It all started with a simple idea back in 1998: do a digital version of a "lost" 70's typeface, and make up the missing letters that were not present in the only available example Jeff Levine had to work with. Jeff wasn't yet doing his own digital font creation, so he hooked up with Brad Nelson who owns a small foundry called Brain Eaters Fonts. Together, they collaborated on "Action Is"- a freeware font named after the source of the type example. This was a title page for a commemorative photo album of images from the 60's TV music show "Where the Action Is", formerly hosted by Jeff's employer at the time, singer-writer-producer Steve Alaimo. The free font took off like a rocket, being released just at the peak of the 60’s/70’s retro craze in the late 1990’s, and it was EVERYWHERE! It showed up on TV shows, packaging and web design -- and was even spotted on signage used on the side of a major amusement resort’s retro-themed hotel. From that point on, Jeff kept getting requests for a version with a lower case. Although they shared the copyright in the freeware version, Brad Nelson gave Jeff his blessing to re-work and take Action Is into the realm of commercial type. Newly improved and re-released as Groovy Happening JNL, it became one of Jeff's better selling type designs. A simplified, yet similar font was issued called Groovy Summer JNL. Now, after about a decade, Jeff had decided to clean up the 3-D (drop shadow) version that was originally freeware with many minute design flaws and re-release it commercially. Groovy 3D Caps JNL is an all-caps, limited character set font which ties in well with the previous releases, yet retains itís 1960s-1970s era charm. The font flag art is courtesy of Barbara D. Berney and is used by permission.

Helvetica’s 50-year anniversary celebrations in 2007 were overwhelming and contagious. We saw the movie. Twice. We bought the shirts and the buttons. We dug out the homage books and re-read the hate articles. We mourned the fading non-color of an old black shirt proudly exclaiming that “HELVETICA IS NOT AN ADOBE FONT”. We took part in long conversations discussing the merits of the Swiss classic, that most sacred of typographic dreamboats, outlasting its builder and tenants to go on alone and saturate the world with the fundamental truth of its perfect logarithm. We swooned again over its subtleties (“Ah, that mermaid of an R!”). We rehashed decades-old debates about “Hakzidenz,” “improvement in mind” and “less is more.” We dutifully cursed every single one of Helvetica’s knockoffs. We breathed deeply and closed our eyes on perfect Shakti Gawain-style visualizations of David Carson hack'n'slashing Arial — using a Swiss Army knife, no less — with all the infernal post-brutality of his creative disturbance and disturbed creativity. We then sailed without hesitation into the absurdities of analyzing Helvetica’s role in globalization and upcoming world blandness (China beware! Helvetica will invade you as silently and transparently as a sheet of rice paper!). And at the end of a perfect celebratory day, we positively affirmed à la Shakti, and solemnly whispered the energy of our affirmation unto the universal mind: “We appreciate Helvetica for getting us this far. We are now ready for release and await the arrival of the next head snatcher.” The great hype of Swisspalooza '07 prompted a look at Max Miedinger, the designer of Neue Haas Grotesk (later renamed to Helvetica). Surprisingly, what little biographical information available about Miedinger indicates that he was a typography consultant and type sales rep for the Haas foundry until 1956, after which time he was a freelance graphic designer — rather than the full-time type designer most Helvetica enthusiasts presume him to have been. It was under that freelance capacity that he was commissioned to design the regular and bold weights of Neue Haas Grotesk typeface. His role in designing Helvetica was never really trumpeted until long after the typeface attained global popularity. And, again surprisingly, Miedinger designed two more typefaces that seem to have been lost to the dust of film type history. One is called Pro Arte (1954), a very condensed Playbill-like slab serif that is similar to many of its genre. The other, made in 1964, is much more interesting. Its original name was Horizontal. Here it is, lest it becomes a Haas-been, presented to you in digital form by Canada Type under the name of its original designer, Miedinger, the Helvetica King. The original film face was a simple set of bold, panoramically wide caps and figures that give off a first impression of being an ultra wide Gothic incarnation of Microgramma. Upon a second look, they are clearly more than that. This face is a quirky, very non-Akzidental take on the vernacular, mostly an exercise in geometric modularity, but also includes some unconventional solutions to typical problems (like thinning the midline strokes across the board to minimize clogging in three-storey forms). This digital version introduces four new weights, ranging from Thin to Medium, alongside the bold original. The Miedinger package comes in all popular font formats, and supports Western, Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish and Celtic/Welsh. A few counter-less alternates are included in the fonts.

