Linotype Compendio is a part of the Take Type Library, chosen from the contestants of the International Digital Type Design Contests from 1994 and 1997. Christian Bauer designed this font based on the basic forms of Transitional faces of the 17th century. The outer contours of the letters are purposely raw and irregular, much like alphabets printed on low-quality paper. The legibility of the font is thus reduced, making it necessary to use this font only for shorter texts or headlines, but it is exactly this characteristic which lends Linotype Compendio its distinctiveness.

During the years of physically doing camera-ready paste-up work before the advent of the digital age, clip art books dominated the way stock art was added to a print project. Clip art books were eventually replaced by clip art CDs, DVDs and online download sites, just as the books themselves had replaced the stock photo engravings of the letterpress era. With the kind permission of Graphic Products Corporation, Jeff Levine Fonts offers up a sampling of images found within the pages of Graphic Source clip art books; aptly entitled Classic Clips JNL.

Supporting Cast JNL is a hybrid of similar designs for hand lettering found on title cards from two morality photoplays from 1936 dealing with drug abuse, "Cocaine Fiends" and "Marihuana" respectively. The films were produced with the hope of educating the public against the dangers of illicit drugs, but they have taken on a cult status because of the dated approach to the problem. Despite all this, it is the Deco-influenced hand lettering which is being celebrated in this font release, not the subject matter of the films.

Basile is the conclusion of a process that began with the learning of italic handwriting in a roballos-Naab studio course. In this workshop I developed a variation of chancery handwriting which had a more pronounced wider than its historical model. While making the digitalization, the forms were modified to obtain a similar spirit to the one in the handwriting, but thinking about the text in small sizes. Also incorporating three sets of forms enlarged the family: italic, swash and extra swash. And the addition of initials and terminals sets.

Romford Stencil is a Brexit inspired typeface. It’s letterforms represent the idea of a union splitting apart and the stylistic differences between the upper and lower case symbolise the notion of being different from one another. Research for this typeface started off in Romford which is an area where the majority of UK voters wanted to leave the European Union, hence the name. Romford Stencil is designed to be readable for body copy and look impressive when used as a display typeface. However, the bigger it's size the better it looks, especially in all capitals.

Ingone is a slightly irregular sans-serif face. It was designed to complement PattyDay and HeyPumpkin, but can be used alone if you need an informal, friendly sans-serif font. It has only one weight, but the family includes a shadowed style. In 2018 the inside of the shadowed version was separated out and made a separate typeface. The letters have the shapes of the regular version but the spacing of the shadowed version and can be layered with the shadowed version to easily produce lettering with two colors.

The Sonica font family represents a modern typeface that is designed the express fluidity of motion. Sonica is the second font designed by the Sonic Savior team, and was specifically build for the group's website. The first font by the hand of this design team was Antediluvian, which consists of solid and down-to-earth glyphs - unearthed in fact, from ancient history. Sonica on the other hand is designed with a most volatile and dynamic geometry. If Antediluvian would be the alchemical Salt, Sonica would be its Mercury.

Franko Luin, Marco Polo's designer, on this typeface: Marco Polo is a 'massacrated' oldstyle typeface that can be used in the same way as, e.g., Caslon Antique. I designed it - if the word design is appropriate in this case - to give the users an alternative so that they are not always directed to the same choice. For the same reason I made Marco Polo rounder. The name comes from the famous Venetian globetrotter, who has nothing at all to do with the typeface, since printing and punchcutting were still an invention of the future.

This charming font, with its hints of the exotic, originally carried the rather prosaic name of Show Card Roman. It appeared in the book "Art Alphabets and Lettering: an encyclopedia of lettering including the most important standard alphabets and such classics as are in most demand for the use of engravers, designers, and all lovers of art" by the evidently rather verbose J. M. Bergling (1866-1933). As a nod to its exotic overtones, the font is named after the 1872 utopian novel of the same name by Samuel Butler.

Macho was designed in 2010 for MAN, Museo d'Arte Provincia di Nuoro, as a part of the corporate identity designed by Sabina Era. Macho is based on the idea of modular widths of the 20th-century typesetting systems, as the Olivetti Margherita and the hot-metal Linotype machine. The basic module is 7,5 percent of the body size (75 upm units) and every letter width is up to 20 modules. Every letter has the same width across different weights. Macho includes a large set of boxes and underlines that can be overlapped on the letters.

