Plumage is somewhat unusual in that it has elements of calligraphy as well as script in a semi-loose form that gives it a pleasing appearance for both large and small sizes, and interesting flare finish strokes add to its unique character. As I read a dictionary description of "plumage", I realized that in many ways there is a parallel between a bird's plumage and how it is utilized in the context of writing: Plumage varies in pattern and arrangement for different purposes; what it expresses can of course be even more interesting. Plumage is disposable after a season, as new ones become available... imagine, a self-sustaining quill! - I guess that's equivalent to a refill or disposable pen. Historically, quill pens were made from feathers of a variety of birds, each chosen for its special characteristics. The sturdiest and most reliable feathers, however, come from turkeys, swans and geese. Feathers used to make pens are the stiff-spined flight feathers on the leading edge of the bird's wing. Pens for right-handed writers come from the left wing, and pens for left-handers, from the right! Each bird yields 10-12 good quills, and sometimes only 2 or 3 - so small a yield that the geese reared in England could not furnish nearly enough for local demand, and quills were imported from the Continent in large quantities. At one point St Petersburg in Russia was sending 27 million quills a year to the UK. It is said that geese were specially bred by US President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) to supply his own vast need for quills - in his lifetime he wrote almost 20,000 letters. The name "Plumage" was selected to pay homage to the noble birds that supplied countless quills for centuries of literary works. Plumage is recommended for any formal or informal invitation, decorations, awards, poetry, plaques, etc. We hope you will have the pleasure of using Plumage.

The Brass Family has a lineage that extends into English history. About five hundred years ago a devout, but anonymous Englishman gave glory to the God he worshipped by designing the capital letters and decorations of these two fonts. Originally recorded in The History Of Mediaeval Alphabets And Devices by Henry Shaw (London 1853), they are described by Alexander Nesbitt in his Decorative Alphabets And Initials (Mineola, NY 1959) as “Initials and stop ornaments from brasses in Westminster Abbey.” I wish I could say I remember seeing them when I was there, but that was forty-two years ago and all I remember was seeing the tomb of Edward the Confessor. One definition of “stop” as a noun is a point of punctuation. I have heard people from the British Isles speak of a “full stop” when referring to a period. Some may remember a 19th century form of communication called a telegram being read aloud in an old movie, with the use of the word “stop” to indicate the end of a sentence or fragment. A full dozen of these stop ornaments are provided. They occupy positions 060, 062, 094, 123, 125, 126, 135, 137, 167, 172, 177 & 190. The Brass Family consists of two fonts: Brass and Brass Too. Both fonts have an identical upper case and ornaments, but paired with different lower cases. Although the typefaces from which the lower cases were drawn are both of modern design, both are interpretations of the textura style of blackletter in use in England when the upper case and ornaments were fashioned for the Abbey. Brass is paired with Morris Gothic, which matches the color of the upper case quite well. Brass Too is paired with Wedding Regular, which is distinctly lighter than the upper case. I find it very interesting how each connects differently. The resulting fonts are unusual and most useful for evoking an historic atmosphere.

Paralucent is versatile all-purpose modern sans. Available in seven weights, from Thin to Heavy, and in two widths each with corresponding italics, it avoids some of the more eccentric calligraphic quirks of Akzidenz or Helvetica or the cool precision of Univers for an elegant, functional, yet warm design. There are two additions to the core 28-weight family: a three-weight stencil set, and a four weight text family. The text weights have been adjusted for use at small point sizes, and feature more open character shapes, looser inter-letter spacing for improved readability, and lining numerals for use in listings and tables. Several core ideas inform Paralucent’s design. Prime attention has given to the negative space between characters, giving a more even “colour”, especially in text. For example, the J, L and T have shorter arms than comparable sans typefaces, while the M and W are wider. The A has a lower bar, opening up the interior counter. An unusually high lower-case x-height again helps to give a more even colour and improve legibility. Care has been taken to rationalise repeated elements like the tails on lower-case letters, or the Q and the “ear” of the g. Typographic design solutions that are consistent across all these features add more stylistic cohesion. ‘Ink traps’ are exaggerated incisions used to open up a letter's narrower internal angles, which can become clogged with ink, especially in small point sizes. Now largely redundant due to the high quality of modern print, they are still sometimes used as a stylistic quirk or design feature. Now that digital fonts are often reversed or outlined, or enlarged to enormous sizes, these can also lead to unexpected or obtrusive results. Paralucent takes these inevitable digital manipulations into account, and adds optical corrections without resort to ink traps. The family has been picked up by many UK and US publishers, featuring heavily in magazines like Loaded, Heat and TV Quick, as well as high-end coffee-table photography books and gallery websites. A perennial Device bestseller.

