It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that these letter shapes are familiar. They have the unmistakable color and weight of Cooper Black, Oswald Cooper's most famous typeface from 1921. What should be a surprise is that these letters are actually from George Auriol's Robur Noir (or Robur Black), published in France circa 1909 by the Peignot foundry as a bolder, solid counterpart to its popular Auriol typeface (1901). This face precedes Cooper Black by a dozen of years and a whole Great War. Cooper Black has always been a bit of a strange typographical apparition to anyone who tried to explain its original purpose, instant popularity in the 1920s, and major revival in the late 1960s. BB&S and Oswald Cooper PR aside, it is quite evident that the majority of Cooper Black's forms did not evolve from Cooper Old Style, as its originators claimed. And the claim that it collected various Art Nouveau elements is of course too ambiguous to be questioned. But when compared with Robur Noir, the "elements" in question can hardly be debated. The chronology of this "machine age" ad face in metal is amusing and stands as somewhat of a general index of post-Great War global industrial competition: - 1901: Peignot releases Auriol, based on the handwriting of George Auriol (the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer," according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili), and it becomes very popular. - 1909-1912: Peignot releases the Robur family of faces. The eight styles released are Robur Noir and its italic, a condensed version called Robur Noir Allongée (Elongated) and its italic, an outline version called Clair De Lune and its condensed/elongated, a lined/striped version called Robur Tigre, and its condensed/elongated counterpart. - 1914 to 1918: World War One uses up economies on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Georges Peignot with a bullet to the forehead, and non-war industry stalls for 4 years. - 1921: BB&S releases Cooper Black with a lot of hype to hungry publishing, manufacturing and advertising industries. - 1924: Robert Middleton releases Ludlow Black. - 1924: The Stevens Shanks foundry, the British successor to the Figgins legacy, releases its own exact copies of Robur Noir and Robur Noir Allongée, alongside a lined version called Royal Lining. - 1925: Oswald Cooper releases his Cooper Black Condensed, with similar math to Robur Noir Allongée (20% reduction in width and vectical stroke). - 1925: Monotype releases Frederick Goudy's Goudy Heavy, an "answer to Cooper Black". Type historians gravely note it as the "teacher steals from his student" scandal. Goudy Heavy Condensed follows a few years later. - 1928: Linotype releases Chauncey Griffith's Pabst Extra Bold. The condensed counterpart is released in 1931. When type production technologies changed and it was time to retool the old faces for the Typositor age, Cooper Black was a frontrunning candidate, while Robur Noir was all but erased from history. This was mostly due to its commercial revival by flourishing and media-driven music and advertising industries. By the late 1960s variations and spinoffs of Cooper Black were in every typesetting catalog. In the early- to mid-1970s, VGC, wanting to capitalize on the Art Nouveau onslaught, published an uncredited exact copy of Robur Black under the name Skylark. But that also went with the dust of history and PR when digital tech came around, and Cooper Black was once again a prime retooling candidate. The "old fellows stole all of our best ideas" indeed. So almost a hundred years after its initial fizz, Robur is here in digital form, to reclaim its rightful position as the inspiration for, and the best alternative to, Cooper Black. Given that its forms date back to the turn of the century, a time when foundry output had a closer relationship to calligraphic and humanist craft, its shapes are truer to brush strokes and much more idiosyncratic than Cooper Black in their totality's construct. Robur and Robur Italic come in all popular font formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages. A range of complementary f-ligatures and a few alternates letters are included within the fonts.

Maximo Nexa is a dynamic, contemporary sans serif font family consisting of 8 meticulously designed fonts. With its clean lines and sporty geometry, Maximo Nexa offers a harmonious aesthetic that seamlessly blends into various design contexts. Whether you're working on branding, editorial projects, signage, or larger applications, Maximo Nexa is your perfect companion.

Fondly Yourz is a less than serious, hand drawn serif font. This headline font has nice thick and thin lines. Pair it with a sans serif font for body copy for a fresh contemporary look. Fondly Yourz can be seen in the 2012 Typodarium Page-A-Day Calendar on 8-13-2012.

American type designer Jim Parkinson created this display FontFont in 1996. The font is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, festive occasions, film and tv as well as poster and billboards. FF Motel Gothic provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures and stylistic alternates. It comes with proportional lining figures.

