The cover on the sheet music for the 1922 song "If She Comes from Dixie" had the title hand-lettered in an Art Nouveau style with a semi-stencil effect. It's now available as Nouveau Semi Stencil JNL in both regular and oblique versions. The typeface is not considered a "pure" stencil because many of the letters were made solid; lacking the classic stencil "breaks" at key points found in more traditional stencil designs.

“The Auto Show” is the title of an early 1900s pieces of sheet music proving that America has had a fascination with cars since the earliest days of the automotive industry. The song sheet’s title was hand lettered in a casual Art Nouveau style which has been re-drawn digitally as Nouveau Auto JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions… and what’s better than a nouveau auto (a new car)?

Some years ago, a good friend and typophile, Gonzalo García Barcha, approached me with the idea of designing a typeface for his editorial project Blacamán Ediciones. He had just came across an hitherto unknown manuscript by Luis Lagarto, a colonial illuminator and scribe, working in Mexico City and Puebla in the late 1500s. The manuscript calligraphy was incredible and stunningly original. It featured three different hands by the scribe, intermingled in the text: a kind of baroque «Roman» roundhand; a very ornate, lively «Italic»; and some sort of irregular, playful, even funny «small caps». All imbued with an eccentric, convoluted zest and vivacious rhythm. Lagarto is the final result of translating these extraordinary hands into a digital type family. Since the manuscript had no numerals, math signs and many other characters now in use, part of the fun of the job was to infer them from the stylistic peculiarities of Luis Lagarto's calligraphy. Lagarto received an Award of Excellence at the Type Directors Club of New York annual competition.

The other day I was at a market with my kids and they had this really retro kind of circus thing. The signs and posters there, were designed in a really sloppy and poor manner - but they all had a lot of naive charm! I was really fascinated by all these uneven letters and I was immediately inspired to do a font like that! And out of the magic hat comes...ta-da-da-da...Cirkus Fantastiko! Planning on throwing a party with a circus theme? Then Cirkus Fantastiko is ready to play the juggling clown while riding the elephant! Play around with the 3 different layers to create that low budget hand painted cirkus posters! :)

Sometimes you get an idea stuck in your head and the only way to get rid of that demon is to put something down on paper. A year later the doodles became a skeleton, and then the skeleton had a body, then the body had a name, then the name got a personality. What was left was a clean set of ten fonts that encompass a very simple skeleton with a lot of visual appeal. During the process, I saw ways to expand the typeface's display capabilities by producing inline styles as well as a down-and-dirty rough set. Each font has a full set of glyphs that include Central European and Small Cap characters.

Sometimes you get an idea stuck in your head and the only way to get rid of that demon is to put something down on paper. A year later the doodles became a skeleton, and then the skeleton had a body, then the body had a name, then the name got a personality. What was left was a clean set of ten fonts that encompass a very simple skeleton with a lot of visual appeal. During the process, I saw ways to expand the typeface’s display capabilities by producing inline styles as well as a down-and-dirty rough set. Each font has a full set of glyphs that include Central European and Small Cap characters.

Answer Songs have been around for [probably] just as long as there have been songs. 1917's "If I Catch the Guy Who Wrote Poor Butterfly" was the answer to the 1916 hit "Poor Butterfly" [by Raymond Hubbell and John Golden], which in turn was inspired by the Puccini opera "Madame Butterfly". "Poor Butterfly" was so popular that this "answer" tune had as part of its lyrics "That melody haunts me in my sleep; it seems to creep." Nonetheless, the sheet music for William Jerome and Arthur Green's comic lament had the title hand lettered with an oval nib lettering pen and is now availably as a digital type face called Dip Pen JNL.

Sometimes you get an idea stuck in your head and the only way to get rid of that demon is to put something down on paper. A year later the doodles became a skeleton, and then the skeleton had a body, then the body had a name, then the name got a personality. What was left was a clean set of ten fonts that encompass a very simple skeleton with a lot of visual appeal. During the process, I saw ways to expand the typeface's display capabilities by producing inline styles as well as a down-and-dirty rough set. Each font has a full set of glyphs that include Central European and Small Cap characters.