I have seen my share of badly stuffed animals. Most of them via pictures, but also on vacations here and there. They all had this really bad handcraft vibe, but at the same time some really ordinary and kind of cute looks. I did my best to capture this look and feeling in my Badly Stuffed Animal font: clumsy letters made with a blobbly pen, with naive and irregular lines - and the conclusion is something super useful for a project that needs an organic handmade look!

FuturaClassic is a recut of Paul Renners original Futura. This version was what Mr. Renner wanted the Futura to look like. He had to change his very stringent design because the market wanted a more pleasing typeface. I think the original design is worth saving because it is much more typical and has a personal and distinguished touch. I have also designed Geometra Rounded with rounded endings that looks more interesting than your usual DIN type Yours trying to save the typographical past Gert Wiescher

Released by Intertype in the 1930’s, Vogue was a geometric sans serif rival to Futura and Kabel. Vogue had many unique quirks such as its distinctive G, that striking Q with a vertical tail, and many others. Almost ninety years later there has been no decent digital revival of this wonderful typeface... until now. Intervogue brings this classic to life in the modern age. Seven weights complete with true obliques and an alternate cut give Intervogue the versatility to be a true workhorse.

Can noise be a beautiful sound? Well, I guess...because the other day when I was playing the good old Bleach album by Nirvana (which I consider lovely grunge music!) my wife yelled "Could you stop that noise?!" - and I answered "What noise?!" - ha-ha-ha! Anyway, I finished this font while listening to that particular lovely noise, and I knew that this crunchy, grungy, handmade and full of contextual alternates and multilingual font had to be named something with the word "noise" in it!

Pomerans is a redo of an old font of mine called Suco De Laranja. Since the original font had a citrusy name, I decided to name this reincarnation Pomerans, which means ‘Seville Orange’ in Dutch. I doubt that there are many Dutch people who actually know what a pomerans is! Pomerans is a handmade, all caps font. I kept the look and feel of the original font, but I cleaned up the glyphs, added new glyphs and added additional language support (including Vietnamese and Sami).

Released by Intertype in the 1930’s, Vogue, was a geometric sans serif rival to Futura and Kabel. Vogue had many unique quirks like its distinct G, that striking Q with a vertical tail, and many others. Almost ninety years later there has been no decent digital revival of this wonderful typeface... until now. Intervogue Soft brings this classic to life in the modern age. Seven weights complete with true obliques and an alternate cut give Intervogue Soft the versatility to be a true workhorse.

The box cover of “Drawing Stencils No. 3 for Use on Slate or Paper” [a children’s drawing set produced by Montgomery, Ward & Company of Chicago circa the 1890s] had its title in an elegant spurred Roman type face. Working from the few letters available, a complete character set was created that resulted in Antique Packaging JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. To note, this is the 1500th font release from Jeff Levine Fonts since its inception in January of 2006.

