Popular music of the early 1900s included a genre called two step; round dances utilizing a sliding step with a tempo in either march or polka time. 1911's "Daughters of the American Revolution" was one such march/two step. The cover of the sheet music had the title hand lettered in a slightly rounded sans serif type design in the Art Nouveau style popular during that era. It is now available as Two Step Nouveau JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

The bold hand lettered title on the 1940 sheet music for the band piece "Drexel Marching Song" was the inspiration for Drexel JNL; available in both regular and oblique versions.

In the late 1930s, old Egyptiennes (or Italiennes) returned to the collective consciousness of European printers and type houses — perhaps because political news were front a centre, especially in France where Le Figaro newspaper was seeing record circulation numbers. In 1939 both Monotype and Lettergieterij Amsterdam thought of the same idea: Make a new typeface similar to the reverse stress slab shapes that make up the titles of newspapers like Le Figaro and Le Frondeur. Both foundries intended to call their new type Figaro. Monotype finished theirs first, so they ended up with the name, and their type was already published when Stefan Schlesinger finished his take for the Amsterdam foundry. Schlesinger’s type was renamed Hidalgo (Spanish for a lower nobleman, ‘son of something’) and published in 1940 as ‘a very happy variation on an old motif’. Although it wasn’t a commercial success at the time, it was well received and considered subtler and more refined than the similar types available, Figaro and Playbill. In the Second World War, the Germans banned the use of the type, and Hidalgo never really recovered. Upon closer inspection, Schlesinger’s work on Hidalgo was much more Euro-sophisticated and ahead of its time than the too-wooden cut of Figaro and the thick tightness of Playbill. It has a modern high contrast, a squarer skeleton, contour cuts that work similarly outside and inside, and airy and minimal solutions to the more complicated shapes like G, K, M, N, Q and W. It is also much more aware of, and more accommodating to, the picket-fence effect the thick top slabs create in setting. Basilio (named after the signing teacher in Mozart’s Figaro) is the digital revival and major expansion of Hidalgo. With nearly 600 glyphs, it boasts Pan-European language support (most Latin languages, as well as Cyrillic and Greek), and a few OpenType tricks that gel it all together to make a very useful design tool. Stefan Schlesigner was born in Vienna in 1896. He moved to the Netherlands in 1925, where he worked for Van Houten’s chocolate, Metz department store, printing firm Trio and many other clients. He died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz in 1944. Digital revivals and expansions of two of his other designs, Minuet and Serena, have also been published by Canada Type.

La tipografía Castelan Hispane es una tipografía inspirada en documentos y textos antiguos históricos españoles del siglo XVI. Los trazos semi-medievales - cursivos, le dan una apariencia antigua pero también moderna para los proyectos en los que se desee utilizar la tipografía. Cuenta con seis estilos y tres pesos, ligera, regular y negrita. Cada peso contiene también su forma “itálica”. The Castelan Hispane typeface is a typeface inspired by ancient Spanish historical documents and texts from the 16th century. The semi-medieval - cursive strokes give it an ancient but also modern appearance for projects in which you want to use typography. It has six styles and three weights, light, regular and bold. Each weight also contains its “italic” form.

Sardines is a project by Jacques Le Bailly aka Baron von Fonthausen. It first saw the light as a student project for a monospaced font and eventually grew into Vette Letters’ largest font family. We saw its potential and expect it to be a million seller, just like our other typefaces. VLNL Sardines comes in 42 different variations, like rough and clean cuts, regular and condensed widths (condensed is the exactly half of the regular width). Sardines is an eclectic mash of classic curves and mathematical measurements, leaving a very distinct typographic flavor. While most of our type is market-fresh, this one comes out of the can, but it’s delicious nonetheless. And it’s great for adventurous BBQ-ing!

France 1727, the book Le chemin Royal de la Croix is published. Centuries later the historical publication comes into the hands of Josep Patau, who uses its printed pages as a reference for a new digital typeface. Previously created for printing, those shapes adapt now to the screen and show the sophistication and authenticity of true Garalde types. Frenchute is a multipurpose typeface with 3 optical sizes. All the shapes were modified to cover different typographic needs. The diagonal axis and the moderate stroke contrast are taken further in the italics letterforms, where the design is far more expressive. The character set includes decorative forms and italic capitals with swashes, so the text looks prettier.

Torjus is so rigid and stiff typeface. While designing a more dry and stiff handwriting typeface, I tried to remove the Bezier curves. Rhythms were also created by dramatically simplifying the paths used in the Glyphs and emphasizing individual contrasts. 60 predefined Ligatures to bring your passion and inspire you to wonder. Ligatures : Ba, Be, Bo, Ca, Ce, Co, Da, De, Do, Ea, Fa, Fe, Fo, Ga, Ge, Go, Ha, He, Ho, Ja, Je, Jo, Ka, Ke, Ko, La, Le, Lo, Ma, Me, Mo, Na, Ne, No, Oa, Pa, Pe, Po, Ra, Re, Ro, Sa, Se, So, Ta, Te, To, Va, Ve, Vo, Wa, We, Wo, Ye, Yo, ee, ff, ll, oo, rr.

Guillaume is a small family of text fonts with its roots in the French sixteenth century. The roman is based on the types of Guillaume Le Bé (c.1525–1598), and the italic on those of Claude Garamont (Garamond) (d. 1561). Garamont’s romans have inspired countless modern interpretations, but his italics, despite their merit, have attracted much less attention. Guillaume offers extensive support for European languages, and is best suited for use in applications that support OpenType. Among its OpenType features are ligatures, small caps, several sets of numerals, contextual alternates, intelligent implementation of long ‘s’ and other period features, and fractions. For more detail, please see the pdf available in the Gallery.

Even though the phrase Art Nouveau originated in Paris at the shop of Siegfried Bing, the French preferred to call it Le style moderne. This very sinuous, very Art Nouveau typeface was designed by an E. Mulier around 1894, probably also in Paris. The organic, vine-like curve forms are frequently seen in the art of the period. Examples include the architecture of Victor Horta, the furniture of Henry van de Velde and the jewelry of Max Gradl. Mulier Moderne is an all-cap font with a full Western European character set plus ST and TH ligatures, an alternate ‘E’ and two glyphs of period printer’s cuts. Warning: do not use for extended text. Duh!

Font designed from work by an anonymous printer in Lyon (France) to print the French popular novel Les Grandes et inestimables Chroniques du grand et enorme geant Gargantua [...] in 1532. The original font has a relatively small number of characters. This font include a “long s”, as typicaly medieval, but also a few ligatures . A render sheet, enclosed with files help to identify them and accented or special others characters on keyboard. It can be used as web-site titles, posters and fliers, editing ancient texts, menus or greeting cards as a very decorative font... Although this font remains clear and easy to read from 8 or 9 points on screen, it is clearly designed for print works.