Carnaby Street is a vintage style bold font that pairs strong rectangular framing with softer rounded elements. It has a cool, funky, and groovy vibe, while still retaining a strong sense of linearity and geometry. This lettering style conjures up the retro vibes of the 1960s swinging London scene, or the psychedelic poster art of posters and handbills for the Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco in the mid to late '60s. It represents a new take on a classic array of hand lettered stylings that have their roots both in the Art Nouveau Movement and the hippie counterculture movement of the 1960s and early 1970s.

For many decades, the fashion magazine “Vogue” featured superbly illustrated covers before photography became more commonplace. During the 1930s and 1940s those illustrations were accompanied by many creative styles of hand lettering for its monthly issues. The January, 1930 cover had the magazine’s name lettered in an Art Deco geometric monoline, which became the inspiration for Vagary JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. A vagary [in a simple sense] is when something or someone changes in an erratic or unexpected way (as the wind’s direction or in a person’s mood or whim)… and thus seemed the fitting name for this type style.

History, as it's said, tends to repeat itself. The round-point pen lettering used in the 1920s logo and ads for Dodge Brothers cars (pre-General Motors) is an early predecessor to the techno type styles of the 1980s. Square in shape, with unique stylization to some letters, Jalopy JNL can cross the decades and be used for a 1920s period piece and still look fresh in an ad for computer parts. Rather than round out the inside lines of the characters to fully emulate the strokes of a lettering pen, the inside lines have straight intersections for the contemporary side of this font's design.

McKnight Kauffer is a casual sans derived from poster and book cover lettering by the American designer, Edward McKnight Kauffer, who mainly worked in England through the 1920s and 1930s. The style owes much to Louis Oppenheim's Fanfare of 1927, but without the Germanic blackletter inflection. The two display fonts, regular and outline, have a playful art deco feel, and share spacing and kerning so can be overlapped for bicolor effects.

A style of die-cut cardboard letters and numbers used for signs, displays and show cards was the basis for Haute Couture JNL, an Art-Deco flavored typeface from Jeff Levine. A direct cousin to Signboard JNL, this font shares some similar characteristics in letterforms. Both styles of die-cut lettering were manufactured by a number of companies, and were most popular from the 1940s through the mid-1960s.

Three Day Pass JNL is another addition to the large collection of stencil fonts from Jeff Levine. This design was based on a 1980s clone of a popular lettering guide first sold in the 1950s. To the untrained eye, many of the stencil designs look the same - but there are subtle nuances in the shapes of the letters and numbers that makes each font unique and slightly different.

A nostalgic font referencing the 1920s and 1930s during the Golden Age of Hollywood, art moderne and the rise of luxury items. Highly geometric with wild variations in glyph widths that demand attention. Smart Deco is a display font with clean simple lines, tall ascenders and expressive Capitals that descend below the baseline. The intention is to create a sleek elegance that symbolizes the sophistication of a bygone era.

This reinterpretation of Caslon Rounded showcases one of the early attempts of type foundries to create a novelty ‘rounded’ typeface for general use. While the lettering might easily convey a more modern look of 1960s or 1970s pop typography, its roots definitely lay in the later part of the 19th Century and the heyday of wood type design. Wood Rounded JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Inspired by a retro Art Deco poster as well as many of the true classic Art Deco type designs of the 1930s and 1940s, Deco Revisited JNL is a bold, black, stencil-influenced design with no counters. Although being a contemporary design, its use in any retro project will truly evoke a feeling for the “streamline” era. Deco Revisited JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

From the pages of a small book entitled “A Portfolio of Alphabet Designs for Artists, Architects, Designers & Craftsmen” [Irene K. Ames, 1938] comes a bold Art Deco sans poster display face. The digital version is called Throughway JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions. [To note, throughway (or sometimes spelled thruway) is a popular term from the 1950s and 1960s for a major road or highway.]

A popular hobby in the 1950s and 1960s was creating your own wallets, belts and other items from leather do-it-yourself kits. Stamped or carved initials, names or phrases were often added to the leather with special tools and templates - many featuring a Western-styled alphabet with a hand-lettered look. Leathercrafter JNL recreates that same look in a digital font format, complete with the unusual and contrasting letter shapes.

The Federal Art Project of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) employed artists to create posters for various subjects including health, tourism, safety, patriotism, theater and the arts during the Great Depression years of the 1930s on through the early 1940s. One health-related poster had the word “against” in a thin Art Deco monoline which served as the basis for Wellness JNL, which is available in regular and oblique versions.

Leibix, inspired by a jolly trademark of the past, is a fun family of five typefaces which transcends different eras of the past. It has elements of the 1920s in its design, but is equally at home with projects having a 1970s theme of an up to the minute modern one. Use it for eye catching cartoon captions, in posters of anywhere else a casual impact is required.