Comenia Sans was designed in the framework of a unique typographic project for all types of schools. It is a complementary face for Comenia Serif, released by our friends at Storm Type Foundry. Comenia Sans has a lot in common with its serif sister: the height of both upper and lower case, the length of ascenders and descenders, and the general weight. This makes the two perfect partners which work well even when set side by side in a single line of text. Comenia Sans does, however, lack all serifs, ornamental elements and stroke stress variation. All these elements freshen up the feel of long texts, but for shorter texts use, they are not necessary. Despite that, Comenia Sans retains the soft, friendly character of its big sister, as well as a few tiny details which lend it its unique character without compromising legibility or utility. Open counters give all letters an airy feel and permit enough variation in construction. This is why the face works well even in multiple-page texts. All its letters are easily distinguished from each other, so the reader's eyes are not strained. Diacritics and punctuation harmonize with both upper and lower case. As usually, all diacritical marks fully respect conventional shapes of accents and they are perfectly suitable for Czech, Slovak, Polish and other Central European languages, where a lot of diacritics abounds. Similarly to the renaissance italics which refers to the cursive forms, Comenia Sans introduces novel shapes of some characters drawing from the hand-written heritage. This is most apparent in the single-bellied a, the simplified g, and the stem of f which crosses the baseline and ends with a distinct terminal. In the text, emphasized words are thus distinguished not only by the slant of letters, but also by the shapes of the letters themselves. All twelve styles contain set of small caps, suitable for the names, in the indexes or the headlines in longer texts. Legibility in small sizes under 10 points was at the center of designers' attention, too. This is why the counters of a, e and g are large enough to prevent ink spread in small sizes, both on-screen and in print. After all, the font was specifically optimized for screen use: its sober, simple forms are perfectly fit to be displayed on the computer screen and in other low-resolution devices. When used in the context of architecture, the smoothness of all contours stands out, permitting to enlarge the letters almost without limit. A standard at the Suitcase Type Foundry, each style of Comenia Sans boasts a number of ligatures, an automatic replacement of small caps and caps punctuation, a collection of mathematical symbols, and several types of numerals which make it easy to set academic and other texts in an organised, well-arranged way. For the same purpose, fractions may come in handy, too. Apart from the standard emphasis styles, the family also contains six condensed cuts (each set has the same number of characters), designated for situations where space is limited or the need for striking, poster-like effect arises. Comenia Sans is the ideal choice for the setting of magazines, picture books, and navigation systems alike. Its excellent legibility and soft, fine details will be appreciated both in micro-typography and in poster sizes. Although it was designed as a member of a compact system, it will work equally well on its own or in combination with other high-quality typefaces.

A neat face with pronounced spur serifs which several foundries have already digitized. We like ours better though, because we have drawn a lowercase which was lacking in the original. Barnhart Bros. & Spindler of Chicago introduced this type in 1888.

This roly-poly romp through the alphabets is based on a showing from Carl Holmes' 1950s book, ABC of Lettering, published by art-for-the-masses magnate Walter T. Foster. Named as an apt companion to my East Coast Frolics.

Puffball is a fat face with cartoonish features. It also wouldn't look out of place in an ancient Celtic engraving. What makes Puffball so intriguing to look at is that it seems to walk a thin line of buffoonery and ornamentation.

Editorial Comment JNL is another wood type in the Grotesk (also spelled Grotesque) style of sans serif faces. Popular in newspaper headlines as well as posters, the slightly irregular stroke widths add an old-fashioned charm to any print project.

Meet The Glamz, a brand new auto-chic font. Designed to fulfil your trend-catching things with the edgy style and undeniable artsy look. Perfectly fit for your fashion branding stuff, handwriting logo, inspirational quote poster, oh well you name it.

Introducing a new clean signatures script called Bresley. Bresley came with open type features such contextual alternates, stylistic alternates, ligature, good for signature logo, wedding invitation, romantic quote, logotype, poster, social media kit, book cover, tshirt design, packaging and any more.

Gilgamesh is the work of British designer Michael Gills, based largely on his calligraphic experiments and named after a poem from Middle Eastern mythology, The Epic of Gilgamesh". Gilgamesh offers functionality with style and will give emphasis to any typographic design."

Racing Sunday is a modern techno display font and unique style that instantly add power and movement to your projects. Racing Sunday is very suitable for automotive magazine covers, racing game covers, logos & branding, product design, labels, and so on.

Barnhart Bros. and Spindler called this Faust Text when they introduced it in 1898. A quarter of a century later, they brought back a number of obsolete faces and renamed them. This one became Missal Text in their 1923 catalog.

Vacant is a precisely drawn, contemporary stencil face built with attention towards retaining pure underlying geometric forms and visual balance between letterforms. Stylistically, Vacant exudes a strong sense of clarity and sophistication which contrasts the unrefined nature of stencil typefaces.

This circa 1910 European face was introduced into the United States by a German type foundry traveling salesman during the great depression of the 1930s. We have used it quite successfuly in sizes as small as 10 and 12 point.

Ginko is a capitals only display font with an obvious Asian influence. The characters are formed with short tapered strokes, reminiscent of those produced by a broad pen. An ideal face for signage, menus, advertising, wherever an Asian feel is required.

