Samuel Welo was a sign painter who had published in the 1920s and again in 1960 his “Studio Handbook – Letter and Design for Artists and Advertisers”, prolifically hand lettering all of the type style examples within the pages of the publication. In 1930 Welo also published “Lettering - Practical and Foreign”. From this book comes a thick-and-thin hand lettered Art Deco alphabet – now available digitally as Sightseeing Tour JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Ebbets JNL is a variant of Jeff Levine's Base Runner JNL, with more of a 1930s-1940s feel.

Sheet music for the 1910 composition "Good-By Betty Brown" has its title hand lettered in a thick and thin, condensed sans serif design reminiscent of lettering found in later comic strips and books of the 1930s and 1940s. Transcending both the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles, Funny Papers JNL gets its name from the slang reference Americans of the early 20th Century gave the Sunday comics pages in their local newspapers, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

In a career spanning the early 1900s through 1940, George M. Cohan wrote and produced over 50 plays, 300 songs and was also an actor, singer and dancer. Many of his works honored his Irish roots, and the cover of one piece of sheet music called “The Irish American” (1905) had its title hand lettered in a condensed Art Nouveau type design with tiny spurred serifs. This is now available digitally as Dress Rehearsal JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Samuel Welo was a sign painter who had published in the 1920s and again in 1960 editions of his “Studio Handbook – Letter and Design for Artists and Advertisers”. In-between, in 1930 Welo also published “Lettering - Practical and Foreign”. Within the pages is an Art Deco outline slab serif design using multiple thin lines to create an “incised” or “engraved” look within the characters. This intriguing type style is now available as Guest Invitation JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

The model for Bensonhurst JNL was a 1930s-era hand-lettered WPA (Works Project Administration) poster for the play "Hell Bent For Heaven". Although the basic style is a classic Art Deco "thick and thin" format, the design (in certain characters) starts to take on the feel of a 1970s revival style. With this in mind, Bensonhurst JNL is a bit of a hybrid between the 1930s and the 1970s.

Love songs are the perennials of music, outlasting all other popular fads and styles that come and go. The 1920s through the 1940s is considered by some to be the Golden Age of the American love song. Thousands upon thousands of copies of popular sheet music sold, and the cover lettering and art on many titles were from some of the finest illustrators of their time. Love Song JNL recreates the Art Deco-flavored design found on one such piece of sheet music from the 1930s.

Tarocco is a typical book face with good readability and rather tall x-height. The origin for this typeface is found in Nordisk Antikva. A typeface especially constructed with attention for the Swedish language. Waldemar Zachrisson was determined to realize his ideas and in 1906 he began to cooperate with the foundry Genzsch & Heyse, based in Hamburg. Some influences of Jugendt can be found and the typeface were released in 1910. It became rather popular until around 1930. The MRF version includes 7 weights all together.

The cover of the 1907 sheet music for "I'd Rather Twostep Than Waltz, Bill" was hand lettered in an Art Nouveau sans serif alphabet. During the hippie counter-culture movement of the 1960s, rock posters, album covers and other printed ephemera of the time embraced the styles of lettering and art made popular during the early 1900s. It seemed only fitting to name this type design Nouveau Hippie JNL as an homage to both eras. The font is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Inspired by the typefaces used for company insignia on aircraft in the 1930's and 1940's, Streamliner is light, friendly and open.

This is a decorative and steganographic Braille font based on Lorraine Cross pattern. As the Lorraine cross splits space into six areas, it may be used to represent Braille glyphs. Provided Glyphs * Lowercase letters (a..z): a White cross and Black square dots * Uppercasecase letters (A..Z): a Black cross and White square dots * Special characters (e.g. !#$%*+<>{}()[]...) * Decorative glyphs (provided in black and white as well) Glyph code intervals - Codes 48..57: Bullets (0..9 digits) - Codes 130..150: 'White Stars' - Codes 192..233: 'Black Stars', Black border glyphs and other black patterns. - Codes 214..233: Border/Decorative glyphs (Black) - Codes 235..255: Border/Decorative glyphs (White) - Codes for Cross w/o dots: Black (192), White (235) - Codes for Cross and 6 dots: Black (191), White (234) - Code for 'Half-width space' (166) Posters 1. Logo: illustrates usage of border glyphs 2. Meta: Two big Lorraine Braille glyphs drawn with pattern glyphs 3. Stars: illustrates usage of 'Star' and pattern glyphs 4. Bullets: illustrates usage of bullet glyphs (0..9) 5. Human rights - Article 1 NB: - Encoding is: Windows Latin ("ANSI") - Published in two versions: Commercial and Free for personal use

Cardboard Cutouts JNL is a blocky sans serif font re-drawn from some old "kiddie" stencils from the 1950s or 1960s acquired by Jeff Levine.

The range of subtle differences in the many different sized lettering stencils of the 1940s and 1950s allows for a wonderful library of authentic-looking stencil fonts. Storage JNL is another Roman (serif) type design by Jeff Levine and modeled from a 1950s stencil set.

F.W. Woolworth was once one of the giants of the variety store chains, along with the likes of Kress, S.S. Kresge, McCrory’s, Neisner Brothers, Ben Franklin and others. In 1960, the company brought out a new corporate logo with a type design harking back to the Art Deco style of the 1930s and 1940s. A photo of one of their old store fronts (despite having only eight letters to work with) inspired the digital interpretation of the signage as Bargain Shopping JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Fette Deutsche Schrift also known as Koch-Fraktur or Kochschrift was created by Rudolf Koch for Klingspor foundry between 1908 and 1910. The basis of this font is a publication in the magazine “Das Plakat” of September 1921. The font contains swash capitals to use as dropcaps, contextual alternates, glyphs for line endings, ligatures, discretional ligatures for use in German, ornaments and other OpenType features. It supports all the European languages using Latin alphabets (including slashed S and slashed long s used in Latvian old orthography till 1930s).

