Ten years or so after his unique treatment of Garalde design with Trump Mediaeval, Georg Trump took on the transitional genre with Mauritius, which was to be his last typeface. He started working on it in 1965. The Stuttgart-based Weber foundry published a pamphlet previewing it under the name Barock-Antiqua in 1967, then announced the availability of the metal types (a roman, a bold and an italic) a year later. The global printing industry was already in third gear with cold type technology, so there weren't that many takers, and Weber closed its doors after more than 140 years in business. Subsequently, Trump’s swan song was unfairly overlooked by typography historians and practitioners. It never made it to film technology or scalable fonts. Thus, one of the most original text faces ever made, done by one of the most influential German type designers of the 20th century, was buried under decades of multiple technology shifts and fading records. The metal cuts of Mauritius seem to have been rushed in Weber’s desperation to stay afloat. So the only impressions left of the metal type, the sole records remaining of this design, show substantial problems. Some can be attributed to technological limitations, but some issues in colour, precision and fitting are also quite apparent, particularly in Mauritius Kursiv, the italic metal cut. This digital version is the result of obsessing over a great designer’s final type design effort, and trying to understand the reasons behind its vanishing from typography’s collective mind. While that understanding remains for the most part elusive, the creative and technical work done on these fonts produced very concrete results. All the apparent issues in the metal types were resolved, the design was expanded into a larger family of three weights and two widths, and plenty of 21st century bells and whistles were added. For the full background story, design analysis, details, features, specimens and print tests, consult the PDF available in the Gallery section of this page.

Menca takes cues from the lettering of engineering, found on road signage and industrial metal plaques.

Curlz is designed to look like bent, twisted metal. The Curlz font is best used for impudent, carefree titles. Curlz is appropriate for menus, signage and greetings cards.

That’s what people call ‘an experimental typeface’. Yes it is! It consists in letterforms designed in very strict geometrical parameters. I was not thinking about ‘reading’ when I’ve drawn this typeface — rather on different way of projecting our mental image of the words. Do not try to set a book with this type, please! One single version, one single font designed in 2000.

An industrial-weight typeface inspired by graphics laser-cut from sheet metal.

Orlando is a quirky display face inspired by Art Nouveau metal types.

Many decades back, churches, schools and other buildings with a need to display an outdoor message often chose a sign making system utilizing characters silk screened onto metal pieces in a block chamfer style. Each piece had a crimp in the top of the metal which formed a hook to fit over the existing rails of a message panel. This allowed for a finished sign to be displayed within minutes, and a quick change of information was not very time-consuming. A popular version of these signs provided white letters and numbers on black backgrounds. This was the model for Announcement Board JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. There are two different width blank panels on the broken and solid bars for those who wish to kern the letters tight to form a ribbon, however they were designed to have slight spacing in order to emulate the hand assembly of those vintage sign panels.

In both chunky and tilted/3D versions, this font gives a dose of fun!

PictiFont’s newest symbol set, intended to be used within any of the PictiFont™ typefaces, features a sampling of the seashore. From seashells to sailboats, surfboards to sunshine, here are the symbols you need to make all things summer a breeze! Sunscreen anyone?

A tribute to Jan Tschichold. His hot-metal font Saskia was released in 1931 by Schelter & Giesecke. This elegant italic font was finally redrawn, extended and digitized for present-day use.

The lettering style of Location JNL is based on sets of "vintage" metal house identification letters and numbers seen for sale online. As these sets are available from overseas sources, it's not clear whether those metal characters are cast from original vintage dies that have been used for years or just designed to look like a vintage style of lettering. Nonetheless, they make for a great digital interpretation and the design is available in both regular and oblique versions.

A lovely decorative Victorian period font taken directly from samples printed on an old press right from the metal type in the collection of typophile Steve Saxe.

A true north font of 152 characters, inspired by the black metal culture but more readable. UPPERCASE 
lowercase 
Numerals 
Punctuation 152 characters

Aye, me lovelies, this be Scurvy Dog, a grand font! The letters were etched into a dead man's chest with a blunt rapier, pickled in brine and covered in spew. Ye could be using this crafty penmanship for yer logs or writing yer dear ol' mothers a letter.

