Songs of the early 1900s were anything but the status quo in topic or style. Excessively long titles, novelty tunes and "foreign themes" permeated the piles of sheet music in the local music shops. 1916's "Oh How She Could Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki Woo (That's Love in Honolu)" covered a number of these quirks within one publication. This Hawaiian-tinged song evoked the mysterious ways of the South Seas islands, despite the abridging of Honolulu to "Honolu". Nonetheless, the hand lettered title of this particular piece of sheet music featured an Art Nouveau-influenced bold block letter with rounded corners. It's now available digitally as Smooth Sailing JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Valet is deco moderne the way it was meant to be: Big, bold, classy, flashy, and clean at the seams. Its message is rich, strong, confident and reliable. Valet tells you that it’s used to thorns being part of every rose, that it can handle sharp objects just fine, and that it'd much prefer buying the tuxedo rather than renting it. This font grew out of an uncredited early 1970s all-cap film type called Expression. An appropriate deco lowercase was added, along with small caps, zippy titling caps, and Pan-European language support. With over 9250 glyphs, we bow our heads with the admission that we kind of got carried away with it.

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

Payload began as an early concept for Loaded magazine, and here is developed into a clean outline and rough splattery spraycan version. In this font, the upper and lower case characters are subtly different enabling a more realistic appearance to be achieved by ßipping between cases whenever characters occur together in pairs. Wide and Narrow styles of this popular font have been subsequently been added. This font is reminicent of military stencilling, urban graffiti and freight packaging. The "Outline" version, as before, is a carefully weighted addition where the thickness of the stroke is identical to the stencil gap. It has also been respaced and rekerned to allow for the additional character spread.

Titling Stencil JNL is an extra bold stencil treatment of R. Hunter Middleton’s ‘Karnak’ (produced in 1936 for Ludlow) and is a companion font to both Bookkeeping JNL and Bookkeeper JNL (a lightweight version of the type design). Middleton based his ‘Karnak’ family of typefaces on the geometric slab-serif ‘Memphis’, which was designed in 1929 by Dr. Rudolf Wolf and released originally by the Stempel Type Foundry of Germany. According to Wikipedia, ‘Karnak’ was named after the Karnak Temple Complex in Egypt, in reference to the fact that early slab serifs were often called “Egyptians” as an exoticism by nineteenth-century type founders.” Titling Stencil JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

In the nineteen-twenties and early thirties, all display typography flourished in Europe. This was especially true in Germany, where poster design set a high creative standard, stimulating the design of a fantastic group of dramatic display letterforms. Richard Lipton designed Riquet after being inspired by a handful of freehand capital and lowercase letters on posters designed by lettering and poster artist Ludwig Hohlwein. He expanded this small group of display letterforms into a variable family with a weight axis. Riquet is a low contrast, delightfully casual typeface with 6 weights and the perfect selection of alternates. All of which gives an expressive look of precisely inked letters perfect for any packaging or branding project.

Dexter is an original new typeface creation by Alex Kaczun. It is a warmer, more sophisticated grotesque that is both fun and interesting. Its tight letter spacing and narrow proportions make the typeface particularly well suited for display sizes and headlines. This intriguing sans with distinctive letter shapes is typical for display fonts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dexter is ideal for titles and headlines looking for impact and style. Dexter is also an excellent choice for magazines, books, posters, brochures, flyers, etc. The large Pro font character set, which supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages, also includes a corresponding small caps font along with old style figures.

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.

Scanno is a modern sans serif typeface that comes in eight weights and one condensed. Each weight has an oblique. It is a versatile family that is suitable for body, headline, and display text on screen or in print. Its open forms set a welcoming and friendly tone that renders well in all media. Scanno is warm and modern with a nostalgic hint of early sans serifs. It encapsulates both humanist and geometric qualities, while maintaining a sense of timelessness and neutrality, thus opening itself to a wide range of uses. Supported languages: Western European; Danish, Dutch, English, Icelandic, Italian, German, Finnish, Flemish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. Pan African Latin

The Applied Sans™ family is a reinterpretation of the first sans serif typefaces used in what was then called, “jobbing or trade” work – typefaces like Venus and Ideal Grotesk. While built on the foundation of these late 19th and early 20th century designs, Applied Sans adds to it all the required features for modern typographic communication. The design benefits from a large x-height, open counters, generous apertures and a subtle modulation in stroke weight. These ensure character legibility and make for a design that is inviting and easy to read. Applied Sans family’s wide range, precise gradation of weights and extensive language support guarantees the design’s effectiveness in a wide and varied range of uses.

