapes and varying character widths.

Take a classic wood type design, add some white panels to parts of the letters and numbers and you end up with Partial Eclipse JNL, a novelty display font that adds a clean, yet unique look to your digital or print project. A little experimentation can go a long way!

Spur Stencil JNL gets its inspiration from the single word "stencils" lettered on a vintage package of Glass Wax Christmas stencils.

An ad in the Oct. 27, 1919 issue of the trade magazine “The Moving Picture World” promoted “Princess Virtue” from Bluebird Pictures starring Mae Murray – The Adorable [as noted by the movie studio in the ad]. The Art Nouveau hand lettering emulated the style usually drawn with a round nib pen, but was given a specialized treatment for the ad. It was re-drawn in a more traditional ‘pen nib’ look for digital revival. The end result is Silent Movies JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Bit Player JNL is the extra-condensed companion font to Cast and Crew JNL, and features an additional oblique version. Useful wherever a large block of copy text needs to fit into a constrained space, Bit Player JNL can be applied to movie title credits, disclaimers, warranty information, end user license agreements and similar projects.

Stuffed Shirt JNL acquires its name from a term popularized during the years when the Art Deco period flourished. The Great Depression further widened the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. Occasionally, some of those that 'had' (and some who pretended they did) came off as standoffish, egotistical and pompously arrogant. Such individuals were referred to as a "stuffed shirt"; a blowhard who thought he was better than others. In this case, Stuffed Shirt JNL is no more than a dual-line adaptation of Playwright JNL, itself an interpretation of the classic Broadway type design in a way that emulates the hand lettering of old-time sign painters.

Old Favorites JNL is a collection of over 35 dingbats based on designs from the early days of printing. These timeless images will fill a variety of needs.

The brand marking on a vintage wooden shipping case for bottles of Mission Naturally Good Orange Soda inspired Beverage Stencil JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. Mission was a popular soda in California from about 1929 through 1970.

Letterpress Sorts JNL adds to the growing library at Jeff Levine Fonts of classic dingbats, embellishments, cartoons, ornaments, etc. all re-drawn from vintage source material.

Eckhardt Titling JNL is another treatment of a popular typeface that lends itself well to the hand-lettered sign and display work of days past. A clean sans serif with a slight touch of Art Deco, this font renders well from small point sizes to large posters. As with other fonts in this series, it is named in honor of Jeff Levine’s good friend Albert Eckhardt, Jr. who owned Allied Signs in Miami, Florida from 1959 until his passing.

French Wine JNL is an Art Deco thick-and-thin type design based on the hand lettering from a vintage poster for Monarch Cabernet Sauvignon wine. The typeface is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Record Jacket JNL gives an outline treatment to the popular typeface used on record album covers in the 1960s and 1970s, and is based on Jeff Levine's Album Cover JNL.

The February 19, 1923 issue of The Film Daily contained an ad for Mack Sennett's new Ben Turpin comedy entitled "The Shriek of Araby". No doubt this was a spoof of the popular Rudolph Valentino film "The Sheik". The ad tries to emulate Mideastern or Arabic typography via a standard Western alphabet. It somewhat captures the flavor, but its free-form hand lettering comes off as more of a novelty-type style. This is now available digitally as Desert Sands JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Conrad X. 'Cobb' Shinn (Sept. 4, 1887- Jan. 28, 1951) was a Fillmore, Indiana-born post card illustrator who sold a series of successful novelty postcard lines which included (among others) Charlie Chaplin, automobiles and the Dutch culture in the beginning years of the 20th Century. After serving in World War I, Shinn found the market for novelty postcards dwindling, and he also lent his artistic skills to cartoon features and illustrating many children's books [including his own, under the nickname 'Uncle Cobb'] which taught easy step-by-step drawing methods. Some time in the 1920s, he eventually migrated into the field of supplying electrotypes and stereotypes of 'stock cuts' of photos and line art to the printing trade. In the days of letterpress printing, this was the forerunner of paper clip art and its successor, electronic clip art. Purchasing many of his designs from 'journeyman' artists of the time, the diversity of Cobb Shinn's stock cuts library grew with the passing years, reflecting changing times, styles and topics. Some of the illustrators whose signed works were presented in Shinn's 'CUTalogs' [as he called his stock cuts catalogs] include Mary Clemmitt, Louis H. Hippe, E.C. Klinge, Nelson White, Harvey Fuller, Bess Livings, Lois Head, Harvey Peake and Van Tuyl. Upon his passing in 1951, it's not known how long the Indianapolis-based company existed before finally closing its doors. One of the more popular series of cartoons were the line illustrations of men and women affectionately called 'little big head guys' by many modern fans of these cuts because the heads of the characters were drawn somewhat larger than the rest of their bodies. Shinn Kickers JNL is a collection twenty-six of these illustrations, and just like a kick in the shin (as the pun in the name implies), these charming cartoons get your attention.

The sheet music for the 1917 song "Wake Up Virginia (and Prepare for Your Wedding Day)" features a hand lettered title in a sans serif Art Nouveau design with stencil influences. This was the inspiration for Nouveau Stencil JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Squared letters with rounded corners – Deco stylized letter forms – some characters with ‘hook’ semi-serifs – such is the mixed styles that comprise the hand lettered title “United We Stand” on a 1940s-era piece of sheet music. This unusual conglomeration of character shapes inspired the aptly named Hybrid Deco JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Franklin Stencil JNL is based on the classic and perennial workhorse design of Franklin Gothic Condensed and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Snack Shop JNL draws its basic influence from the capital letters of Jeff Levine's Two Reeler JNL, but is a bolder, outline design - looking more like sign lettering than a title font from a silent movie.

Tribal Council JNL is a variant of Fun and Games JNL with a linocut look that emulates jungle or tribal lettering.