John Seddon (1644-1700), was a famous English writing master, the leading calligrapher of his time, and master of Sir John Johnson’s Free Writing School in Priest’s Court, Foster Lane. His portrait was drawn by William Faithorne and was engraved by John Sturt as the frontispiece for his copy-books, such as ‘The Ingenious youth’s companion’ of c.1690 and 'The pen-man’s paradise' of c.1695. These were engraved after his work by others. Your extra-rare book - "The Pen-mans Paradise Both pleasent & Profitable OR Examples of all ye usuall hands of this Kingdome. Adorn'd with variety of ffigures an Flourishes done by Command of hand. Each ffigure being one continued & entire Track of the pen most where of may be struck as well Reverse (or to answer bothwayes) as Forward", London (1965). - (YES, that is the title of the book!) was the starting point to these new extra accurated works of Iza W, a series of revivals of the penmanship Seddon’s artworks, like this highly ornamented animal kingdom inspired capitals and alphabets: the Seddon Penmans Paradise Capitals typeface. And, on the other hand, you can get the animal and human kingdon inspired penmanship forms in the Bestiario font. The “SeddonsFleurons” will complete the collection. Fantastic choice to elaborated barocque/renaissance inspired and historical accurated layouts.

John Sigvard ‘Ole’ Olsen and Harold Ogden ‘Chic’ Johnson were musicians-turned-comedians who rose to fame in the zany 1938 Broadway musical review “Hellzapoppin'”. They reprised their roles in the 1941 film adaptation of the show, and the opening title card of the film has “Hellzapoppin'” hand lettered in a tall, condensed sans serif design with an inline. This is now available as Wild Comedy JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

In 1972, VGC released two typefaces by designer friends Dick Jensen and Harry Villhardt. Jensen’s was called Serpentine, and Villhardt’s was called Venture. Even though both faces had the same elements and a somewhat similar construct, one of them became very popular and chased the other away from the spotlight. Serpentine went on to become the James Bond font, the Pepsi and every other soda pop font, the everything font, all the way through the glories of digital lala-land where it was hacked, imitated and overused by hundreds of designers. But the only advantage it really had over Venture was being a 4-style family, including the bold italic that made it all the rage, as opposed to Venture’s lone upright style. One must wonder how differently things would have played if a Venture Italic was around back then. Chopper is Canada Type’s revival of Venture, that underdog of 1972. This time around it comes with a roman, an italic, and corresponding biform styles to make it a much more attractive and refreshing alternative to Serpentine. Chopper comes in all popular formats, boasts extended language support, and contains a ton of alternate characters sprinkled throughout the character map.

A faithful reproduction of the common French Ronde of the nineteenth century; the design originates at the Inland Typefoundry in St. Louis as French Script and was revised by Morris Fuller Benton in 1905 and made popular by ATF under the name Typo Upright. Stephenson Blake also had a version available as Parisian Ronde.

When the Adventures of Max Faraday began in the pages of Wildstorm Comics' DIVINE RIGHT in the mid-'90s, this chapter title font materialized, eventually reappearing on the covers of WOLVERINE. Delicately crafted by Mister Fontastic himself, John Roshell claims this font was the product of Divine Inspiration. When told he'd been looking at the work of too many French Poster Artists, he dismissed such allegations as Mucha do about nothing.