Slatterine is a retro-futuristic family, inspired by the second streamline era of the 1950s It's ideal for any design work that needs to suggest bygone visions of the future, or to have a retro-space-age effect. Slatterine's horizontally shaded glyphs give a strong sense of motion, whether coupled with the regular form's sharply leaning oblique angle, the perpendicular form, or the reverse leaning 'Lefty'.

A circa-1940s textbook for the Esterbrook Drawlet Pens (similar to Speedball pens) offered numerous samples of lettering that could be obtained by following the simple directions and using the book as a guide. One example was a classic Art Deco design made with a round nib pen, and it has been redrawn digitally as Lettering Book JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Halavah Twist JNL is a casual serif font designed by Jeffrey N. Levine and modeled after an early-1960s display font that was quite popular in its day. This new interpretation takes on an entirely different look from the original, creating a modern-yet-retro design. Light, playful and fun-loving, Halavah Twist JNL is perfect for any project that exudes a bubbly warmth and enthusiasm.

Power, speed and modern creature comforts characterized rail travel in the 1930s. To reflect those characteristics, legendary French poster artist A. M. Cassandre employed strong graphic elements and a chiaroscuro letter treatment to the 1939 poster lettering that inspired this font. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 Latin and Unicode 1250 Central European character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

Master Photograph is a Monoline Signature Font, font with a touch of handwriting style. This font is perfect for creating signature logos and watermarks for photography studio or wedding invitation. Master Photograph includes full set of beautiful hand lettered uppercase and lowercase letters, numerals, a large range of punctuation and many beautiful ligatures. You will get: Regular and Italic Version 100+ Ligatures Thank You, Subectype

The pattern for this graceful, subtly modulated Art Deco typeface was designed by Willard T. Sniffin for American Type Founders in the 1930s. True to the original design, the Swash Caps version features Sniffin's twelve decorative variants. The Postscript and Truetype versions contain a complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252); in addition, the Opentype version supports Unicode 1250 (Central European) languages as well.

Digital Sans Now combines and completes the many diverse requests and requirements by users of the past years. By now, 36 versions for over 70 Latin and Cyrillic languages have become available, including Small Caps. Digital Sans Now is also available as a webfont and reflects, with its simplified and geometric construction and its consciously maintained poster-like forms as well as with its ornamental character, the spirit of the decorative serif-less headline typefaces of the 1970s. The basic severity of other grotesque typefaces is here repressed by means of targeted rounds. Exactly these formal breaks allow the impression that it could be used in a variety of visual applications. Short texts, headlines and logos of all descriptions are its domain. It is because of this versatility that the typeface has become a desirable stylistic element, especially in such design provinces as technology, games and sports, and that, for many years now, it appears to be timeless. Additional weights designed on the basis of the original, from Thin to Ultra, the Italics, Small Caps and alternative characters allow for differentiated “looks and feels”, and, with deliberate usage, give the “Digital Sans Now” expanded possibilities for expression. The basis for the design of Digital Sans Now is a headline typeface created in 1973 by Marty Goldstein and the Digital Sans family which has been available from Elsner+Flake since the mid-1990s under a license agreement. The four weights designed by Marty Goldstein, Thin, Plain, Heavy and Fat, were originally sold by the American company Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC) under the name of “Sol”. Similarly, the company Fotostar International offered film fonts for 2” phototypesetting machines, these however under the name “Sun”. The first digital adaptation had already been ordered in the mid 1970s in Germany by Walter Brendel for the phototypesetting system Unitype used by the TypeShop Group, in three widths and under the name “Digital Part of the Serial Collection.” Based on the versions by VGC, Thin, Plain, Heavy and Fat, new versions were then created with appropriate stroke and width adaptations for data sets for the fonts Light, Medium and Bold as well as for the corresponding italics