Erich Fehrle designed this robust alphabet for headlines and titles in 1976. The constructed figures of Linotype Fehrle Display were built on the geometric form of the rectangle. Lines of text look closed and compact. The letter forms are the result of fine open spaces. Design-specific characteristics of Linotype Fehrle Display are its serif-like additions to the strokes of the figures a, c, G or M, and the alternating rounded and angular outlines of the figures a, e, s and others. Typefaces similar to Linotype Fehrle Display: Bigband, Frutiger 95.

In the days of hand lettering, a common philosophy was "the problem creates the solution". Often times the layout artist would have to adapt the lettering style to fit the amount of copy on a line. A perfect example is during the early 1900s, when popular sheet music of the time almost seemed to be competing for how many words could be used within a song's a title. One such piece of sheet music offered up the tall, condensed and variable-width lettering found within Narrow Minded JNL.

A heavy blackletter; Rudolf Koch’s first type from 1909. On an old page full of type specimen from the 1930s, the type is described as ”Schwabacher (used by the Deutsche Reichsbahn [German Imperial Railway]).“ As a matter of fact, it is the first print of the Offenbach script master Rudolf Koch, who came out with this typeface in 1909. At that time, it was given the name ”Neudeutsch“ (New German). Later, it became very popular under the name Koch-Schrift, and was at times the official typeface of the Deutsche Reichsbahn (German Imperial Railway).

For Monumental Gothic, we delved into the archives and found some old rubbings and photos of monumental brasses from British tombs of the 12th and 13th centuries. The sources included famous monuments like the tomb of Richard II and less well known inscriptions with similar style lettering. The rubbings were made by Dave Nalle in the 1970s (when they still let you have access to the the brasses). Monumental Gothic includes some alternate characters, plus upper and lower case characters, numbers and a selection of very interesting decorative emblems to complement the text.

Aqua Life is a pictogram font from the Monotype Design Studio. It contains 26 vibrantly drawn images of fish and other wildlife you might find at the seashore or in your aquarium. Some of the fish look out at you rather inquisitively! Don't miss the shark, the giant squid, the octopus, the happy slug, the diving seal, or even the old-fashioned deep-sea diver and coy mermaid! Each of these symbols is best used in a very large point size. Perhaps one of them will illustrate you next newsletter or classroom poster?

One of the odder things I remember from high school (50+ years ago) is the tile floor of hexagons in the bathroom. There is something fascinating with the way hexagons fill the plane. BakerHalfDozen is made of white letters that fit on black, hexagonal tiles. BakerHalfWhite switches the letters to black on white tiles, and BakerHalfBare eliminates the tiles. There are no true lower-case letters, but some letters have alternate shapes. To make the tiles line up right, alternate lines must be indented half a space. Use the {} characters (brackets) to do this.

Legitima is a text font family inspired by the types found in the 3rd edition of the Italian book La Cicceide Legitima, printed in 1695. Its weight and x-height, optimized for 10 point-size, make it an ideal choice for book design and anything with running text. Like most typefaces from the 16th century, the strokes that constitute Legitima seem to depart from the traditional broad-nib pen model of handwriting and dare to explore the shapes produced by the techniques in use by punch-cutters of the time.

Metalet Modern JNL was based on the letters found within the Metalet Movie Titling Set manufactured by the Modern Display Advertising Company of Hollywood, California circa the 1940s. Each stamped metal letter would be affixed to the background surface via the use of miniature magnets. Once in place, titles for home movies or slides could be photographed, the letters then returned to their storage area in their box. The character shapes show unusual stroke movement, which means the original models used for these letters were most likely hand-drawn.

The calligraphy font Banner was designed by Martin Wait in 1986 and mixes the character of the 1940s with that of the 1980s in its forms. The round and somewhat reserved lower case letters make a balanced basis for the generous capitals. Black outer contours surround a white inner area and are heavier on the right side of the figures, making the characters look as though they have shadows. Banner should be used in point sizes of 18 and larger and is meant for lighthearted short texts or headlines.