Remember those 1970s science fiction dramas which had such charming futuristic sets and backdrops? Remember the intriguing future lettering and signage the set designers would devise-often coupled with interesting futuristic spellings? Movella is a family of three typefaces inspired by that design ethos. The three faces- regular, italic and the 3D solid form are all capitals faces which combine a feeling of retro-futuristic design with easy legibility. Take your next project into the age of the Apollo Launches, sci-fi action drama and fun!

I don’t have a sweet tooth myself, but I do like toffee! One of my favourite desserts is English Sticky Toffee Pudding, so I really had to name a font after this delicacy. Sticky Toffee is a bold display font. It’s all caps (in case you might have missed that), but upper and lower case differ and can be used together to create a more ‘natural’ look. Sticky Toffee comes in two great styles: Regular and Sprinkles, and has all the diacritics you’ll need.

This handwritten font was brought to our attention by one of our customers. Tom Bernard Anyz had offered his handwriting font at dafont.com, a free-font portal for private customers where Toms Handwritten is enjoying great popularity. We liked the design at first glance – it is so innocent and sketch-like, similar to a quick note or message. We reworked and completed Toms Handwritten for professional usage. Apart from the already available Latin character set for West and East, we also added Greek and Cyrillic.

TabloidDot M is a simple monospace font created for a small project. It had one task, to imitate the inscriptions on the electronic scoreboard in the form of dots arranged on a grid. As time went on I decided to make an extended version of the font with alternate letters and more styles, plus a variable font to control the size of the dots. The font has 6 stylistic sets, Proportional and Old-style figures, Ornaments, a set of Arrows, Currency Symbols, and supports Extended Cyrillic.

The Raleigh Hotel at 18th Street and Collins Avenue on Miami Beach is an Art Deco landmark and part of the city's popular tourist district. A vintage matchbook from the hotel had its name hand lettered in what is now Beachfront Hotel JNL; available in both regular and oblique versions. The lower case letters have been made more traditional, eliminating the Deco-influenced "overhangs" present on the capital letters, and an alternate "E" from the original matchbook design is available on the bar and broken bar keys.

Polke is a single weight display face brimming with style and charm but simultaneously exuding impressive core strength and a vibrant personality. Floating ball terminals rub shoulders with contrasting sharp and rounded letterforms to produce a distinctively decorative headline font built on robust foundations. Polke's name is derived from the striking terminal dots which dominate the character set, creating a Polka-Dot effect throughout. I also had the artist Sigmar Polke in mind which explains the spelling, and so the two ideas simply morphed together.

The sheet music for "I Used to be Color Blind" (from the 1938 Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie "Carefree") had its title crafted in ornate Art Deco hand lettering. Keeping the original letter forms, the interior embellishment was simplified to a dot-and-line pattern [eliminating a secondary squiggly line] for a cleaner look. The type design is now digitally available as Performing Arts JNL, in both regular and oblique versions. For those who prefer no ornamentation, there are also regular and oblique versions in solid form.

Following rules, perhaps too closely. The first full font created by Ray Mullin who strongly believes a font need not be pretty to be valid. Each capital shares similar angles, as does each lowercase, making for a typeface only a mother could love. The rounded style was the true inspiration for the original, but logically it had to come second. Based entirely around Bong God but losing the harsh edges to become a usable futuristic type. Legible, but not readable, recommended in small doses.

The inspiration for SJURecord was calligraphic lettering used for the title of a student newspaper, St. John’s Record, during the late 1920s and early 1930s. The three upper-case and nine lower-case letters were considerably different from any calligraphic lettering I had developed, so I thought creating a complete typeface around these twelve letters would be an interesting challenge. The SJCRecord family has four members: regular, oblique, shadowed, and oblique shadowed. There are alternate letters for A, J, L, S, V, W, and X.

Prop-a-ganda offers retro-flavored fonts inspired by lettering on retro propaganda posters, retro advertising posters, retro packages all the world over. This is perfect font for your retrospective project. PAG Karogs is geometric, art-deco font that had been used for a match box. The bowls of this font is based on a positive circle. The contrast of a circle and straight line effective in producing brisk structural rhythms. This is great for branding, packaging and posters or any other kind of display use.