The Garamond family tree has many branches. There are probably more different typefaces bearing the name Garamond than the name of any other type designer. Not only did the punchcutter Claude Garamond set a standard for elegance and excellence in type founding in 16th-century Paris, but a successor, Jean Jannon, some eighty years later, cut typefaces inspired by Garamond that later came to bear Garamond’s name. Revivals of both designs have been popular and various over the course of the last 100 years. When ATF Garamond was designed in 1917, it was one of the first revivals of a truly classic typeface. Based on Jannon’s types, which had been preserved in the French Imprimerie Nationale as the “caractères de l’Université,” ATF Garamond brought distinctive elegance and liveliness to text type for books and display type for advertising. It was both the inspiration and the model for many of the later “Garamond” revivals, notably Linotype’s very popular Garamond No. 3. ATF Garamond was released ca. 1918, first in Roman and Italic, drawn by Morris Fuller Benton, the head of the American Type Founders design department. In 1922, Thomas M. Cleland designed a set of swash italics and ornaments for the typeface. The Bold and Bold Italic were released in 1920 and 1923, respectively. The new digital ATF Garamond expands upon this legacy, while bringing back some of the robustness of metal type and letterpress printing that is sometimes lost in digital adaptations. The graceful, almost lacy form of some of the letters is complemented by a solid, sturdy outline that holds up in text even at small sizes. The 18 fonts comprise three optical sizes (Subhead, Text, Micro) and three weights, including a new Medium weight that did not exist in metal. ATF Garamond also includes unusual alternates and swash characters from the original metal typeface. The character of ATF Garamond is lively, reflecting the spirit of the French Renaissance as interpreted in the 1920s. Its Roman has more verve than later old-style faces like Caslon, and its Italic is outright sprightly, yet remarkably readable.

Chicago Ornaments is a collection of decorative cuts cast by the Chicago Type Foundry of Marder, Luse & Co. of 139-141 Monroe Street in Chicago, Illinois. This collection was shown in their 1890 Price List. According to William E. Loy, at least some of them were designed by William F. Capitain. Chicago was one of the innovative Midwest type foundries, introducing the American Point System. These designs represent the late Victorian period. After 1890, with the posters of Jules Cheret taking Paris by storm, Art Nouveau gradually began to displace Victorian style. In type design, both styles competed against each other until about the end of the century. Designers may want to consider using these ornaments when using Victorian style typefaces, like our Cruickshank, Edison and Freak - as well as faces by others such as Karnac, Kismet and Quaint Gothic. Included in the font are a set of Dormer-inspired caps, numerals and a few other glyphs - also from the Victorian period.

A long lost Art Nouveau wood type from the Hamilton Museum Collection evokes the excesses of Victorian design and the equally quirky 1960s Psychedelic era revival of the Victorian type styles. Free flowing organic designs that flourished with Art Nouveau in the late 1800s were directly referenced and further distorted with with phototype in the late 1960s. This design, known as Arabesque, was produced by the Morgans & Wilcox Co. and the Wm. Page Co. as almost identical designs. Both manufacturers were acquired by Hamilton and offered briefly by Hamilton as design #618. This curious wood type defies most of the basic tenets of type design and what comes to mind when one thinks "wood type". Many characters have a lively eccentricity that were all left true to the original design. Additional characters were designed to fill out the standard range of characters found in digital fonts. This font includes over 280 characters for full unicode support of Western and Central European Latin characters.

Oliviar Sans Variable is a modern sans serif with Grotesque touch. It's my experimental to study the new trends for the future fonts that is Variable Fonts. Inspired by a Geometrical fonts and also Humanist Sans serif. Created with 8 Masters that export to the traditional OTF to 28 Styles!. On the Applications that support variable fonts such as Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop, you can get more than only 28, you can customize the Weight, Width and Slant. Weight created from Thin (100) to Bold (900), Width created from Standard (100) to Expanded (900) and Slant based on degree angle from 1˚ to 10˚. There is a new slider icons for accessing this features Check on Last Display Image. Another advantage on the Variable fonts are you just need 1 files to install to your computer and it will install all the styles available. All of the Fonts are support for Multilanguage, Carefully Crafted.