The first three weights of the family were designed at ParaType (ParaGraph) in 1997 by Dmitry Kirsanov . They were based on the artworks of Moscow graphic designer Andrey Kryukov (1923-1997). The original version was developed by Kryukov at the end of the sixties for Russian railways. The proportions and elements of construction were inspired by Eurostile (1962) by Aldo Novarese. It is intended for use in advertising and display typography. In 2009, Dmitry added the new styles, corrected the old ones, and enhanced them with extended character sets.

The Techno sound of the 1990s, a personal computer, a font creation software and some inspiration had been the sources to the F2F (Face2Face) font series. Alessio Leonardi and his friends had the demand to create new unusual faces that should be used in the leading german techno magazine "Frontpage". Even typeset in 6 point to nearly unreadability it was a pleasure for the kids to read and decrypt the messages. About Al Retto: "Al" means "Alessio Leonardi" and Retto "straight", but if you read it as an italian world means "in the a**".

Art Nouveau typeface "Gaisma" ("Light" in Latvian) contains characters for all the European languages, Cyrillic and modern Greek as well as a huge set of contextual and stylistic alternates and historical characters to replicate the texts of the era. It draws inspiration from Vienna Secession movement and Nordic National Romanticism. The work on the design started as drawings of several characters for the graphic standard for the Jugendstil museum in Riga. To use it more effectively and to get acquainted with the possible stylistic sets download the Gaisma specimen in pdf format.

Impact wide was developed from the designer's original drawings for the production of 'Impact' metal type, with many detail changes because of the density of the letters. These include the restoration of the bevelled i and j dots of the original. Character maps show some useful alternative characters in both roman and italic. Included are a crossbar numeral 1, mirror quotes and some sorts which were cast in metal but never reproduced in digitized versions of the typeface. There is also a font-specific Euro symbol. (Impact is a trademark of The Type Museum, London).

The English roundhand has always occupied the central position in the group of faces appropriate to the social printing handled by engravers, and their contemporary imitators, thermographers. At the end of the nineteenth century when engraving was mechanised by the pantographic engraving machine, the traditional roundhands found their way onto pantographic pattern plates. Embassy is a traditional roundhand of vigorous contrast with straightforward capitals with ball terminals; it was transferred from such an engravers’ pattern plate to the Fotosetter at Intertype about 1955. Alphatype’s Yorktown is similar, but appears to have less contrast.

Savoye was created by Alan Meeks in 1992. The spirit of the Jugendstil lies behind the design of this font. Graceful upright letters combine to create delicate, flowing word figures. The light stroke contrast and slant to the right emphasize the liveliness of Savoye. Generous capitals contrast with small, demure lower case letters whose distinguishing characteristic is their high ascenders. This contrasts beautifully with the relatively reserved descenders. The capitals can also be used as initials combined with other alphabets. Savoye is the perfect font for invitations, greeting cards and other personal correspondence.

HERENGRACHT (Patricians' Canal or Lord’s Canal) is the first of the three major canals in the city centre of Amsterdam. The canal is named after the heren regeerders who governed the city in the 16th and 17th century. The most fashionable part is called the Golden Bend, with many double wide mansions, inner gardens and coach houses on Keizersgracht. Former bureau of André Toet (SO)Design was situated there for over 32 years, it was about time to name one of our fonts to: HERENGRACHT. Concept/Art Direction/Design: André Toet © 2017

Sinffonia is a beautiful ornamental font family. Its thin weight and roman style makes very elegant and ideal for any high quality project. The Open Type version, plenty of ligatures, alternative Characters and ornamental characters, is carefully programmed to replace automatically the glyphs accord to the feature and context so you can modify the aspect of the text easily without any incoherence in the design (i.e. overlaps and collisions). Non Open Type users can try the four plain versions of Sinffonia, which includes some of the beautiful ornamental characters of the OT version.

The inspiration for this typeface family came from my childhood experiences at West Monkton, amidst an historic part of the South West of England. Studies of the original incised capitals of the Trajan column in Rome were analysed and polished for this modern version. The lower case letterforms and numerals were then created in sympathy, taking their proportions from the incised letters of local gravestones. Its name honours not only the area where the original alphabet was conceived and drawn, but also the people responsible for fostering my initial interest in letters.

Malino is a humanist sans serif that gives a slightly stiff and strong feel but still presents a harmonious blend. The main characteristic of Malino is the flat shape at the end of the letter (specific : inner side of the letter C, G, J, S, a, c, e, g and s) and still maintain the curvature of the outside (Overshoot) so that empty space ( Open Counter) looks wider and the level of readability produced is much higher.