Obviously the Irish Stew font finds its origin in Ireland. During a vacation in West Ireland Donald® fell in love with the famous local dish. In fact, he loved Irish stew so much he couldn't wait to create a font dedicated to the stew from Ballymaloe. He found the inspiration for this font on an old shop front sign somewhere in Dublin. The sign only contained a few characters, but the stew had given him more than enough energy and inspiration to complete the whole alphabet!

ITC Zinzinnati is based on a font called Ohio, released in 1924 by Die Schriftguss A.G. Typical of the Plakatstil letterforms of the time, the original font had a rough outline, as if drawn with a brush. Nick Curtis has smoothed the rough edges, which enhances the design's playful curves and engaging charm. As for the name: it's the punchline to an old vaudeville routine that starts with the question, Name a city in Ohio that begins with a 'Z.'" Pie in the face, comin' atcha!"

Charles W. "Plot" Plotner was a cartoonist who had developed a template-based cartooning set for kids circa 1952 called "Plot-O". A companion set was called "Plot-O the Clown". "Plot-O" consisted of two plastic templates with pre-cut and numbered cartoon shapes. By following the simple directions and tracing the corresponding parts, any youngster could create basic cartoons of people and finish them off with their own details. The hand-lettered instruction booklet provided the design inspiration for Cartoon Panel JNL.

Gayle Sato, longtime friend of MVB Fonts, has amazing handwriting. It’s a natural, simple hand, with perfect rhythm. Devoid of flourishes, it doesn’t try to be beautiful. It’s just genuine, quick, and clean — the handwriting we all wish we had. The digitization by Mark van Bronkhorst captures these qualities. Retaining the roughness of a felt pen, MVB Calliope is a handwriting typeface that feels much more authentic than most, highly legible but still raw. The Regular was released in 2005, with the other weights shortly thereafter.

This is a geometric uncial font with a retro/art-deco feel. It comes in four weights, each in upright and oblique styles. It has Unicode coverage for Latin, Greek (modern diacritics only), and Cyrillic, plus the Euro and peace signs. This font began as part of a project to design a local currency. Sadly, the municipality canceled the endeavor before the design competition had started. I'm including one of the prototypes in the gallery section as an example of this font’s many uses.

Way back before digital imaging, video tape and computer editing, the home movie enthusiast had to shoot on film his own titles using any one of a variety of movie titling kits on the market. One common approach was to arrange white ceramic letters on a colored background and film them. A set of such letters provided the inspiration for Entitled JNL from Jeff Levine. The classic, sleek Art Deco lines of this font makes it an all-purpose design for any headline needs.

The sheet music for the 1934 tune "Two in A Dream" had the title hand lettered in a bold type style that utilized some stencil and some solid lettering. Following through on the stencil portion of the design, Tuxedo Stencil JNL was created in both regular and oblique versions. The 1930s were the era of elegant supper clubs and night spots, and it was not unusual to find gentlemen all decked out in formal wear for an evening on the town, hence the font's name.

