PM Showman is based on vintage hand-painted sign writing from the 1900s through the 1960s. Seen on everything from office signs to posters, it was a staple of business communication and entertainment advertising in the early 20th century. We meticulously hand-drew each font, modeling the spacing and quirkiness of the original letterforms to give PM Showman an authentic hand-painted look.

Will Ransom designed the exemplar for this series for Barnhart Brothers & Spindler in the early 1900s. The typeface was originally named "Parsons", after the advertising director of a Chicago department store (evidently a very BIG customer of BB&S). Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

During the early years of the 20th Century, America's fascination with automobiles was just beginning. The cover for a 1916 piece of sheet music for the comedy song "On the Old Back Seat of the Henry Ford" had the title hand lettered by a round nib pen in an Art Nouveau style. This is now available digitally as Running Board JNL.

Arial is one of the most widely used designs of the last 30 years. Drawn in 1982 by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders for use in an early IBM® laser printer, Arial has become a staple for textual content. While it is widely believed that Arial's design was based on Helvetica, it is more accurate to consider Monotype Grotesque as its ancestor.

Bastion is an ultra-bold text-style font derived from some turn of the century hand lettered signage. It is characteristic of the very bold lettering used in a lot of advertising and product packaging in the early 1900s, a style of lettering which was also the inspiration for the Cooper font, though we think Bastion has a much more attractive overall look.

In late 1988 or early 1989 I noticed that the circular form of the sickle and the linear form of the hammer could be used to form all the letters of the alphabet. The result of that realization was RedLetter, a novelty or letterbat font. It is caps-only with the lower-case letters containing smaller versions of upper-case letters.

The Charta family of fonts draws its inspiration from the letter styles used in early manuscripts and printed books. Charta is also remarkably versatile: it’s equally at home in a traditional or modern context and can be used for a wide range of applications from an automobile badge to a newspaper masthead and from a fashion label to a candy bar wrapper.

Arioso was a part of the 1990 program Type before Gutenberg, which included the work of twelve contemporary font designers and represented styles from across the ages. The calligraphic style of Arioso stems from an early form of Old Face developed in the 14th and 15th centureis in Italy. It is a mixture of Roman capitals and Carolingian lower case.

Inspired by a handwritten Cyrillic placard seen in a book about the Soviet Union, Statue of Liberty's Underwear was envisioned as having been written with a very thick pen with a flat tip held horizontally. Additionally, the letterforms were sculpted to resemble lettering common in early 20th-century Russian constructivism pieces. A Cyrillic alphabet, or "azbuka", set was included in the font.

SK Shriftovik is a geometrical, caps and small caps only, sans serif typeface inspired by the works of constructivists of the early XX century. Due to its structure, this display typeface is good for posters and magazines. The SK Shriftovik typeface supports many languages, including extended Latin and Cyrillic. The font contains many ligature combinations and stylistic alternatives that significantly transform the text.

Madeleine is an open script face with influence from early 50s scripts. The stroke doesn't have much variation, and the characters are wide and flowing. The script also features OpenType end swashes and discretionary ligatures to extend the twirling and fluid nature of the script. This mischievous script is useful for informal invitations, scrap booking or whenever you need a retro look.

It's all about these subtle nuances that make a neutral sans typeface different. Pure geometry with a human touch is a recipe that works in every generation. Inspired by classical fonts from the early 20th century, General rides the line between traditional and modern styles. With its 5 light weights, the General family is a strong tool for a clean design.

Retro Signs JNL collects nearly 50 designs modeled from old water transfer sign decals once manufactured by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago, Illinois and adds in a generous amount of additional phrases newly-drawn in the same hand lettered style. These vintage sign panels are perfect for creating nostalgic signage to fit projects centered around the 1950s and early 1960s.

The chamfered block style of lettering has been a workhorse for years. From the early signage of the 1800s to military markings to the techno fonts of the 1980s and beyond, its clean and simple look gets the message across easily and boldly. Industrialist JNL and its oblique partner were modeled from the title on a piece of sheet music from the 1940s.

I took Arquà’s curvy lines from some details in art nuveau posters from late 1800 / early ‘900, then I added to the mix a little bit of elegance with some weird contrast (look at the S). One hour in the hoven and a modern looking display font came out in 2 weights: Goodboy and the doppelganger Badboy perfect to mix up.

Good Vibes is a three-variation font family with a groovy retro vibe. This lettering style conjures up the early 1970s and the whimsical post-psychedelic graphic era. Stack the three styles to build different combinations of shaded and outlined layers. Good Vibes, as it's name suggests, has a charming and lively funkiness that will add splash and pizzazz to your designs.