Archaz Negras strikes a chord with its rough rock band logo aesthetic. Its symmetric and captivating character makes it a fit for movie posters, Halloween invites, or a heavy metal t-shirt that demands attention. Dark, daring, and undeniably striking, Archaz Negras channels the raw energy of death metal and an eerie aura of horror. Designed with precision by Mans Greback, this destroyed font resonates with the rebellious spirit of punk and its haunting allure of the unknown.

A vintage metal sign saying "No Dogs Allowed" was the model for the ultra-bold Art Deco-influenced lettering comprising Informational Sign JNL.

Based on an antique metal stencil plate used for identifying crates, bales or barrels, Stencil Piece JNL is one of the numerous stencil designs available through Jeff Levine Fonts. The type design is available in both regular and oblique versions.

French Stencil JNL was inspired by images of a set of metal stencils from France that were offered for sale in an online auction.

Based on some vintage metal type initial monograms, Long and Thin Initials JNL reproduces this condensed spur serif design in digital form.

Tin Stencil JNL was modeled from examples of an antique metal stencil letter and number set.

Magnekidz is a font that has a metal character, and has a simple look, with many characcters, and multilingual support. better used for band logos, music events, banners, posters, advertising, apparel, and others.

Finally the light version of Wilhelm Berg’s hot-metal classic which had found its way from Schriftguss to Typoart can be released for nowaday’s use.

The origin of AM Floriana is already several decades ago. At a time when there was no photo set and the choice of metal type fonts was still very manageable, Alois Menacher received an order to design a custom business logo from a flower shop. He then created a hand-drawn lettering based on the form of leaves and plants. Now Alois Menacher professionally designed and developed AM Floriana on the basis of this lettering. AM Floriana is ideally suited for packaging design, as well as for display design and logo design. AM Floriana is available as a Bold version and will soon be complemented by further cuts.

Rock Sevendie is a font that has a metal character, and has a simple look, with many characters, and multilingual support. better used for band logos, music events, banners, posters, advertising, apparel, and others.

Black Magnet is great looking, badass, and each character was designed with great composition. Of course, this font is very suitable for you that like death metal music, design, your clothing, logo, and many others.

Inspired by roman typography and extreme metal band logos. This is a vicious looking font that works great in large and small pt. sizes. Ideal for rock bands, alternative literature, films, video games and apparel.

Carla Pro is a lively, legible, and partly joining broad-nib script font. I named it after a favourite colleague, in my hot-metal time, who set on the Linotype next to mine.

Basic Commercial is a font based on historical designs from the hot metal typeface era. It first appeared around 1900, and was created by type designers whose names have not been recorded but whose skills cannot be overlooked. This typeface's design has been popular among groups and movements as diverse as the Bauhaus, Dadaism, and the masters of Swiss/International-Style typography. It influenced for a variety of later grotesque fonts, such as Helvetica and Univers. Basic Commercial was distributed for many years in the United States under the name Standard Series. The typeface worked its way into many aspects of daily life and culture; for instance, it became the face chosen for use in the New York City subway system's signage. The Basic Commercial's font family members have a clear and objective design. Their forms exhibit almost nothing unusual, but remain both lively and legible nonetheless. Perhaps for this reason, Basic Commercial's design has been popular with graphic designers for decades. To read more about the history of typefaces like Basic Commercial, visit our font feature, The Sans Serif Typefaces. In addition several weights of this typefamily are available as soft rounded versions."

Light Sleeper is a messy and scratchy grunge, metal, surfer, grafitti, skater and punk font - but even though it is wild and crazy, it is still super legible!

"Halloween Devil" is a unique and spooky display font. This font is perfect for Halloween moments, Halloween invitations, metal concerts, horror movie titles, and more. Equipped with uppercase, lowercase, ligatures, uppercase alternates, lowercase alternates, multilingual support, numerals, and punctuation.