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.

Varese is a geometric and modular typeface inspired by early 1900s European posters. It is heavy and excellent for display or large body text. The design of this font explores the boundaries between unity and variety in a playful rhythmic dance. Varese will give your content a warm, nostalgic, robust, and friendly tone. The lowercase is similar in form to the uppercase, yet many of the lowercase letters have interior spaces and several have some variations on the form. The lowercase also has two alternate glyph sets that are half size and align with cap height. One of the alternate glyph sets has an underline and the other set does not. Varese Soft has a sibling, Varese.

Inspired by the large American wood type of the Wild West, Richard Yeend created Italienne Std in 2002. Italienne Std is both very condensed and very decorative. It sports heavy, band like serifs, reminiscent of other italienne-style fonts, like Westside. Italienne-style fonts rose in popularity during the early 19th Century, when designers were first beginning to experiment with extreme contrast within letterforms, and across lines of text. Interestingly enough, letterforms with similar designs were just as common during the 1970s as during the 1870s, so you may use Italienne Std for applications ranging from country music concerts to disco parties. Italienne Std is part of the Take Type 5 collection from Liinotype GmbH."

A sheet music edition of an early 1900s song entitled "You Taught Me How to Love You, Now Teach Me to Forget" was hand lettered in a free-form Art Nouveau style that combined varying line widths and character shapes. This unrestricted style of lettering was popularly embraced and revived by the hippie counterculture of the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s through their rock concert posters, record album covers and tee shirt graphics. It is now available digitally as Nouveau Artiste JNL. As a side note, a 1940s reprint of the sheet music was done in a popular metal typeface, which was also redrawn digitally and available as Elite Resort JNL [in both regular and oblique versions].

Pill Gothic walks the tightrope between a heads down, hard working, utilitarian sans and something that stands out, saying, "Look at me!" Designers looking for a type that will work in blocks of text for callouts, captions and headlines will find that unique balance with Pill. Pill Gothic asks the question: what is the effect of a few truly unique characters on the meaning of a type? In particular, the 'a' and the 'g', while relating strongly to the forms of the other characters, stand out from the traditional milieu of sans serif types. The name Pill Gothic came from early studies of the condensed weight where the lower case characters had the shape of a pill capsule.

American Uncial™ was designed by Victor Hammer in 1943. Uncial typefaces consist of letter forms of the Capitalis Monumentalis and the majescule cursive. The origins of Uncial faces date back to the 5th century. In 1953, American Uncial was expanded to include some new figures, also designed by Hammer, and was rereleased by Klingspor with the name Neue Hammer Unziale. The forms are based on old scripts in books of antiquity and the early Middle Ages and the font is a new variation of a classic. Neue Hammer Unziale font has been a favorite for certificates and diplomas and is recommended for headlines and shorter texts in a point size of 12 or larger.

19th Century Retro is a re-design of an official German font style (called ‘Fraktur’) which was used in official documents in the 19th and early 20th century. There is an alternative small letter ‘s’ which you generate by typing the @ sign. This alternative letter was the original small letter s which was printed in the middle and at the beginning of a word originally (for example in the words ‘slightly’ and ‘best’). However, if the s was at the end, the normal small letter s was used (for example in the words ‘it's’ and ‘columns’). For readability reasons I decided to put the normal small letter s onto the s-key on your keyboard.

Twentieth Century was designed and drawn by Sol Hess in the Lanston Monotype drawing office between 1936 and 1947. The first weights were added to the Monotype typeface library in 1959. Twentieth Century is based on geometric shapes which originated in Germany in the early 1920's and became an integral part of the Bauhaus movement of that time. Form and function became the key words, unnecessary decoration was scorned. This clean cut, sans serif with geometric shapes was most appropriate. The lighter weights of the Twentieth Century font family can be used for text setting; the Twentieth Century bold and condensed fonts are suitable for display in headlines and advertising. Commonly spelled 20th Century.

Alternate Gothic was designed by Morris Fuller Benton for American Typefounders Company in 1903. All three weights of Alternate Gothic are bold and narrow. In fact, this face is essentially a condensed version of Benton’s other well-known sans serif types, Franklin Gothic and News Gothic. In the early twentieth century, the modern concept of type “families” had not yet been formed — and though Benton designed these sans serifs to harmonize with each other, the foundry gave them different names. Robust, dark, and coolly competent, Alternate Gothic is a good choice when strong typographic statements must fit into tight spaces. As a modern usage, it is currently the font of YouTube’s homepage logo.

