Up until the late 1920s, it was a popular habit in American songwriting to use African Americans as the topic of compositions using denigrating themes, words and even exaggerated character illustrations on the covers of the published sheet music. One such example of what was considered "entertainment" for its time was a piece entitled "Little Black Me". While this now socially and morally unacceptable piece of forgettable tripe is collected by some only for the historical documentation of the times they reflected, one good "positive" came out of this negative chapter of our country's musical heritage: The beautiful floral ornamented letters in the song's title has yielded Fancy Free JNL. Originally hand-lettered on an arc, these spurred Roman letters have been re-drawn, and are offered in both the regular design and a companion version with the ornamentation removed for lettering that is less ornate.

Toward the end of the 1920s, Art Deco influences were starting to creep into modern design. The hand lettered title on the cover of the1928 sheet music for “Fascinatin’ Vamp” not only embraced the new Deco movement, but sent it on a wild typographic ride. Letters of mixed thicknesses and stylings made up the two word title, and this unusual group of letter shapes became the inspiration for Free Form Deco JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Sultan free is an Arabic text typeface for desktop applications. Sultan free is a freestyle script. It is available in One style, calligraphic, and very dynamic. This makes it suitable for large display sizes, especially in the area of advertising, while still functioning well as a text face. The font includes a support for Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. Sultan free typeface comes with many opentype features.

The titles and credits from the 1960 French film “Le Passage Du Rhin” (English release title: “Tomorrow is My Turn”)” are hand made in a free form bold alphabet resembling both cut paper and quickly sketched lettering. This avant garde style inspired the digital type revival, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

One of the examples in the 1916 publication “Baker’s Showcard Book” [an early 20th Century instructional book on sign lettering] was simply called “Plain Poster”. Somewhat Art Nouveau in style, but with many ‘nonconforming’ character shapes and widths, this novelty design is available digitally as Free Form Showcard JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

This chunky serif handwriting is fun but still completely legible for children.

Bodoni Classic Free Style is my really fat, high contrast free flowing, liberated designed, script-like non-script extension to my ever expanding Bodoni Classic family.