Caribantu Agora is an update of the Caribantu Grotesque typeface, with a new, more consistent and refined design. Being a 100% Latin Plus typeface, it features a wide range of characters for all Latin languages, making it a versatile option for designers worldwide. The kerning has been adjusted to ensure readability and text cohesion, providing a pleasant and professional reading experience. Additionally, Caribantu Agora includes all braille characters, making it accessible, inclusive, and ready for complex signage and packaging projects. With four stylistic sets, this typeface allows users to further customize their designs. Alternative glyphs allow you to change the look to a more modern and tech form, giving even more dynamism to web pages, packaging, and signage. Check out some of the features present in Caribantu Agora: 7 weights and a variable option; 100% Latin Plus; 15 OpenType features; 4 stylistic sets; Monetary symbols for all circulating currencies; Braille character sets; Math symbols; Arrows pointing in all directions.

Singel is a neoclassical serif with semi-condensed proportions. As a contemporary interpretation, this typeface combines the rationalist modulated stroke with an elegant silhouette and crisp serifs. The altogether splendid appearance of Singel, completed with a full set of Small Capitals and true form of italics makes it perfect for any luxurious and graceful design. Other aspects of its characteristics include the consistency of 10 styles from Light to Bold; a coverage of Extended Latin and Cyrillic with span for more than 130 languages; a flawless functionality and support of many OpenType features, such as localizations, tabular numerals, inferiors and superiors, numerators & denominators, fractions, case sensitivity etc. Features: • Over 900 glyphs in 10 styles (Light to Bold); • Extended Latin and Cyrillic for more than 130 languages; • Tall x-height and Semi-Condensed proportions; • High contrast and modulated stroke with vertical stress; • Neoclassical characteristics and moderate apertures; • Full set of Small Capitals; • True form of italics; • Coverage of multiple OpenType features; • Suitable for wide design purposes.

The Face2Face (F2F) series was inspired by the techno sound of the mid-1990s, personal computers and new font creation software. For years, Alexander Branczyk and his friends formed a unique type design collective, which churned out a substantial amount of fresh, new fonts, none of which complied with the traditional rules of typography. Many of these typefaces were used to create layouts for the leading German techno magazine of the 1990s, Frontpage. Branczyk and his fellows would even set in type at 6 points, in order to make it nearly unreadable. It was a pleasure for the kids to read and decrypt these messages! The three fonts in the F2F Czykago family, F2F Czykago Light, F2F Czykago Semi Serif, and F2F Czykago Trans, were all inspired by the Apple system font Chicago. The F2F Czykago family, along with 38 other Face2Face fonts, is included in the TakeType 5 collection from Linotype. Branczyk designed 16 of these himself."

Softrobo Pro is the further development of Softrobo font provided by Koval Type Foundry in 2008. Provided in 3 most popular formats: OpenType PS, TrueType and Type1. Fine-built, straight but not official, with soft corners is suitable for short texts, placards and advertising. It was inspired by the 1970s when people were mad about robots, space and so on. I decided to create a font as if it were a progressive font of the 1970s. This font supports the Latin-based languages: Albanian, Basque, Bielorussian (Latin), Breton, Catalonian, Chamorro, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch (with Flemish), English, Estonian & Setu, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Gaelic (Irish), Galician, German (incl. eszett), Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maori, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Romanian, Saami (Lule & South), Slovak, Slovene, Sorbian Lower, Sorbian Upper, Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, and Turkish. It also supports the Cyrillic-based languages: Belorussian, Bulgarian, Crimian Tatar (Cyrillic), Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian, Also included: ligatures, superior & inferior numbers set.

Framer Sans is sans-serif condensed type-family, created by June 23 Foundry. It is a geometric, lightly robust, simple and clean font, with a low contrast width. Framer Sans perfectly conforms to the ever-increasing demand for a diverse set of weights and additional support for non-Latin languages. The type system consists of 7 weights that for the clarity and users convenience is labelled with numbers from 100 to 700 (100 for “Thin”, 200 - “Ultra-Light”, and so on till 700 for “Bold”). It supports full Latin (European) character set, as well as Turkish, Vietnamese, Greek (basic) and Cyrillic languages. Framer Sans includes alternate characters, ligatures, symbols and 253 country codes that perfectly expand the design’s capabilities. Numerals contain six figure sets and Roman numbers. The variety of choices is expanded with additional stylistic sets for lowercases "a" and "g", as well as 3 stylistic sets for Latin uppercases with crossbars and letter “Q”.