Clairvaux is a part of the 1990 program Type before Gutenberg, which included the work of twelve contemporary font designers and represented styles from across the ages. Linotype offers a package including all these fonts on its web page, www.fonts.de. Herbert Maring developed his Clairvaux based on early Gothic typefaces. Its clever design resulted in highly stylized yet legible characters.

An old rubber stamp printing set called the Aristocrat Sign Marker was the inspiration for this font from Jeff Levine. The letter shapes are truly reminiscent of the 1920s and early 30s with their casual playfulness, hence the font's name of Casual Friday JNL. To add a more nostalgic touch, the characters show slight imperfection of shape, as if hand-lettered.

We have created this font as a complement for the 825 Karolus. It is a set of decorated letters in the style of those used by the scribes during the early medieval era. It is inspired from a manuscript copy of "The Hobbit" (in Caroline style) that we obtained in the year 2000 as a present for our daughter’s 15th birthday.

This font started life in 1893 at the Boston Type Foundry, but was also cast at the Central Type Foundry. Both were members of the ATF combine formed in 1892. Like so many interesting fonts of its day, it was issued without a lowercase, limiting its use to display headlines. Sometime in the early 1990s, we designed a lowercase to go with it.

A playful, casual take on round nib pen lettering was spotted amongst some online scans from an old lettering book. The free-form and stylized shapes of the letters and numbers are reminiscent of old-time show cards, movie titles and signage in vogue around the early 1900s through the 1920s. Fancy Show Card JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Par Avion's design draws something of its inspiration from the wings of the old BSA Motorcycles logo and was developed in parallel with our Vinea typeface family. “Par Avion” means ‘By Air’ - remember those little blue stickers in the Post Office - for sending Air Mail? We think this typeface design has a lovely streamlined feel of the early jet-era about it.

Handmade Caslon JNL is a somewhat imperfect version of one of the many Caslon faces in use during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Based on vintage source material, Handmade Caslon JNL is the right typeface for projects reflecting antiquity, a hand-made look or where slightly imperfect lettering adds a bit of the "real world" to the message.

An early 20th-Century French lettering book displayed at an online image sharing site stood out with a hand-lettered version of a classic Victorian font. The lettering - a spur serif top and a split serif (or "Western-style") bottom is the basis for Jeff Levine's Les Folies JNL. All of the nuances and idiosyncracies of hand-lettering are left intact.

Here’s a warm, casual text font based on an early twentieth century work by lettering artist Elizabeth Colwell, released by American Type Founders in 1923. For this update, all four fonts have been completely redrawn, and many new characters have been added. Both versions of this font contain the complete Latin A Extended character set, as well as extended ligatures and fractions.

There was a time in this country when many young people studied a trade via a correspondence course through the mail. While this method still exists, it's now more common to find students taking online classes. From an early-1960s course in sign painting comes Sign Merchant JNL, a classic brush stroke type design popularized on show cards and posters.

Iowan Old Style was designed for Bitstream in 1990 by noted sign painter John Downer. Iowan Old Style is a hardy contemporary text design modeled after earlier revivals of Jenson and Griffo typefaces but with a larger x-height, tighter letterfit, and reproportioned capitals. Cyrillic letters were designed by Natalia Vasilyeva in 2016. Iowan Old Style Cyrillic was released by Paratype in 2017.

Klondike began life as an update of the discontinued Elemeno font Pourpoint. It took on a life of its own early in the design process and went in a completely different direction. Standard Klondike is best at very large sizes and evokes a disco or neon feel. Klondike Solid works at smaller sizes to compliment the regular version or on its own.

Gilmore Fahrenheit is a glyphic, sans serif typeface that was inspired from early designs by the renowned English typographer Eric Gill. It was designed in 1992 by A. Pat Hickson (P&P Hickson) and Steve Jackaman (ITF) exclusively for the Red Rooster Collection. It was designed with true small caps, has an italicized geometric look, and possesses legibility reminiscent of Swiss typefaces.

Solente is an elegant slab serif font and was inspired from Early 1900's Art-Deco, Art Nouveau and Jugendstil fonts. Perfect for use as headline or sub-head text in you design. It perfectly represents vintage esthetics in a modern way. The font has stylistic alternates for all capitals and an extra set of ligatures to replace some combinations.

Here's a handy collection of 72 type adornments gleaned from American Type Foundry catalogs from 1913 to 1934, featuring little treasures from some of the early twentieth century's most respected designers, including Will Bradley, Frederic Goudy and George Trenholm. Among the goodies are fleurons, pilcrows, guidons, bishops fingers, mortised initial frames and several other useful elements to dress up your documents.