Introducing Madriz, a slab serif font with a retro feel that's perfect for any project that needs a touch of old-school charm. With over 32 fonts in one font family, Madriz offers a wide range of styles to suit any need. You can choose from Thin to Black weights and Regular to Extra Expanded widths to create your perfect look. Madriz is inspired by the old-school signage of Madrid, Spain. The name "Madriz" is actually the affectionate nickname that Madrileños, the people of Madrid, gave to their city. The font's bold, blocky letters capture the essence of Madrid's vibrant and historic streets. Madriz's versatile nature makes it a great choice for a wide range of projects. Its bold, retro style is perfect for showcasing heritage brands or giving a modern touch to classic designs. Madriz can also be used to create a sense of nostalgia, making it ideal for retro-themed projects or campaigns. Here are some of the ways you can use Madriz: Titles and headings: Madriz's bold, eye-catching style is perfect for titles and headings. Text blocks: Madriz's wide range of weights and widths makes it suitable for text blocks, from body copy to large paragraphs. Logos and branding: Madriz's retro charm makes it a great choice for logos and branding. With its 32 font styles and support for over 90 languages, Madriz is an incredibly powerful tool for any designer. It can be used to create a variety of looks, from classic and elegant to modern and edgy. Whether you're working on a print project, a web design, or an app, Madriz has the potential to make a lasting impression. Madriz is the perfect font for anyone who wants to add a touch of old-school charm to their designs. With its wide range of styles and features, Madriz is sure to make a statement in any project. Would you like to get 5 completely free fonts worth over $75? No tricks, no hidden words, terms or anything. Just subscribe to my newsletter, make sure to check your email to approve the subscription, add me to your contacts so that the emails don't end up in spam folder and you will get 5 fonts for free. The fonts are packed with alternates, ligatures and some even come with extra goodies. Happy creating everyone!

Kisba Nova – A character actor that turns heads. Spiky serifs, soft ball terminals. All eyes on Kisba Nova: enter a typeface designed to arouse attention. Kisba Nova is that one guest who joins a party, and a murmur goes through the crowd. Kisba Nova is pure charisma. Opposites attract: Kisba Nova combines sharp wedge serifs and spiky spurs with round and soft ball terminals. Infuse this with a neoclassical stroke contrast and you get a thrilling typeface driven by visual extremes. Sure: Kisba Nova is a diva. But it’s a pro, after all. That’s why it comes in two optical sizes: Headline and Text. This makes sure it looks gorgeous in any situation. The Kisba Nova Headline subfamily is flaunts the trademark flamboyant looks and extravagant letters like f and k. They bring you all of the excitement of the showbiz in large applications—use it for sizes of 24 Pt. and more. The extraordinarily designed, thin and monolinear diacritics, punctuation marks, and symbols of Kisba Nova Headline add to this modern and elegant character. Kisba Nova Headline consists of seven weights from Thin to Black, offering plenty of possibilities to set headlines and titles. With about 600 characters per weight, it contains enough functionality for the demands of a skilled typographer. OpenType features, such as a large set of ligatures, extended language support, case-sensitive forms, different sets of figures, and arrows, enable sensational designs both in web & print layouts. The Kisba Nova Text subfamily comes with decreased contrast, more generous letter proportions, and wider spacing. Instead of employing flashy thin and monolinear diacritics, punctuation marks, and symbols, Kisba Nova Text aims for a more even texture on the page. It retains the true, elegant Kisba DNA while allowing you to set legible copy in sizes between 9 and 18 Pt. Nothing will distract your reader–Kisba Nova Text aims to please. Kisba Nova Text consists of seven weights from Thin to Black, offering plenty of possibilities to set body copy and subheadlines. With about 600 characters per weight, it contains enough functionality for the demands of a skilled typographer. OpenType features, such as a large set of ligatures, extended language support, case-sensitive forms, different sets of figures, and arrows, enable sensational designs both in web & print layouts. Kisba Nova celebrates the dual nature of softness and sharpness in a single typeface. It’s a character actor that turns heads.