The award-winning Scala family (1990-1993) is a worldwide bestseller and has established itself as a ‘classic’ among digital fonts. It was one of the first serious digital text fonts to support small caps, ligatures and different set of numbers. In fact Scala and Scala Sans (1990-1993) are two different typefaces sharing a common form principle: the skeletons of both Scala and Scala Sans are identical. Scala’s dark colour and low contrast works to prevent the thin parts from breaking up. The generous length of Scala italic’s serifs gives it a strong rhythm. The bold weight has the same character widths as the normal weight, so changing a text from normal into bold does not affect the set width. Another part of Scala is very popular among its users: Scala Hands, containing more than one hundred decorative hands and pointers, is a free bonus. Scala Jewels is a set of four highly decorative typefaces, based on the bold capitals of Scala.

The typeface PLAKAT Wood is designed from 2021 for the font foundry Typo Graphic Design by Manuel Viergutz. The display font based on the original wood letter from Paul Renners typeface Plak Schmalfette and is inspired in the past and present. The font started from 80 wood letters (analog) and was finally digitalize and extended to 640 glyphs (digital). 3 font-styles (Rough, Rough Mix, Rough Invert) + 1 icon-style with 640 glyphs (Adobe Latin 2) incl. 100+ decorative extras like icons, arrows, catch words, dingbats, emojis, symbols, geometric shapes (type the word #LOVE for ❤ or #SMILE for ☺ as OpenType-Feature dlig) and stylistic alternates (7 stylistic sets). For use in logos, magazines, posters, advertisement plus as webfont for decorative headlines. The font works best for display size. Have fun with this font & use the DEMO-FONT (with reduced glyph-set) FOR FREE! ■ Font Cate­gory: Dis­play for head­line size ■ Glyph Set: 640 glyphs (Adobe Latin 2) incl. 100+ decorative extras like icons

The Face2Face (F2F) series was inspired by the techno sound of the mid-1990s, personal computers and new font creation software. For years, Alessio Leonardi and his friends formed a unique type design collective, which churned out a substantial amount of fresh, new fonts, none of which complied with the traditional rules of typography. Many of these typefaces were used to create layouts for the leading German techno magazine of the 1990s, Frontpage. Leonardi and his fellows would even set in type at 6 points, in order to make it nearly unreadable. It was a pleasure for the kids to read and decrypt these messages! F2F Mekanik Amente appears as if it had once been a normal font whose letters were horribly attacked by a pair of scissors. This font could be a very creative choice for headlines. F2F Mekanik Amente is one of 41 Face2Face fonts included in the Take Type 5 collection from Linotype GmbH. Leonardi designed 11 of these himself."

Spillsbury was inspired by some examples of 1920s signwriting (principally seen on the side of some vintage vans-good thing they were in a photograph and not on the move!). Spillsbury draws inspiration from these sources to provide a unique combination of legibility and flair, which echoes the charm of advertising and publicity material from the halcyon days of the 1920s. A basic range of four display faces os offered - Regular, Plain (not all that plain really!), Shaded and Shadowed. In a new departure for Greater Albion, three pairs of 'Duo' faces are also offered. These are designed to be used in pairs-and only sold on that basis for little more than the cost of a single face-to provide for two-coloured typographic design, enabling the recreation of those evokative two coloured blocked lettering styles that were used to such good effect in the past. Take a trip back to more colourful times today with Spillsbury!