ITC Hornpype is the work of California freelance designer Mott Jordan, a cheerful display face inspired in part by the cartoons of the 1920s and 30s. According to Jordan, the typeface's name and three-dimensional quality can be traced to an early cartoon in which a cat blows on a horn with such force that the instrument bulges out. For the three-dimensional look, Jordan added highlights to the thicker strokes to create letters that look as though they were, in his words, squeezed from a toothpaste tube". Jordan suggests his eye-catching font for shorter words in larger point sizes. ITC Hornpype is a lively font perfect for anything needing a "fun, goofy" look."

Westside was designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1989 and is a kind of wood type. It is reminiscent of dusty streets, Wild West heroes and swinging saloon doors. The origins of this kind of typeface can be found in the early 19th century. Called Italian or Italienne, these typefaces quickly became very popular. They are distinguished by square serifs whose width is larger than the stroke width of the characters. When the letters are set together, the heavy serifs build dark horizontal bands. Westside is a particularly decorative typeface which will have a marked effect when used expertly. It is perfect for headlines in larger point sizes, which will highlight its special character.

The ITC Blair™ typeface is a revival and reimaging of an early 20th century metal typeface of the same name. Even though only available as single weights of extended and condensed proportions, metal fonts of the face were sold well into the 1950s. In 1997, Jim Spiece resurrected the original extended design for digital imaging and, in the process, added two new weights. Almost 20 years later, he collaborated with Monotype type designers to extend the basic family again. The result was a new suite of three condensed designs and italic complements for all the roman weights. The family also benefits from a large set of alternative glyphs and many OpenType® features.

Isidora Sans is a new version of the bestselling font Isidora (released a year ago). The absence of terminals gives this new typeface a cleaner and more geometric look, keeping the essence and structure of the classic sans fonts of the early 20th Century yet with a fresh, clean and contemporary appearance. Isidora Sans consists of two subfamilies of 7 weights, ranging from Thin to Black, with matching italics, giving a total of 28 fonts. Isidora Sans is the perfect font for publishing, titles, books, magazines and corporate design. Its Alt version is ideal for logotypes, branding, packaging, and use on web and Tv. The family contains a set of 416 characters supporting 207 different languages.

Curwen Sans is a monoline sans-serif dating from the early twentieth century. Though contemporary with Johnston’s Underground and Gill Sans, and emerging from the same artistic milieu, Curwen Sans was created solely for in-house use at the Curwen Press in London so never achieved a wide audience or recognition. The original face was cut only in a Medium weight, but the new digital family consists of four weights, each with an optically corrected Oblique, and all containing a full complement of Latin Extended-A characters. K-Type Curwen Sans comprises three packages: • Basic Family (Regular, Oblique, Bold, and Bold Oblique) • Light (Light and Light Oblique) • Medium (Medium and Medium Oblique)

Tafel is Sudtipos’ contemporary take on early- to mid-century geometric fonts; it has the intrinsic qualities of a geometric without following the strict rules they customarily employ. Tafel is notable for its versatility as it works well in both small and display sizes; its sophisticated elegance and refined simplicity make it ideal for corporate identities, street signage, fashion brands, luxury packaging and much more. From Thin to Black, Tafel is comprised of 8 weights, 3 sets of Small Caps with different x-heights (Big Caps, Small Caps and Petite Caps), many alternative glyphs and a complete range of figures including old-style figures with matching italics. The extended character set supports Central, Western and Eastern European languages.

A “latin” alphabet modelled on the ethiopian Ge'ez script - an experiment that works. Amhara was created by transferring the typical forms of the Ethiopian Amharic script to the west European alphabet. Because Amharic is traditionally written with an expanded pen tip, it shows the typical ductus also characteristic of the uncial scripts of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. So this font »Amhara« has a somewhat sacramental effect. And, although the individual forms look foreign, the overall picture is strangely familiar. The two styles of »Amhara« include a number of ligatures which dispose of many non-attractive letter combinations. Stylistic alternates are available for some letters, too. Read more about this font at ingoFonts...