Italian type designer Alessio Leonardi created this display FontFont in 1993. The family contains 3 weights and is ideally suited for festive occasions and poster and billboards. FF Priska Serif provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures and case-sensitive forms. It comes with tabular lining and proportional oldstyle figures.

Kelso is a highly original, outline display font. Each character is represented by a single continuous line to create a fluid and rhythmic look. This technique seems somehow to bring out the individual characteristics of each letter, resulting in a harmonious typeface that’s both easy to read and easy on the eye.

One of the guys is a simple, highly legible, mono lined comic book font. Simple, yes, but full of personality! Use it as it is, or spice up your text by using the extra layer. The extra layer could be ghouly slime, birthday cake cream, snow or whatever your imagination figures out!

Futurist typeface from the programming era, Plau is a sans-serif with rounded corner personality and interestingly deliberate lettershapes. Comfortable in headlines, reads surprisingly well in longer passages of text. Includes the following OpenType features: OT All Small Caps, Small Caps, Fraction, Proportional/Tabular Oldstyle and lining figures, subscript and superscript numbers.

English by influence with an American disposition and modernist details, Steady Sans is a blend of styles from multiple eras. Decidedly expansive letterforms make for an overall lively presence. Fluid italics, multiple weights, and alternate forms provide a variety of tone for headline use and solid construction works well for text settings.

Screenplay JNL was modeled from the signage seen in an old photo of the RKO movie studios building circa the 1930s. This multi-line lettering is so classic of the Art Deco period. For best effect and readability, use wider spacing between letters. For single words or initials, regular spacing should do fine.

Futurist italic typeface from the programming era, Plau is a sans-serif with rounded corner personality and interestingly deliberate lettershapes. Comfortable in headlines, reads surprisingly well in longer passages of text. Includes the following OpenType features: OT All Small Caps, Small Caps, Fraction, Proportional/Tabular Oldstyle and lining figures, subscript and superscript numbers.

Nekst is geometric sans-serif. So it can only seem at first glance. Non-standard forms of some letters, behave unexpectedly and eccentric in a text line. It’s add notes of old grotesques and futuristic aesthetics to the modern-nordic image. Nekst font family includes seven weights supporting Cyrillic and extended Latin.

Nevison Casual was designed by T. Nevison in 1967 and is an informal, lively, modern handwriting. While the capitals are generous and wide, the lower case letters have reserved, narrower forms, an eye-catching contrast that gives the typeface its zest and energy. The unconventional Nevison Casual combines well with sans serif typefaces.

Bylum is put together with a bulbous line segment that makes up the bulk of the font. The verticals bulge out in the middle, the curves vary in width along their lengths. This gives the font a relaxed sway to it even while its verticals are upright and its design is fairly regimented.

Pacifista takes advantage of the well-tested structure of our constructed typefaces, the directness and simplicity of which are by far the best suited to stencils. Straight lines, regular arcs and purity of drawing facilitate maintaining the maximum possible legibility even in a typeface that is practically devoid of any joining of strokes.

Flimsy is 100% handmade, but digitally remastered. I removed some blobs here and there, but kept enough of the original handmade line in order to make the Flimsy stand out as an organic and powerful ALL CAPS font! I've also added 5 slightly different versions of each letter, along with multilingual support!

Angellove is a beautiful and elegant script font. Its modern and classy look makes it the perfect font for creating outstanding DIY projects! This font is PUA encoded which means you can access all of the glyphs and swashes with ease! It features a varying baseline, smooth lines, gorgeous glyphs and stunning alternates.

Lullaby is a display font that works great for headlines, posters or logotypes. With its regular rhythm, soft lines, some non-standard ligatures and two versions of each character (caps as alternatives), it gives many possibilities for any kind of typographic artworks. It works best with auto kerning in OpenType savvy applications.

Subtitle is a handdrawn slab serif that contains condensed and wide width capital letters in one font. With slightly wobbly lines, Subtitle is designed to be legible at a variety of sizes to give that quirky, fun feel to any informal occasion or brand. Central, Eastern and Western European language support included.

Shake Your Head is a grafitti font which involves both smooth curves and ragged edges. Somewhat a mixture between the grungy lines of TagBoyHardcore and the more elegant swings of TagStarHardcore. Furthermore Shake Your Head is spaced very tight and kerned even tighter in order to keep my way of writing tagfonts!