Squad is a humanist sans serif with semi condensed proportions. Inspired by Adrian Frutiger’s perfectionist style this typeface is a harmonious breed of humanist heritage and contemporary simplicity. The balanced characteristics, clear and legible silhouette and simultaneously vivid appearance of Squad makes it perfect for any design purpose. The figures are evident — it consists of 18 styles from Thin to Black; covers Extended Latin, Cyrillic and Greek with span for more than 130 languages; flawless functionality and supporting many OpenType features, such as localizations, tabular numerals, inferiors & superiors, numerators & denominators, fractions, discretionary liga- tures, case sensitivity etc. Designers: Svetlin Balezdrov, Svet Simov Features: • Over 780 glyphs in 18 styles (Thin to Black) • Extended Latin, Cyrillic and Greek scripts for more than 130 languages; • High x-height and Semi Condensed proportions; • Moderate contrast and vertical stress; • Humanistic characteristics and open vertical terminals; • True form of italics; • Coverage of multiple OpenType features; • Perfect for text, headlines and web;

Melina Plain and Melina Fancy are characterized by graceful lines, strong contrast and nostalgic overtones. These typefaces are patterned after two members of a type family named Greco, released by Fundición Tipográfica Richard Gans of Madrid, Spain, in the 1920s. Melina Plain is a refined version of Greco Bold, and Melina Fancy is based on Greco Adornado, with the notable addition of a lowercase, which was not a part of the original design. Melina is based on two typefaces (ca. 1920) from the Fundición Tipográfica Richard Gans in Madrid, Spain. Nick Curtis first found Greco Adornado in a type specimen at the Library of Congress. It was a cap only design. He made a cut of the original (Melina Fancy) and created his own lowercase, and many other characters to support contemporary character sets. Later he came across Greco Bold, which had a lowercase, but he chose not to use it and instead, adapted his Melina Fancy to create Melina Plain.

The award-winning Scala family (1990-1993) is a worldwide bestseller and has established itself as a ‘classic’ among digital fonts. It was one of the first serious digital text fonts to support small caps, ligatures and different set of numbers. In fact Scala and Scala Sans (1990-1993) are two workhorse-like typefaces sharing a common form principle: the skeletons of both Scala and Scala Sans are identical, therefore they can be combined perfectly. Where many of the modern sans serifs (like Helvetica and Univers) have rather ‘closed’ letter shapes, the same elements in Scala Sans are much more ‘open’. This greatly improves legibility, especially in the smaller point sizes. The italic of Scala Sans is not a slanted version of the roman, but rather a ‘real’ italic. Another part of Scala is very popular among its users: Scala Hands, containing more than one hundred decorative hands and pointers, is included in the Scala fonts and is a free bonus.

Ornaments family with four different sets plus a decorative capitals font from the rare, valuable and amazing Allerlei Zierat book from Schelter & Gieseck (1902). A research and free interpretation by Intellecta Design. This encyclopedic specimen book of the Leipzig, Germany type foundry and printing supply house J.G. Schelter & Giesecke features, as the title indicates, all kinds of decoration for supplying printing of every type. On the title page, the firm boasts winning grand prize in 1900 in Paris (presumably at the Exposition Universelle). It is hard to do justice in a short description to the variety of styles (traditional, Jugenstil, etc.) and categories (certificates, letterheads, borders, ornaments, exotic motifs, flowers, animals, silhouettes, menus, greeting cards, vignettes humorous and otherwise, images of bicyclists, occupational symbols, portraits, Classical figures, religious art, heraldry, ships, trains, athletes, etc., etc.) offered in this volume. Some of the examples are printed in color, most are in black-and-white. The Jugenstil cover of this copy shows minor wear and soiling. The plate of “Gust. Carlsson & Co., Stockholm” is attached to the front pastedown. A small fraction of pages show minor soiling, a pencil notation or a short closed tear. Two of the fold-outs at the back have a little more damage-one is missing a 1x2 inch piece along the margin, the other has a 3-inch closed tear and an edge which is crumpled. A rare specimen from the Intellecta rare books library.