Hopeless Diamond is a contemporary display typeface inspired by the sculptural muscle of 19th century carved lettering and the radical forms of the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber and the F-117 Nighthawk stealth strike aircraft. The typeface itself contains three different styles, each with an italic and an alternate character set that can be used to generate a number of interesting permutations. The name was taken from the derisive term that test pilots used for Have Blue, a late '70s stealth demonstration aircraft –and early prototype for the F-117— designed and built by Lockheed's Skunkworks division. Due to its unusual shape and departure from received aerodynamic wisdom, Have Blue was referred to as the ‘Hopeless Diamond’.

Candida roman was designed by Jakob Erbar and appeared after his death with the typeface foundry Ludwig & Mayer in Frankfurt am Main in 1936. Due to the original designer’s death, the italic was designed by Walter Höhnisch shortly thereafter. In 1945 the roman was reworked, the breadth of the figures was reduced and the strokes made heavier. The bold weight followed in 1951. Later the typeface was expanded with further weights, which have for the most part fallen out of use. Three weights can still be found in catalogues, available as early as 1937 for the Linotype machine. Candida is a modest text font which retains its legibility even in smaller point sizes.

This typeface was inspired strongly by one of Ernhardt Ratdolt’s (1442-1528?) many beautiful typefaces. Mr. Ratdolt was a printer from the city of Augsburg, who had also worked for several years as a printer in Venice. He made many advances in printing technique and technology, including the decorated title page. Early books have a mysterious rhythm to the appearance of the text, due to small variances in letters caused by casting irregularities and ink transfer from the press. This supposed defect, which is present in this typeface, gives a pleasing effect when compared to the sterile regularity of modern printing technology. This font has been released as version 2.0 with over two hundred additional characters and improved metrics.

This font was created inspired from a handwritten copy of the "Brief story of the second journey in Canada" (1535) by French explorer Jacques Cartier. It is an early "Civilité" manual style, closely looking like the "Civilité" script font carved by Robert Granjon a few years later and still strongly influenced by blackletters forms, clearly visible in the capitals or long s, d, e, f or t forms. (Look at our "1557 Civilite Granjon Pro" and the latest "1638 Civilite Manual"). It is containing Western (including Celtic) and Northern European, Icelandic, Baltic, Eastern, Central European and Turquish diacritics. Historical forms, titling alternates and the numerous lower alternates or ligatures made the font looking like a real various hand.

Loew is a geometric sans serif font influenced by the methods of the early industrial designers. Pure mechanical shapes are carefully adjusted to give the characters the right form, function and usability. These subtle human touches combined with the technical detail provide great readability at both large and small point sizes. Loew is a versatile sans serif font with simple and honest geometry aimed at a wide range of modern applications. Details include over 800 characters with alternative lowercase a, e and g. Seven variations of numerals, true small caps with accents, manually edited kerning and Opentype features. For additional non-latin language support in Cyrillic, Greek and Arabic, visit Loew Next and Loew Next Arabic.

The future is right here, today, and Areon Flux comes to point that out. It’s a font family consisting in three weights that makes it a notable choice for designers that have to do with techy, futuristic layouts or printing materials. The lettering design appeal as sharp, powerful, distinctive and kind of modular, remembering the upcoming space exploration opportunities that are ready to enlarge our horizons in the next years. Areon Flux family is designed and published in late ‘20/ early ’21 and has an established discount for more that 30% for all the weights buyed together that makes it a versatile fresh and modern display not to be missed by edgy designers.

“Growing up in Iceland, I was exposed to Scandinavian modernism from an early age. My parents had Arne Jacobsen furniture around the house and I was always enticed by the fun shapes and colors...."—SK Armchair Modern is derived from the logo created for Armchair Media Group by Stefan Kjartansson. The design is unabashedly ultra-modern, reminiscent of work by Mark Newson and the aforementioned Jacobsen. Armchair Media is a consulting company, working with clients from the Web and interactive TV, so the super-elliptical letterforms are also intended to evoke a traditional TV screen or CRT display. The complete family of five weights was co-produced by PSY/OPS in 2001.

Slope Sans is an original design that combines a technological shape model borrowed from the early Macintosh system fonts with organic, open elements looking futuristic in a retrospective manner. Designed as part of a font family without different weights, Slope Sans Pro provides OpenType features for alternate letter forms in two stylistic sets. The basic version works similar to a stencil font, an alternative set has consistently closed shapes and a more rigid appearance, while the second stylistic set offers some alternative letter forms. Headlines and shorter texts set in Slope Sans provide a variable, modern appearance. Slope Slab Pro goes very well with Slope Sans Pro and can be used as style variant or display.

