The French publication “La Lettre Dans le Decor et La Publicite Modernes” (“The Letter in the Modern Décor and Advertising”) was a 24-page booklet showcasing the then-current trends of the time (circa late 1930s-early 1940s). On one page was found a squared, extra bold sans serif alphabet set with strong Art Nouveau influences, yet it was ahead of its time by taking on the look and feel of 1980s techno typography. They say “everything old is new again”, and Nouveau Techno JNL is now available digitally in both regular and oblique versions.

One of the classic designs of the wood type era is Hamilton Gothic Bold [from the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry circa 1889]. Clean and timeless, it even had found a resurgence during the rock and roll posters of the 1960s, where vintage wood types and Art Nouveau influences merged with the “Hippie Counterculture”. Wood Gothic JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

This quaint little charmer was found under the same name in the 1893 Cleveland Type Foundry specimen book. Slightly quirky and naively elegant, it's the perfect choice for everything from invitations to headlines. It also contains a few alternate characters in the ASCII circumflex and tilde positions to spice up your layouts. Both versions of the font contain characters to support all major European languages.

Waves is a sans serif typeface with pure but expressive look, which is notable even in smaller sizes. The softly decorative characters are also nicely visible in bigger sizes what makes Waves unique. A user can choose from two sets in all four weights. Each font features alternate letters, offers wide sets of characters including fractions and language support with all characters for Central European countries.

Designed at ParaType in 1994 by Tatiana Lyskova. Based on Carola Grotesk of H.Berthold and Bauer type foundries (early 20th century) and Boutique of Haas type foundry (Munchenstein, Switzerland). Bold style based on Herkules of H.Berthold foundry (early 20th century) was added for ParaType by Manvel Shmavonyan in 2002. For use in advertising and display typography.

The rather wide, caps-only Monotype Engravers family imitates scripts that evolved from copperplate and steel plate engravers hands of the nineteenth century, which were a quite expressive medium! Monotype Engravers' letters show a strong contrast between thick and thin strokes and have sharply cut serifs. In 1899, Robert Wiebking (who worked for a number of foundries in his time) designed an all-caps typeface named Engravers Roman."" Shortly thereafter, American Type Founders, Inc. (ATF) released another successful ancestor of this design in 1902, ""Engravers Bold,"" designed by Morris Fuller Benton. Engravers Bold was also released by the Barnhart Brothes & Spinder foundry. Also made available by Lanston Monotype at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Engravers faces soon became a popular choice for letter heads, advertising and stationery.

The rather wide, caps-only Monotype Engravers family imitates scripts that evolved from copperplate and steel plate engravers hands of the nineteenth century, which were a quite expressive medium! Monotype Engravers' letters show a strong contrast between thick and thin strokes and have sharply cut serifs. In 1899, Robert Wiebking (who worked for a number of foundries in his time) designed an all-caps typeface named Engravers Roman."" Shortly thereafter, American Type Founders, Inc. (ATF) released another successful ancestor of this design in 1902, ""Engravers Bold,"" designed by Morris Fuller Benton. Engravers Bold was also released by the Barnhart Brothes & Spinder foundry. Also made available by Lanston Monotype at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Engravers faces soon became a popular choice for letter heads, advertising and stationery.

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.

LTC Keystone Ornaments is a set of over 100 glyphs based on "running border" ornaments from Keystone Type Foundry of Philadelphia, circa 1903. These geometric dingbats can be used individually for decorative emphasis, or combined in repetitive lines or complex patterns.

Bolboreta Hollow is a revival of "Decorativa" font of Richard Gans Foundry .We've expanded the family with padded versions, striped versions (gray on other Gans fonts, in keeping with the days of lead fonts), and those same fills in separate font files, for graphic designer layered play. In addition to Bold versions.

Loosely based on an early 20th century type from the Brussels foundry of Van Loey-Nouri. Many European foundries had fonts of this general design. Schelter & Gieseke of Germany had several.

Jan Tschichold designed Sabon in 1964, and it was produced jointly by three foundries: D. Stempel AG, Linotype and Monotype. This was in response to a request from German master printers to make a font family that was the same design for the three metal type technologies of the time: foundry type for hand composition, linecasting, and single-type machine composition. Tschichold turned to the sixteenth century for inspiration, and the story has a complicated family thread that connects his Sabon design to the Garamond lineage. Jakob Sabon, who the type is named for, was a student of the great French punchcutter Claude Garamond. He completed a set of his teacher's punches after Garamond's death in 1561. Sabon became owner of a German foundry when he married the granddaughter of the Frankfurt printer, Christian Egenolff. Sabon died in 1580, and his widow married Konrad Berner, who took over the foundry. Tschichold loosely based his design on types from the 1592 specimen sheet issued by the Egenolff-Berner foundry: a 14-point roman attributed to Claude Garamond, and an italic attributed to Robert Granjon. Sabon was the typeface name chosen for this twentieth century revival and joint venture in production; this name avoided confusion with other fonts connected with the names of Garamond and Granjon. Classic, elegant, and extremely legible, Sabon is one of the most beautiful Garamond variations. Always a good choice for book typography, the Sabon family is also particularly good for text and headlines in magazines, advertisements, documentation, business reports, corporate design, multimedia, and correspondence. Sabon combines well with: Sans serif fonts such as Frutiger, Syntax. Slab serif fonts such as PMN Caecilia, Clairvaux. Fun fonts such as Grafilone, Animalia, Araby Rafique. See also the new revised version Sabon Next from the Platinum Collection."

Some words from the foundry: The Pristine Light fonts are clean and crisp, sans serif, uppercase only. They were designed specifically for those applications where uppercase text is appropriate, such as display, headline, logotype, branding, and similar applications. There are numbers, punctuation, accented characters, symbols, and miscellaneous characters. For convenience the uppercase alphabet is repeated under their respective lowercase keys.

Here's a faithful rendering of a typeface originally named Octic, from the 1884 specimen book of the Palmer & Rey Type Foundry of San Francisco. Its geometric severity is softened by the gently scalloped "bites" taken out of the corner. Sets tight to make attention-getting headlines. Both versions contain the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets.

Syntax was developed by Hans Eduard Meier in 1968 and presented by the font foundry D. Stempel AG. Its figures are based on Old Face characters but have a distinctive, modern design. The inclination to the right lends the font a dynamic feel.

Here's another collection of ornate border elements gleaned from the 1888 specimen books of James Conner's Sons United States Type Foundry in New York City. Refer to the PDF guide for detailed, yet simple, instructions for constructing nine delightfully different border patterns.