Hope Sans™ takes the jaunty style of 1950s and 60s lettering and melds it with the jubilant 1970s swashes of Bookman. The result is a sans serif family that is lively, inviting and deeply customizable. Its basic sans serif forms create engaging text, while a roaring collection of swash designs, alternate characters and ligatures make it a natural for attention-grabbing display typography. Hope Sans has been selected by the judges of the 22nd Annual TDC Typeface Design Competition to receive the Certificate of Typographic Excellence. The middle weights of the family are easy on the eyes and shine at smaller sizes and in blocks of text copy. Their friendly vibe also translates well to web and interactive design projects. Spacing is open, counters are large and Hope Sans’ range of six weights can provide just the right design for virtually any need. Headlines, subheads, banners and navigational links are naturals for its lightest and boldest weights – either with, or without, the swash letters. “Hope Sans is a paint box,” says its designer, Charles Nix. “In its basic form, it’s a sturdy grotesque, capable of setting text in a cool and relaxed way. But a bit of accenting with the alternate forms easily creates an entirely different mood and meaning. And for those that are willing to really mix with it, the variety of alternate characters can build truly unique typographic statements.”

The first versions of Nimbus Sans have been designed and digitized in the 1980s for the URW SIGNUS sign-making system. Highest precision of all characters (1/100 mm accuracy) as well as spacing and kerning were required because the fonts should be cut in any size in vinyl or other material used for sign-making. During this period three size ranges were created for text (T), the display (D) and poster (P) for small, medium and very large font sizes. In addition, we produced a so-called L-version that was compatible to Adobe’s PostScript version of Helvetica. Nimbus was also the product name of a URW-proprietary renderer for high quality and fast rasterization of outline fonts, a software provided to the developers of PostScript clone RIPs (Hyphen, Harlequin, etc.) back then. Also in the 80s, a new, improved version of the Nimbus Sans, namely Nimbus Sans Novus was designed. Nimbus Sans Novus was conceptually developed entirely with URW’s IKARUS system, i.e. all styles harmonize perfectly with each other in terms of line width, weight, proportions, etc. On top of that, Nimbus Sans Novus contains more styles than Nimbus Sans. Now, Nimbus Sans is also available as Round (like the popular URW fonts Futura Round and Eurostile Round). The Round versions are intended to facilitate the work of designers and typographers. The fonts can be used directly, without further preparatory work in graphic programs as finished, high-quality Rounds.

STF Eclectic One is a visual cornucopia of symbols, like the junk drawer in your kitchen. Stuff you'll need someday for a graphic element, bullet or dingbat application. Perfect for website icons! The Eclectic family is legendary, with a cult-like following among the inititated. As one of the first dingbat fonts available on the web, it gain popularity after its design in the early 1990s. With over 150 characters in the complete set, you'll find yourself using Eclectic One almost daily to add spice to your otherwise san-serif typographic existence. This font is essentially a soap opera of typographic image elements, created for projects when I couldn't find the "thingbat" I needed. Almost more of a collection of illustrations, there are many characters which connect to form patterns, and of course it's like a "small neutral European country" army knife for the creative community. EcOne features complete hour, quarter, and half-hour notations in an analog clock design glyph, recycled/recyclable symbols, a registration mark, a toaster, globes, sideways diamond arrows, spaceships, stoplights, the "running man," several atomic references, da buzz saw, target icons, the unusual smiley face floating in a ball (with a drop shadow, no less!), and the fish skeleton which complements the fallout shelter symbol, and more. Make your own juxtapositions! One reviewer proclaims "for whatever you do, Eclectic One is an excellent dingbat source." Available in Mac and PC formats. License it today!

Lincoln Electric started its life as an in-house experimental film type Thomas Lincoln drew shortly after concluding his work as part of Herb Lubalin’s famed crew in the late 1960s,. The master alphabet was drawn on illustration boards using pen and ink and press-type lines. The typeface was initially made for use in the branding and promotional material of Lincoln’s new design outfit. This alphabet’s forms are a spin on Bifur, the all-cap deco face designed by Adolphe Mouron (known as Cassandre) in 1929, and published by the Deberny & Peignot foundry in France. Lincoln Electric evolves Cassandre’s idea further by constructing new shapes more in line with minimalist principles rather than art deco geometry — something clearly evident in Lincoln’s minuscules, which exhibit a clear connection to Bauhaus ideas More than 50 years after the typeface’s design, Thomas Lincoln found the original film alphabet tucked away in his archives and brought it over to Canada Type for digital retooling. The result is a modern and thoroughly elaborate set of fonts that belonging prominently in a 21st century designer’s toolbox. The following features are included in Lincoln Electric: • Three fonts for chromatic layering. • More than 1900 glyphs in each font. • Expanded Latin and Cyrillic character sets. • Small caps and Caps-to-small-caps. • Six different sets of stylistic alternates. • Ordinals and case-sensitive forms. For a showing of the stylistic set variations and a sample of demonstration of chromatic layering, please consult this PDF.