At one time, the Hampton Publishing Company of New York specialized in producing reading and activity books for children. The “Letters and Numbers Stencil Book” (probably from the late 1940s or early 1950s) was the basis for Kiddie Stencil JNL. This bold sans serif type style replicates the handmade steel rule dies used for cutting the stencil pages of the book, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Platinus Script Pro is the latest example of what has now become a Sudtipos tradition: Adapting conventional calligraphic methods from the last two centuries to produce modern digital scripts for the current one. This time the resulting font explores the evolution of invitation scripts from the classic commercial lettering of the 1930s to the ideas clearly visible in the greeting cards of the 1980s and 1990s. Most base characters are made up of a single stroke, with some of the strokes driven from the top down, and some from the bottom up, putting the emphasis on the casual but precise fluidity of the hand, an emphasis magnified by the expert use of loops and swashes everywhere. The Platinus Script Pro family comes in two weights, each loaded with alternates and Latin-based langauge support, for more than 570 characters per font. Platinus Script Pro is great for product packaging, as well book covers, menus and greeting cards.

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."

It seems that after the 1960s, very few display typefaces were being produced that had the desirability to transcend generations, as did many type designs of the past. In 1970, a local television station embraced a lettering style for its logo that was a cross between round point pen nib lettering and the modular, techno look complete with squared characters in a futuristic "space age" style. News Crew JNL was inspired by the few examples found of this particular font [in use by the station at the time] and was pretty much created from scratch in order to capture the 1970s era of experimental typography. It is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Chet was inspired by the lettering on the signs of American diners and gas stations in the 1950s and 60s. It is not a mere reprint of nostalgic signage letters, however. This typeface retains the boldness, uniqueness, and strength of this era, while adding a modern touch that makes it feel comfortable to use today. It is highly readable even from a distance, making it perfect for signs, posters, and website headers. Chet can also be used as a base for creating logotypes because of the unique forms of the a, n, and r. The typeface is named after Chet Baker, the jazz trumpeter who was active between the 1950s and 1970s.

Electric Eden is a strikingly retro font that oozes nostalgia and vintage vibes. This font is reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s, with its bold and vibrant curves that exude an electric energy. The font's name is derived from the famous rock festival of the 1970s, and its design is a tribute to that era. The letters have a hand-drawn feel, giving it a touch of personality and uniqueness. The Electric Eden font is perfect for designing posters, album covers, and other creative projects that require a bit of edginess and flair. With its vibrant colors and eye-catching design, this font is sure to transport you back in time to the heyday of rock and roll.

Grand Central JNL is named for the most luxurious train depot in the nation—Grand Central Station in New York City. This multi-line Art Deco font is reminiscent of all of the glitz and glamour associated with Manhattan in the 1930s and 1940s. Modeled from Jeff Levine's Parkitecture JNL, its roots go back to the popular typeface best known as Eagle—a lettering design most associated with the NRA posters of the Depression era.

An original typeface designed for ParaType in 2004 by Armenian designer Manvel Shmavonyan. Based on the lettering created in 1970s by outstanding Armenian type designer Henrik Mnatsakanyan (1923-2001) of the same name. In Armenian 'Bardi' means 'Poplar'. Extra compressed decorative stenciled typeface. Its letterforms resemble many Neo-Classicism extra compressed faces and magazine lettering of the 1950s-60s. For use in advertising and display typography especially in magazine headlines and logos.

In the heyday of "Tin Pan Alley", a song plugger was one whose job it was to bring a publisher's song to the attention of performers, show producers and radio station executives; the forerunner of the promotion man who visited disk jockeys with new record releases in the hopes of getting them played on the air. Song Plugger JNL was based on hand lettering spotted on some late-1920s-early 1930s sheet music.

The hand-lettered signage of 1920s and 1930s America produced many typographic jewels that digital type has yet to manifest. This face is but one of them. Unearthed by Alfredo Graziani and Alejandro Paul from a 1923 Speedball lettering manual, Milk Script is a distinctive upright script that offers well-nourished majuscules and sweet-flowing minuscules. A non-connecting variation of this versatile display script is also offered for additional aesthetic control.

Lettering has an unusual way of adapting itself to many needs. The type style for Sporting Chance JNL was based on metal house identification letters used for Welcome Home JNL. The same type of block design was prevalent in 1920s-1930s era window signage via die-cut foil characters. Yet we tend to nowadays associate block lettering with sports-themed items. No matter the application, Sporting Chance JNL will fill the bill.

BluHead Studio LLC is pleased to announce the release of 9 fonts from the Churchward Design family designed by New Zealand typeface designer Joseph Churchward. BluHead Studio is in the process of digitizing many of the fonts in Churchward’s extensive library of exciting and unique designs and will be releasing them in OpenType format on a regular basis. Churchward Design Lines is the latest addition to the Churchward Design family. The family now consists of nine unique fonts, all based on a classic, straightforward geometric glyph forms, with the addition of Churchward’s quirky details.