Infamy is a display typeface inspired by graffiti and street art, featuring the ‘bubble letter’ style of writing which was very popular among subway and suburban graffiti artists in the early days of American graffiti. This font recovers graffiti horizontal alignment, tight tracking and colourful lettering. The OpenType version includes many different ligatures which provide multiple options when composing a text. Multiple layers make Infamy a bright, shaded and colourful font, allowing you to dress up your writing. This font incorporates a pictorial rendering of character faces (instead of small caps), capturing the essence of the graffiti: the ‘childish’ and the ‘irresponsible’, which is present in the experimental side of the typeface.

The Modesto Text Family is text in name only. It’s called Text because it has a Lower Case, and also to distinguish it from the rest of the Modesto clan. Modesto is a loose-knit family based on a signpainters lettering style popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. It evolved from the lettering I used for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Baily Circus Logo. The Modesto family was not planned. It just happened, a few fonts at a time over about fifteen years. In 2014 seven new Italic fonts and two Chromatic families were added. There is a downloadable MODESTO USER MANUAL PDF in the Gallery section for this family.

Slope Sans is an original design that combines a technological shape model borrowed from the early Macintosh system fonts with organic, open elements looking futuristic in a retrospective manner. Designed as part of a font family without different weights, Slope Sans Pro provides OpenType features for alternate letter forms in two stylistic sets. The basic version works similar to a stencil font, an alternative set has consistently closed shapes and a more rigid appearance, while the second stylistic set offers some alternative letter forms. Headlines and shorter texts set in Slope Sans provide a variable, modern appearance. Slope Slab Pro goes very well with Slope Sans Pro and can be used as style variant or display.

LaFarge is a typeface primarily inspired by the historic mosaic titling capitals found in the New York City Subway, designed by architect Squire J. Vickers and his staff between 1915-1927. These elegant but industrial signs are characteristic of early-20th century American architectural lettering, and show an evolution of the classical Roman capitals to lower contrast, bolder serifs, and more regular character widths. The majority of this lettering still remains in subway stations today, and though elements of the style vary from sign to sign, many carry the unique features that are reflected in LaFarge: high-waisted crossbars with angled serifs, elegantly curved “R” leg, and distinctive trapezoidal serifs. LaFarge expands this style into a lower case, taking cues from contemporary typefaces like Bookman, Cheltenham, and Della Robbia. A number of typographic features are included, such as small caps, ordinal indicators / superscript letters, arrows, and a set of borders inspired by early subway tile. The result is a fashionable, architecturally-minded typeface that is just as at home on the façade of a grand public building as it is on packaging, magazines, or the web. LaFarge works well in both text and display settings, remaining readable at small sizes but showing off its elegant details in larger uses. LaFarge has received the Communication Arts Typography Award, the ADC Annual Merit Award, is included in the 2020 STA 100, and was part of designer Greg Shutters’ winning portfolio in the 2019 Type Directors Club Ascender Awards. You can download a PDF specimen of LaFarge, and also view a video of LaFarge in action.

Cut as a private version for the Nonesuch Press in the early 1930s, Monotype Bulmer was first released for general use in 1939. Based on types, cut by William Martin circa 1790, used by the Printer, William Bulmer, in a number of prestigious works, including Boydell's Shakespeare. Martins types combined beauty with functionality. Narrower and with a taller appearance than Baskerville, it anticipated the modern face of Bodoni but retained vital qualities from the old face style. This new digital version of the Bulmer font family was drawn by Monotype following extensive research into the previous hot metal versions and a study of Bulmer's printed works. Additional weights have been designed together with a wide range of Expert and alternative characters.

Elegance flows through Couturier Poster soul. The new cousin of early launched Couturier, brings higher contrast and an extended family, perfect for big sizes. Inspired by the didones from the 18th century, its design its heavily influenced by contemporary ideas makes it suitable to use for almost anything you can think of. Equipped with swashes, ligatures, small caps and alternates, this typography is very versatile and allows you to set a big range of compositions with discretion or personality. Couturier Poster comes in six weights and matching true italics, from thin to black. It's a good choice to pair with Couturier for smaller sizes and Couturier Poster for the big titles. It has a set of 1248 characters that cover more than 200 languages derived from latin.