Ghost Sign JNL is a spurred serif type design based on the faded lettering of an antique brick wall sign for Homer Hardware [located in Homer, NY] and is available in both regular and oblique versions. From Wikipedia: “A ghost sign is an old hand-painted advertising sign that has been preserved on a building for an extended period of time. The sign may be kept for its nostalgic appeal, or simply indifference by the owner. Ghost signs are found across the world with the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Canada having many surviving examples. Ghost signs are also called fading ads or brickads. In many cases these are advertisements painted on brick that remained over time. Old painted advertisements are occasionally discovered upon demolition of later-built adjoining structures. Throughout rural areas, old barn advertisements continue to promote defunct brands and quaint roadside attractions. Many ghost signs from the 1890s to 1960s are still visible. Such signs were most commonly used in the decades before the Great Depression. Ghost signs were originally painted with oil-based house paints. The paint that has survived the test of time most likely contains lead, which keeps it strongly adhered to the masonry surface. Ghost signs were often preserved through repainting the entire sign since the colors often fade over time. When ownership changed, a new sign would be painted over the old one.”

The first versions of Nimbus Sans have been designed and digitized in the 1980s for the URW SIGNUS sign-making system. Highest precision of all characters (1/100 mm accuracy) as well as spacing and kerning were required because the fonts should be cut in any size in vinyl or other material used for sign-making. During this period three size ranges were created for text (T), the display (D) and poster (P) for small, medium and very large font sizes. In addition, we produced a so-called L-version that was compatible to Adobe’s PostScript version of Helvetica. Nimbus was also the product name of a URW-proprietary renderer for high quality and fast rasterization of outline fonts, a software provided to the developers of PostScript clone RIPs (Hyphen, Harlequin, etc.) back then. Also in the 80s, a new, improved version of the Nimbus Sans, namely Nimbus Sans Novus was designed. Nimbus Sans Novus was conceptually developed entirely with URW’s IKARUS system, i.e. all styles harmonize perfectly with each other in terms of line width, weight, proportions, etc. On top of that, Nimbus Sans Novus contains more styles than Nimbus Sans. Now, Nimbus Sans is also available as Round (like the popular URW fonts Futura Round and Eurostile Round). The Round versions are intended to facilitate the work of designers and typographers. The fonts can be used directly, without further preparatory work in graphic programs as finished, high-quality Rounds.

Caltic-Holiday, Caltic-Festival, and Caltic-Straight are three eye-catching, very bold typefaces that are suitable for posters and signage. Caltic-Holiday and Caltic-Festival base letter shapes on trapezoids with curved sides but with curves that are reversed going from one to the other. Caltic-Straight has letters based on trapezoids with straight sides. None are suited for text and with their built-in spacing will not work as all upper-case or all lower-case. All three come in two widths, regular and wide, giving the Caltic family six members. Caltic has nothing to do with Celts. The Calt refers to the calt or contextual alternative OpenType feature that makes this typeface work. When the letters on the upper-case keys alternate with the letters on the lower-case keys, they fit snuggly together. As long as the user has a word processor that supports the contextual alternatives feature, there is no need for the user to alternate letters; the calt feature does it automatically. Although the fonts seem similar to hand-drawn lettering that was done on posters and signs during the hippie era of the 1960s and 1970s, I can find nothing quite like them. My inspiration for them is older, in a newspaper from 1932 that led to the typeface family PoultySign. Caltic (and Lentzers) are the result of seeing what else I could do with the inspiration that sprang from that 1932 newspaper.