Born on May 8, 1892 in Reno Nevada, Lewis Franklin (“Lew” ) Hymers left an indelible mark as a caricaturist, cartoonist and graphic artist. At the age of twenty [in 1912] he worked for the San Francisco Chronicle. During World War I he worked for the Washington Post. He even was employed for a time by Walt Disney as an animator - but most of his life was spent in either Tujunga, California or his birthplace of Reno, Nevada as a self-employed illustrator. Hymers inked a feature for the Nevada State Journal called “Seen About Town”, which was published during the 1930s and 1940s. In this panel, he caricaturized many of the familiar faces around Reno. He also designed signs, logos, post cards and numerous other commercial illustrations for clients, but what has endeared him to a number of fans was his vast library of stock cuts (the predecessor to paper and electronic clip art) which feature his humorous characters in various professions and life situations. So popular is his work amongst those “in the know” that a clip art book collection of over seven hundred of his drawings that was issued by Dover Publications [but long out of print] commands asking prices ranging from just under $15 to well over $100 for a single copy. Lew Hymers passed away on February 5, 1953 just a few months shy of his 61st birthday. Although his artwork depicts the 1930s and 1940s lifestyles, equipment and conveniences, more than sixty years after his death they stand up amazingly well as cheerful pieces of nostalgia. The twenty-seven images (and some variants) in Hymers JNL were painstakingly re-drawn from scans of one of his catalogs and is but just a tiny fraction of the hundreds upon hundreds of illustrations from the pen of this prolific artist.

Linotype Agogo is part of the Take Type Library, chosen from the contestants of Linotype’s International Digital Type Design Contests of 1994 and 1997. Designed by British artist Ed Bugg, the font is reminiscent of the elegant 1920s and 1930s. It is a calligraphy font with five weights, one regular and four swash. The regular weight alone is clear and legible enough even for longer texts, although when used with swash characters, the texts should be shorter or headlines.

The hand composition typeface was created at Polygraphmash type design bureau in 1959 by a well-known Soviet book and type designer Pavel Kuzanyan (1901-1992). It was reproduced in the 1960s for slugcasting and machine display composition. Sharp contrast, strong weight, slightly condensed Modern Serif with calligraphic elements. The typeface is useful in text and display composition, in scientific, fiction and art books. The revised and completed digital version was designed at ParaType in 2002 by Lyubov Kuznetsova.

Frederic Goudy designed National Old Style Roman in 1916. It is loosely based on a logo he lettered for the National Biscuit Company in 1901. Steve Matteson expanded on Goudy’s original by designing a bold, semibold and matching italics. While much of Goudy’s work is strongly influenced by Venetian types of the 15th and 16th centuries - this design has a truly American quality about it. The design is useful for text or headlines that captures a sense of Americana.

Wine Cellar JNL is a bold, yet casual display face found on some 1930s-era sheet music entitled "Everybody Wants a Key to My Cellar". Since the subject of the song had a number of good times underneath the house, it's a fitting name for the font. The hand lettering for the original song sheet showed strong influence of the 1920s and the Art Nouveau style, and has hints of the popular metal type "Hobo" in its character shapes.

Neva Regular with Italic was created by Moscow book and type designer Pavel Kuzanyan (1901-1992) at Polygrafmash in 1970 for slugcasting and display composition. Based on simple strict letterforms of Russian classical typefaces. Neva typeface was rewarded on the Gutenberg international type design contest in 1971 (Leipzig). The typeface is useful in text and display composition, in fiction and art books. The digital version and bold styles were designed for ParaType in 2002 by Lyubov Kuznetsova.

The German Standards Committee suggested the light Neuzeit-Grotesk’ font in 1970 for use in official signage, traffic directional systems, etc. The typeface had been designed by Wilhelm Pischner and appeared with the font foundry D. Stempel in 1928. The font Neuzeit Grotesk was once the standard in the print industry, as a timeless typeface with no real distinguishing features. Like other typefaces of the 1920s, DIN Neuzeit Grotesk reflects the philosophy of the times, Form is Function.’

Retro is in again! The distinctive font Kabif will give your work a vintage, extraordinary look. With its erratic, rounded, and geometric shapes, this font typifies popular culture from the 1960s and 1970s. A cool and simple font with an easy-to-see and easy-to-read typeface is called Kabif. The Kabif font works best for text, headlines, headers, signage, greeting cards, posters, flyers, invitations, packaging, book covers, printed quotes, album covers, and other visual elements.

Old Tijuana JNL was modeled from the hand lettered title on the cover of the 1939 sheet music for "Class Will Tell" and is available in both regular and oblique versions. Casual, playful and reminiscent of the "serape" style of pseudo-Mexican lettering found on ad designs of the 1930s and 1940s, the type face isn't just for South of the Border themes. Use it for any festive occasion and the design will blend in well.