Gildersleeve evokes the spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement of the 1920s. Think of a hand-cut Roman display face, with loving care lavished over each serif and letterform. Gildersleeve is offerered in the classic combination of a regular face, a bold face, an italic and an italic bold. Any of them are ideal for poster or cover work, as well as for chapter and section headings in a longer document, in combination with a text face such as Vertrina or Clementhorpe Text.

There are a few professions in which being left-handed confers an advantage-think of the great southpaw pitchers in major league baseball, like Sandy Koufax. Now, think of all the great left-handed calligraphers. Not so easy, right? Here's a hint: Luis Siquot. Far from being an advantage, Siquot's lefty orientation proved a hurdle to overcome. When I was young, I had serious problems writing," he recalls. "If there was a lot of text, I almost always soiled the paper with wet ink as my hand followed the pen." Then, a friend told Siquot about a special store in London that catered to left-handed people. It was there that he found an Osmiroid pen specially designed for left-handed calligraphers. ITC Cali is based on Siquot's use of this pen. "Electronic scans of my calligraphy were the foundation of the design," he says. "I was careful to leave in some imperfections to avoid an excessively mechanical look, and added the little notches in the strokes to imitate the texture of writing on a rough cotton paper." ITC Cali works equally well in text and display sizes, but it is a calligraphic script, Siquot warns, "and shouldn't be set in all capitals." That said, ITC Cali is a remarkably versatile design, well-suited to a variety of communication projects."

FranklinGothicHandLight is part of a series of hand-drawn fonts from way back in time – before computers changed the way we worked. When I was in advertising – before computers – a very time consuming part of my daily work was sketching headlines. I used to be able to sketch headlines in Franklin Gothic, Times, Futura, Helvetica and several scripts. We had a kind of huge inverted camera – which we called Lucy. We projected the alphabet onto a sheet of transparent paper, outlined the letters with a fineliner and then filled them in. It was very tedious work, but the resulting headline had its own charm and we had a permanent race going on who was best and fastest. I won most of the time! They used to call me the fastest "Magic Marker" this side of the Atlantic. Great days, just like today! Your sentimental type designer from the past Gert Wiescher

FranklinGothicHandDemi is part of a series of hand-drawn fonts from way back in time – before computers changed the way we worked. When I was in advertising – before computers – a very time consuming part of my daily work was sketching headlines. I used to be able to sketch headlines in Franklin Gothic, Times, Futura, Helvetica and several scripts. We had a kind of huge inverted camera – which we called Lucy. We projected the alphabet onto a sheet of transparent paper, outlined the letters with a fineliner and then filled them in. It was very tedious work, but the resulting headline had its own charm and we had a permanent race going on who was best and fastest. I won most of the time! They used to call me the fastest "Magic Marker" this side of the Atlantic. Great days, just like today! Your sentimental type designer from the past Gert Wiescher

The 1920 song “Noah’s Wife Lived a Wonderful Life (‘Cause Noah Had to Stay Home)” is another example of one of those overly-worded song titles from early 20th Century composers. What’s more important for type enthusiasts is that the title was hand lettered with a round nib pen in a slightly ragged Art Nouveau style. Cleaning up the ragged design, the end result became Nouveau Showcard JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The cover of the 1919 sheet music for "While Others are Building Castles in the Air I'll Build A Cottage for Two" had its title hand lettered in a wonderfully eccentric Art Nouveau serif design that typified the era. Also typical of the time was the habit of various songwriters to come up with wordy titles. This particular one checks in at fourteen words. Nonetheless, the sheet music's title inspired Air Castles JNL and its oblique counterpart.

Sometimes is a fancy signature font with 2 styles: regular and slant. It is inspired by luxury and branded items. It is perfect for logos, branding, photography, invitations, watermarks, advertisements, product designs, stationery, wedding designs, labels, product packaging, special events or anything that need hand-writting taste. Thanks for checking it out, and feel free to drop me a message if you had any queries! Oh, and come and say hello over at email : almarkhatype@gmail.com ~ Almarkha Type