New Lincoln Gothic is an elegant sanserif, generous in width and x-height. There are twelve weights ranging from Hairline to UltraBold and an italic for each weight. At the stroke ends are gentle flares, and some of the round characters possess an interesting and distinctive asymmetry. The character set supports Central Europe, and there are three figure sets, extended fractions, superior and inferior numbers, and a few alternates, all accessible via OpenType features. Back in 1965, Thomas Lincoln had an idea for a new sanserif typeface, a homage of sorts, to ancient Roman artisans. The Trajan Column in Rome, erected in 113 AD, has an inscription that is considered to be the basis for western European lettering. Lincoln admired these beautiful letterforms and so, being inspired, he set out to design a new sanserif typeface based on the proportions and subtleties of the letters found in the Trajan Inscription. Lincoln accomplished what he set out to do by creating Lincoln Gothic. The typeface consisted only of capital letters. Lincoln intentionally omitted a lowercase to keep true his reference to the Trajan Inscription, which contains only magiscule specimens. The design won him the first Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC) National Typeface Competition in 1965. The legendary Herb Lubalin even used it to design a promotional poster! All this was back in the day when typositor film strips and photo type were all the rage in setting headlines. Fast forward now to the next millennium. Thomas Lincoln has had a long, illustrious career as a graphic designer. Still, he has one project that feels incomplete; Lincoln Gothic does not have a lowercase. It is the need to finish the design that drives Lincoln to resurrect his prize winning design and create its digital incarnation. Thus, New Lincoln Gothic was born. Lacking the original drawings, Lincoln had to locate some old typositor strips in order to get started. He had them scanned and imported the data into Freehand where he refined the shapes and sketched out a lowercase. He then imported that data into Fontographer, where he worked the glyphs again and refined the spacing, and started generating additional weights and italics. His enthusiasm went unchecked and he created 14 weights! It was about that time that Lincoln contacted Bitstream about publishing the family. Lincoln worked with Bitstream to narrow down the family (only to twelve weights), interpolate the various weights using three masters, and extend the character set to support CE and some alternate figure sets. Bitstream handled the hinting and all production details and built the final CFF OpenType fonts using FontLab Studio 5.

The font Speech Bubbles offers a convenient way to integrate text and image. While the font can be used to design comics, it also gives the typographer a tool to make text speak – to give words conversational dynamics and to emphasize visually the sound of the message. The font includes a total of seventy outlines and seventy bubble backgrounds selected from a survey of historic forms. What follows is a discussion of my process researching and developing the font, as well as a few user suggestions. My work on the Speech Bubbles font began with historic research. My first resource was a close friend who is a successful German comic artist. I had previously worked with him to transform his lettering art into an OpenType font. This allowed his publishing house to easily translate cartoons from German to other languages without the need to use another font, like Helvetica rounded. My friend showed me the most exciting, outstanding and graphically appealing speech bubbles from his library. I looked at early strips from Schulz (Peanuts), Bill Waterson (Calvin & Hobes), Hergé (TinTin), Franquin, as well as Walt Disney. The most inspiring was the early Krazy Kat and Ignatz (around 1915) from George Herriman. I also studied 1980’s classics Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen, Frank Miller’s Ronin and Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vandetta. Contemporary work was also a part of my research—like Liniers from Macanudo and work of Ralf König. With this overview in mind I began to work from scratch. I tried to distill the typical essence of each author’s or era’s speech bubbles style into my font. In the end I limited my work down to the seventy strongest images. An important aspect of the design process was examining each artist’s speech bubble outlines. In some cases they are carefully inked, as in most of the 80’s work. In others, such as with Herriman, they are fast drawn with a rough impetus. The form can be dynamic and round (Schultz) with a variable stroke width, or straight inked with no form contrast (Hergé). Since most outlines also carry the character of the tool that they are made with, I chose to separate the outline from the speech bubble fill-in or background. 
This technical decision offers interesting creative possibilities. For example, the font user can apply a slight offset from fill-in to outline, as it is typical to early comic strips, in which there are often print misalignments. Also, rather than work in the classic white background with black outline, one can work with colors. Many tonal outcomes are possible by contrasting the fill-in and outline color. The Speech Bubbles font offers a dynamic and quick way to flavor information while conveying a message. How is something said? Loudly? With a tint of shyness? Does a rather small message take up a lot of space? The font’s extensive survey of historic comic designs in an assembly that is useful for both pure comic purposes or more complex typographic projects. Use Speech Bubbles to give your message the right impact in your poster, ad or composition.