Mixing the vertical to horizontal stroke weight ratio of a sans-serif font while adding serifs is the idea that inspired this face. The result is a typeface with unique display features that is also quite readable at text sizes.

Based on informal handwriting. The face resembles sophisticated but naive childish hand and brings associations of summer vacation and meadows spread with daisies. It may be useful in designing of invitations, picture-cards, posters, funny headers and certainly in advertising.

You can pack a lot of letters into a single line with this face, originally released as Clarendon XX Condensed in 1859. Both versions of this font support the Latin 1262, Central European 1250, Turkish 1254 and Baltic 1257 codepages.

The Torino font family was designed by Alessandro Butti in 1908 for the Nebiolo foundry in Turin. Torino is a narrow face in the Bold weight; the condensed weight is so narrow that it should be used in over 14pt.

Released by the Monotype Corporation around 1932, Inflex Bold is a Scotch Roman fat face design similar to many others popular in the nineteenth century. A high-contrast bold roman, Inflex Bold is good for informal display work when used sparingly.

As its name suggests, PlainPensle is a handwriting font that emulates printing and writing with a pencil or ballpoint pen. The plain and bold styles have hand printing that is ordinary and nondescript. The italics and bolditalics contain simple handwritten cursive.

This font is inspired by ancient games that still use pixel displays. This font can be used for various designs as needed, especially pixel-themed designs. In addition, the Shape Bit font can also give a retro feel to your designs.

Our notes say this was originated at the Barnhart Bros. & Spindler foundry in Chicago, and named Cable. Perhaps so, but we didn't find it in any of our BB&S catalogs. We made a few changes to improve the color.

Introducing of our new product the name is Gresta a Playful Layered Font, Gresta inspired by Playful style with a fun theme very good for Retro, kids and playful theme design. FEATURES : Uppercase Lowercase Number Punctuation Multilingual PUA Encode Opentype

Seleniak's outlines are based on the logo of the eponymous MSX video game, also created by its designer. Thus, all ratios are multiples of the typical 8x8 px video character unit, giving the typeface a characteristic appearance and interesting fitting properties.

My niece has two bunny rabbits: Skye and Pippi. She really loves them, so I named this font after her pets. Bunny Daydream is a rounded, handmade kids’ font. It comes with cute swashes and all the diacritics you need.

Designed by Sol Hess in 1940 as a variation of Stymie Extrabold but with squared corners where round shapes would normally be. This striking display face is found in only some Lanston Monotype catalogs and specimens are somewhat hard to find.

Dortmunder Ecke ("Dortmund Corner") is a clean, all caps font inspired by Cubism. It really has nothing to do with the city in Germany, but the name stuck and I kept it that way. Comes with a square amount of diacritics.

No. 510 is a friendly, slim gothic face. Strokes have a gentle inward curve at the median with the tops and bottoms of the letters slightly wider and thicker. The design was first introduced by William H. Page & Company around 1887.

Another Dan X. Solo find, prosaically named Earth, provided the pattern for this family of futuristic fonts with a strong retro vibe. Both flavors of this font feature the 1252 Latin, 1250 Central European, 1254 Turkish and 1257 Baltic character sets.

Pasture is a display serif in a range of weights. Rounded interior and exterior corners, curvaceous details, and rotund terminals give it a warm, handmade quality. Classic style that is, at the same time, right at home in modern spaces.

Howdy pardner, stick 'em up! Sharp Shooter is a ruff rider that won't take no guff. He'll shoot first and send a 'get well' card later. This font makes a whimsical webfont, best for board games and awesome for apps!

Inspired by old books and misprinted type, Subway Novella is perfect for adding that washed and worn look to your designs without going over the top making it look fake or over done. A little distress goes a long way!

Introducing of our new product the name is Brenza an Urban Font, Brenza inspired by urban style letters with a fun theme very good for poster, flyer, logotype, urban theme design. FEATURES : Uppercase Lowercase Number Punctuation Multilingual PUA Encode Opentype

Hello, this time we want to introduce a new product. namely "Mechta", a display font that has a classic, feminine and elegant style. very suitable for wedding invitations, branding and other creative products. Feature Uppercase Lowercase Numeral Functional Ligature Stylistic Multilingual

The name is danish, and can’t really be translated into English, but its someone who entertains during breaks or just a common funny person! Made with a rough brush and random brushstrokes. Nobody really knows what a "pauseklovn" is up to! :)

BigBang is geometrically monoline, modular sans serif font, square looks glyphs. It is suitable for use in the fields of architecture, urban planning, techniques, electronics, advertising, futuristic themes, film, computers, phones, video games, logos... BigBang contains Latin and Cyrillic glyphs.

Wire Mesh JNL is an outline variation of the same design that produced Shady Characters JNL (lettering printed over a simulated halftone). This time around, the end effect gives the impression of looking at lettering cut out of a mesh screen.