E-Lie is based on the logo for the Portland band E-Lie. Jon Lincicum designed the logo, and then the basic shapes of the principal letters and numbers. He then gave these designs to Shaun Kennedy, who expanded the design, adding punctuation, accented letters, and math symbols. Shaun then compiled the designs into an OpenType font, adding kerning and ligature information. The design is a distinctive, stylistic font excellent for use when you need to grab someone's attention.

Unveil the artistry of the written word with Corymbus, a script font that captures the beauty of handwriting. The interplay between thick and thin lines creates a visual feast for the eyes. The whimsical irregularity mirrors the fluidity of natural handwriting. The distinctive hallmark of this font lies in its swinging endings-each letter playfully extends beyond its baseline, creating a sense of rhythm. Corymbus fits in headlines, logos, print media, editorial layouts, and many more.

Arbotek has the original skeleton that the author used for the development of his typeface Arboria, a real 'architect typography', with a basic and radical approach to pure geometric forms. The three basic styles - Thin, Light and Light Rounded - try to approach the cartographic technique annotations and their output on plotters. The voluptuous style, Ultra, keeps the same structure of the Light versions, but develops as a historic Art Decó variant of this 20s and 30s graphic style.

The characters in this font are the key players in a global conspiracy reaching down into the lives of every man, woman and child on the planet. The Information Agency known as "Active Images" has been shut down. The availability of this font is now restricted to comicbookfonts.com operatives only. Information Agents have been instructed to deny the existence of any UFO* activity in the pages of CABLE, GEAR STATION or LEGION LOST. Trust no one. *Unauthorized Font Operation

At first glance, Else may seem to be similar to many of the Century typefaces, with its prominent figures and sturdy alphabet. But when Robert Norton, of Norton Photosetting Ltd., designed Else in 1982, he added a bit of flair to that basic model. Note the bowl of the g, the splayed legs of the M, the sharply curved G and J, as well as the leading strokes of v and w and both of the graceful ampersands.

A handlettered headline in the January 1953 issue of Park East magazine by wacko album artist Jim Flora provided the inspiration for this exercise in extreme lettering. Check out the [brackets] and the bullet point... like, endsville, daddy-o. Due to the complexity of this typeface, the font has no math operators. The Postscript and Truetype versions contain a complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252); in addition, the Opentype version supports Unicode 1250 (Central European) languages as well.

strokeWeight is inspired by the aesthetics of computer vector graphics. strokeWeight is the name of a processing programming function to set the thickness of a stroke. The single bezier curve that describes a stem as a centerline with a particular stem thickness represents the basic idea of this typeface. The unconventional corners and stem endings derive from the concept. If you buy the complete strokeWeight family you will get a strokeWeight variable font file for free!

Mandarin font first appeared with the Type Founders of Chicago and is an interpretation of artistically drawn Asian brush calligraphy. The stylized Asian atmosphere is not created only by the forms of the figures but also by the very name of the typeface. A mandarin was a high official of the ancient Chinese empire. Alphabets like Mandarin font are often used for the menus, signs and advertisements of Asian restaurants as well as for businesses with Asian products.

The appearance of the 'IA War Bot' speaks for itself. It is a futuristic stenciled robotic font family that would be suitable for lettering comics, computer games, toy packaging, and the like. Many of the glyphs have alternatives. The widest set of font files, from Thin Ultra Condensed to Black Ultra Expanded, and the expanded character set (including Cyrillic) will satisfy all design needs. And the most demanding can turn their attention to the variable font.

A photo of the now closed [circa-1953] Lowell Municipal Pool (at 1601 N. 28th St.) in Boise, Idaho shows the words “Municipal Pool” formed into the cement of the entrance to the above-ground swimming facility. Both the lettering and building entrance designs harken back to the Art Deco era and the sign features stencil-like characters. This inspired a typeface aptly named Municipal Pool JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Old Tijuana JNL was modeled from the hand lettered title on the cover of the 1939 sheet music for "Class Will Tell" and is available in both regular and oblique versions. Casual, playful and reminiscent of the "serape" style of pseudo-Mexican lettering found on ad designs of the 1930s and 1940s, the type face isn't just for South of the Border themes. Use it for any festive occasion and the design will blend in well.