A mid-1950s hand lettered ad for Stenso Lettering Guides provided the inspiration for Stencil Company JNL, now available in both regular and oblique versions. The Stenso Lettering Company of Baltimore, Maryland pioneered easy-to-use and inexpensive lettering devices with guide holes for accurate spacing. Originally designed by a school teacher (Ruth Libauer Hormats) around 1940, the company was family run until it was sold in 1962 to Ottenheimer Publishers. They in turn sold the line to the Dennison Manufacturing Company, and it was discontinued in the 1980s after Dennison merged with Avery.

Although the Art Deco movement is generally attributed to the 1930s and 1940s, a number of design influences were showing up during the late 1920s in what is referred to as the Art Nouveau period. The Dutch illustrator Anton Kurvers’ hand lettering on the front cover of the (1927) magazine “Het Vlaamsche Volstooneel” clearly shows the clean lines and Avant Garde geometrics that foreshadow Art Deco. This attractive pre-Deco lettering has been recreated digitally as Dutch Deco JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

My affection for Slab Serifs began in the early 1960s in Kansas City with Rob Roy Kelly and his fabulous collection of wood type. In the 1970s tried to re-create a Nebiolo Egiziano for Roger Black. Again for Roger, in the 1980s I designed a Slab Serif logo for Newsweek Magazine. Finally, in 2003, designed the Sutro Family. There were things I didn't like about it, so when I did Version 2 for Open Type, I changed it around a little, making it a much nicer Sutro.

The French publication “La Lettre Dans le Decor et La Publicite Modernes” (“The Letter in the Modern Décor and Advertising”) was a 24-page booklet showcasing the then-current trends of the time (circa late 1930s-early 1940s). On one page was found a squared, extra bold sans serif alphabet set with strong Art Nouveau influences, yet it was ahead of its time by taking on the look and feel of 1980s techno typography. They say “everything old is new again”, and Nouveau Techno JNL is now available digitally in both regular and oblique versions.

Nouveau Era JNL was adapted from the title of a hand-lettered advertisement found on the back of a 1920s-1930s piece of vintage sheet music.

A new take on the perennial Art Deco favorite, Broadway, interpreted by 1930s lettering artist Harold Holland Day, and named after a 1960s R&B song.

A 1930s casual Art Deco type style with as much influence in 1970s graphic design as in its day was found within the pages of the 1930s French publication L'Art du Tracé Rationnel de la Lettre. Discotheque JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

A new font inspired by vintage hand-painted paper signs. The Doorbuster Collection is based on retro hand-painted paper signs primarily seen in grocery stores from the 1920s through the 1970s. We meticulously hand-drew each font, modeling the spacing and uneven baseline found in vintage sign painting. The purposely organic ascenders and descenders, along with a huge set of ligatures/contextual alternates to avoid the same letters repeating when paired, give it a real hand-lettered look. Doorbuster Plug is perfect for both vintage-inspired and contemporary marketing, branding, and packaging designs. It's a classic workhorse font from the 1950s thru 1970s. Check out a few of the samples included in the thumbnails to see what can be done with it.

Reverberation JNL and its slanted counterpart are a throwback to the 1970s and 1980s when fonts featuring horizontal white lines of varying widths implied movement or activity.

Monoline Deco JNL is a thin, elegant typeface that is reminiscent of the Art Deco Streamline influence of the 1930s and 1940s, complete with angular and truncated characters.

Fancy Antique Display is a uppercase display font inspired by French decorative alphabets from the 1940's and 1950's. Perfect for headlines, logos and everything above the body.

Record Jacket JNL gives an outline treatment to the popular typeface used on record album covers in the 1960s and 1970s, and is based on Jeff Levine's Album Cover JNL.

Oakland is a Streamline era design inspired by some hand-drawn lettering on a 1930's French poster advertising a certain brand of Car (Automobile for our American cousins). It's ideal for giving poster and design work that late 1930s to mid 1950s feel. Make a bold statement with this all capitals typeface!

Latin music was all the rage in the United States from the 1930s through the 1950s and songs with a “South of the Border” or “Old Mexico” theme were plentiful. The 1940 sheet music for “Make Love with a Guitar” evoked the idea of serenading one’s lovely lady on horseback while strumming the guitar. ..at least if you went by the by the illustration under the song’s name. As the hand lettered title was rendered in an Art Deco design, it became the basis for Jazz Guitar JNL [which seemed a more befitting name], and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Ritz Slab Serif JNL is a bold display face which shares a lot of similar design traits to Stymie and other similar metal type of the 1930s and 1940s, but in actuality was modeled from only four letters. On the sheet music for the 1937 song "Sweet Varsity Sue" [from the 20th Century Fox Film "Life Begins in College"], there is a picture of the Ritz Brothers - a popular comedy team from 1925 through the late 1960s. The hand lettered name "Ritz" became the basis for Ritz Slab Serif JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Mocombo JNL is a slightly modified version of one of the numerous alphabets created by the late Alf R. Becker for Signs of the Times Magazine during the period of the 1930s through the 1950s. Tod Swormstedt of ST Media—who is also the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio—supplied Jeff Levine a wealth of source material from which this font is derived. The angular style of this typeface was originally referred to as “German Poster Lettering” by Becker, but it can represent many styles from 1940s night clubs to African safaris and just about anything in-between.

A handsome German art deco design that fits in well with other types of the 1920s and 1930s. Originally without a lowercase, so we drew one for it, extending its usefulness.

Moving Van JNL is a classic sign painter's block Roman with angled [instead of rounded] corners and slab serifs. This style of lettering was most popular in the 1920s and 1930s.