When traveling in Paris, American designer Frederic W. Goudy did a rubbing of a second century marble inscription he found in the Louvre. After ruminating on these letterforms for several years, he drew a titling typeface in 1918, all around the letters P, R, and E. He called the new face Hadriano" as that name was in the original inscription. Robert Wiebking cut the matrices, and the Continental Typefounders Association released the font. Goudy designed a lowercase at the request of Monotype in 1930, though he didn't really like the idea of adding lowercase to an inscriptional letterform. The lowercase looks much like some of Goudy's other Roman faces. Compugraphic added more weights in the late 1970s, and made the shapes more cohesive. Hadriano has nicely cupped serifs and sturdy, generous body shapes. Distinctive individual letters include the cap A and Q, and the lowercase e, g, and z. Hadriano™ is an excellent choice for impressive headings and vigorous display lines."

Perva is a suite of three eye-catching fonts inspired by display types from the 19th century. This unconventional family has three different font styles that can be used individually or combined to build a playfulness multi-typeface design system. It is suitable for titling, posters headlines, book covers, packaging, social media, and branding. Perva brings together a Slab serif font, a.k.a Antique or Egyptian; a Reverse-contrast or Italian; and an Old English Blackletter. The design is inspired by the display types listed as “Typographic monstrosities” in Thomas C. Hansard’s book Typographia (1825). What he found absurd was understood here as interesting and enjoyable to introduce a contemporary approach of the types widely sold by foundries such as Bruce’s New York Type-Foundry and Caslon Foundry. Each of the three fonts holds around 400 glyphs, covering the languages of Northern, Western, Central, and Southern Europe. Opentype features include case-sensitive forms and a couple of alternates for the Blackletter style.

Blumenkind is a fresh, bright, humanist script font radiating boundless optimism and friendly enthusiasm. Its strokes are based on the rounded triangle, which lends it a dynamic bounce and a confident human touch. It shines in a wide range of display and editorial applications, but excels in particular in the context of art, creativity, food, social events, and spirituality. Blumenkind is inspired by an instance of metal-strip lettering found on the B�rgermeister Kornmesser Siedlung residential building complex in Berlin from the 1960s. The font name, being German for �flower child�, aims to capture the positive zeitgeist of that time evident in the letters. Blumenkind comes with extensive language support, tight kerning, attractive ligatures, and subtly varied alternate shapes for some of the most commonly doubled letters � and all that in three linear weights and one calligraphic weight. Furthermore, a complementary version of the font (Blumenkind Alternate) is available, in which the overlapping tittles and accent marks of the original are replaced with more traditional free-floating marks. This font is dedicated to the miracle of medical science. Thanks to Georg Seifert, Rainer Scheichelbauer, and Michael Wallner for technical aid.

Cross the irrepressible Samuel Welo with a bit of found matchbook art and voilà! You have this retro charmer, proudly found on the kind of neon signs that offered an invitation to dine and dance. To continue the baseline treatment between words—or to extend it on either side—use the _Underscore character. Both versions of the font include complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1524 character sets, with localization for Moldovan, Romanian and Turkish.

The letterforms for this unique face were found on a luggage tag designed by the Richter Studio of Milan in the 1930s; the treatment was suggested by a recent Dutch ad for the opening of a service garage. The meeting of the twain results in a three-dimensional delight. Various transitional elements can be found in the ASCII tilde, {brace}, dagger and double-dagger positions. Both versions of the font contain characters to support all major European languages.

Precursors to Torrone, the fonts are found among the type experiments of Art Deco artists in 1930’s Europe. Fonts of this type with chunky, geometry-driven lower case letters combined with somewhat flamboyant, brush-influenced upper case can be found in the logotypes for Mignon Chocolate Factory in Germany and Baci bon-bons still in use today by Italy’s Perugina Candies. Torrone includes alternate lower case characters and full Central European glyph sets with over 550 characters included!

Some 40 km north of Helsinki, surrounded by meadows and a serene Finnish lake, lies Ainola, the former home and now museum of composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957). I know the place quite well, since it is only a stone’s throw away from the art school where I began my graphic design studies. We sometimes went there after classes—a beautiful walk, especially in spring, when the days were getting longer, the snow melting in the sun and the ice cracking on the lake. The composer often professed his love for this landscape and found constant inspiration in its moods, sounds and scents during different seasons. For many people, Sibelius and his music, most notably his famous symphonic poem Finlandia, are a symbol of Finland. I decided to name the typeface family I’m presenting here FinlandiaScript, because it owes its influence to both Sibelius’ manuscripts and the Finnish landscape around Ainola. The shape of letters, their poise and the rhythm they create resemble Sibelius’ handwriting without copying it. The letters form gently flowing lines of text which is legible without giving up individuality. The font family comes in three styles: FinlandiaScript, FinlandiaScript Bold and FinlandiaScript Frost. Together they are perfect for magazines, websites and brands aiming to create a personal and sincere image. While the fine details of FinlandiaScript Frost are best suitable for display sizes, FinlandiaScript and FinlandiaScript Bold work well in both headlines and texts of smaller sizes. Hundreds of ligatures give them an especially flexible appearance. The FinlandiaScript family contains Western, Central European and Extended Cyrillic character sets and supports almost 100 languages. It is best suited for Opentype savvy programs with the “standard ligatures” and “contextual alternates” features turned on.

This font was inspired by lettering found on old stock certificate on the 19th century and comes with two guilloche borders, which makes national currency very useful.

Inspired by the Techno sound of the 1990s, Alexander Branczyk designed a series of new, wild and controversial fonts which mark a complete departure from typographic traditions.

KP Duty JNL emulates the lettering found on military equipment. It's a bold and macho design, perfectly suited for any project which has an armed forces theme.

Inspired by the Techno sound of the 1990s, Alexander Branczyk designed a series of new, wild and controversial fonts which mark a complete departure from typographic traditions.

Terrace JNL is a bold, sturdy Art Deco titling face based on hand lettering found on the cover of some 1940s-vintage sheet music for the organ.

Oven Plate JNL solidifies the outline lettering of Stove Plate JNL; based on the logo for Red Star Oil Stoves and found on an old letterpress cut.

Sign Writer JNL was found within the pages of an early 1900s manual on the art of sign lettering and is a style typical of those times.

A thoroughly fun font based on handlettering found on a travel brochure for IMM Steamship Lines, circa 1927, and named after a fictitious girl who likes kissing alot.

The hand lettering found throughout the movie trailer for 1942's "Mr. and Mrs. North" inspired Criminal Intent JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Kids Activities JNL is based on the hand lettering found on the covers of some 1955 Cub Scouts activity books. It's available in both regular and oblique versions.

Weekend Tabloid JNL is a classic sans serif wood type design that found its way into the setting of newspaper headlines during the pre-electronic age of publishing.

I was playing around with some brushes and ink, and out came Skulduggery. Use it for any project you can apply the term ‘skulduggery’ to. Or not. Whatever.

Adam Roe founded in 1991 Lunchbox Studios as an experiment. Adam is also president and founder of his second company Reelhouse Footage und FK in Los Angeles, California.