Becka Script was designed by David Harris in 1985 and is a wide running typeface with varying stroke contrasts. This font looks as though written with a broad tipped pen and its slight slant to the right makes clear its similarity to callipgraphy fonts. Becka Script is reminiscent of the 1950s and its strong strokes make it best for headlines or shorter texts.

Named after the Florentine river which runs through the heart of the Italian Renaissance, Arno draws on the warmth and readability of early humanist typefaces of the 15th and 16th centuries. While inspired by the past, Arno is distinctly contemporary in both appearance and function. Designed by Adobe Principal Designer Robert Slimbach, Arno is a meticulously-crafted face in the tradition of early Venetian and Aldine book typefaces. Embodying themes Slimbach has explored in typefaces such as Minion and Brioso, Arno represents a distillation of his design ideals and a refinement of his craft. As a multi-featured OpenType family, with the most extensive Latin-based glyph complement Adobe has yet offered, Arno offers extensive pan-European language support, including Cyrillic and polytonic Greek. The family also offers such typographic niceties as five optical size ranges, extensive swash italic sets, and small capitals for all covered languages.

The Sabon® Georgian design translates the original Sabon typeface into Georgian language. Its old style Latin-based design traits and proportions have been carefully and beautifully interpreted as Georgian script characters. In the early 1960s, a group of German master printers wanted a typeface family which would provide them with consistent and predictable results, whether it was used as machine or hand-set composition. They approached one of Germany’s most distinguished type designers, Jan Tschichold, to undertake the design task. The end result of the design commission is a typographic tour de force, and the face that establishes Tschichold’s reputation as a type designer. The completed design, released in 1966, not only solved the imposed design problem of the early 1960s, it is also an exceptionally beautiful and useful digital design. The Sabon® Georgian design further extends the range of this remarkable typeface

1977 was a good year for soccer. Attendance for the North American Soccer League (NASL) grew 33%, to 13,000 per game. Brazillian soccer legend Pelé played his final match, kicking for both the New York Cosmos and Santos of Brazil. And a soccerboy named Charlie was crowned with the nickname Chanky. In honor of his soccer hero Pelé, Charlie insisted the neighbor kids call him Chelé. They laughed at him and called him Chanky after Spanky from the Little Rascals. As he grew into his manhood, he became Chank the internationally renowned font designer. Chank created this font Soccerboy, as filtered through the artistic eyes of his 1977 childhood. It's a tri-line font, hand-drawn in Chank's signature cartoon whimsy. Soccerboy encourages play with color and alternate characters. Create coloring effects yourself using layers and the magic wand and paint bucket tools in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.

P22 Curwen was originally designed by an unknown designer. This version was created by Colin Kahn. P22 Curwen Poster is a digitized version of a rare wood type used by the Curwen Press in England in the early 20th Century for poster work. The font was known to have been cut in 6 sizes—from 3-line (3/4 inch) to 16-line (3 inch) in height. The font was based from impressions made of the 6-line type. P22 Curwen Maxima is a hyper-stylized re-interpretation of Curwen Poster by Colin Kahn. As a post-modern poster type, it evokes an organic nature within a novel maximalist framework. It is reminiscent of early phototype display faces with an illogical three-dimensionality which serves to give the font continuity. The capitals are buried beneath stylistic wood shavings complementing the sculpture like quality of the lowercase. Perfect for (almost) any project.

While watching a 1920s Charlie Chaplin short film, Jeff Levine was taken with the unusually modern looking lettering of the title cards in that silent movie. The lettering was not only right for its time, but could also be adapted to both Art Deco and Techno applications. From this classic film comes the font Two Reeler JNL, a bit of yesterday with an eye toward the future.

Railroad Gothic Pro is a condensed, sans serif typeface, exclusively licensed from the Ludlow Collection. The original Railroad Gothic was produced by Ludlow in the early 1900’s, and Steve Jackaman (ITF) produced the digital version in 2017. The font provides support for Latin 1, Central, and Eastern European languages, and Cyrillic. Railroad Gothic Pro is reminiscent of typefaces used in 1900’s railyards, hence the name.

Halloween is a time when perfectly reasonable people choose to reenact some lost pagan rituals. No one seems to know why exactly, but Halloween has been celebrated in its present form for a little over one hundred years. This set of ornaments dates back to the early 20th century and depicts a “classic” Halloween collection of black cats, pumpkins, witches, and other indispensable Halloween ornaments.