Rayna is a simply beautiful handwritten font that is suitable for scrapbooking, notes to friends, and stylish logos. It is both elegant and versatile, including both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets with support for most European languages. This delicate typeface's swooping curls and sweet lines are the perfect addition to your handwritten font collection!

British type designer Neville Brody created this display FontFont in 1992. The family contains 2 weights is ideally suited for logo, branding and creative industries and poster and billboards. FF Pop provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, case-sensitive forms, and stylistic alternates. It comes with proportional lining figures.

Midnight Workers is a Modern Sans-serif typeface inspired by freelancers who work late into the night to make a living for their beloved families. The simple and dynamic shape makes it very suitable to be used as headlines, logos, or other design needs that require a formal touch but still seem dynamic.

Built of all straight lines, Elegeion Script -- inspired by retro printers' scripts with a dash of calligraphy and handwriting thrown in -- mimics the imperfections and irregularities of old letterpress printing. Even better, it comes with lots and lots of swashy alternate characters and ligatures, including a full set of "long s" ligatures.

Chortle is the typeface with strict lines and rounded end strokes, making it perfect for logotypes, editorial design, corporate design, and media. This versatile typeface is also great for creating a set of inspirational phrases. It comes in an amazing range of widths, and there's even a specially prepared variable version available.

Breaking news! Hallandale JNL has been italicized and run through a line filter (courtesy of Ray Larabie of Typodermic Fonts)! The result: Newsbreak JNL... a bold, techno-style font with all of the headlines and the first on the scene when the latest news matters... Get the whole story first... with Newsbreak JNL!

As a stand-alone version of our original Sablon, Sablon B delivers a bold expression without any distracting moments. The completely redesigned letters and numerals are available in four weights and are complemented by a vintage stylistic set based on lower horizontal lines. Wide language support including a complete set of Cyrillic characters.

Fictionalism is carefully handcrafted slab serif, slightly condensed to fit lots of beautiful text wherever you need. It's handwritten, but neat as a pin; it's tidy, but has a lively character that grabs attention in a friendly way. Use it for branding, posters, text, or a million and one other design applications.

Formerly only available from my own font site for orders over $50, Ann’s Dividers are now being made available separately. Decorative, spirally, funky and artsy lines and separators perfect for web graphics or on a printed page. A must-have for all web graphic designers. There are 72 characters in this font.

French type designer Albert Boton created this display FontFont in 2002. The font is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, music and nightlife as well as poster and billboards. FF Zan provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, alternate characters, and case-sensitive forms. It comes with proportional lining figures.

Morse Font is a cool alternative for you to easily create a logo for your Underground band or whatever. Using alternate front and ending letters brings the font to life, It comes with a basic character set and a small group of symbols and signs often used in the extreme music sector.

Morse Font is a cool alternative for you to easily create a logo for your Underground band or whatever. Using alternate front and ending letters brings the font to life, It comes with a basic character set and a small group of symbols and signs often used in the extreme music sector.

Attractive is a sweet, round lettered handwritten font. It is PUA encoded which means you can access all of the glyphs and swashes with ease! It features a varying baseline, smooth lines, gorgeous glyphs and stunning alternates. Fall in love with Attractive’s incredibly versatile style and use it to create spectacular designs!

FF Dora Display is the Display version of FF Dora. It provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, fractions, and super- and subscript characters. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths.

Noelle is a classic, minimalist serif and script duo that functions beautifully in modern design work. Noelle serif features geometric, clean lines; modern serifs, and just a touch of vintage while Noelle script brings in femininity and delicateness. Noelle looks gorgeous in logo work as well as web headings and printed materials.

Embossanova was initially sketched to be a monospaced typeface but quickly took on a life of its own. It developed serifs and numerous arcs and stroke weights. I wanted it to retain a pre computer/unmathematical feel so there is a slight variation on curved characters and their relationship to the X height.

Joy is sure to spice up your text life! She overflows with style and personality. She loves to be center stage on headlines, flirting with her readers eyes. There are over 100 ligatures, creating words with some letters connecting and others standing on their own. This creates a modern, fresh, handwritten look.

The design of Vivala Re highlights a powerful contrast between thin curved lines and straight stems. The inline style is not limited to the inside of the strokes but is actively incorporated into the design. This font is well suited for all headlines in posters, book design, magazines, brochures and web design.

Latica Stamp is a rounded, display font, imitating stamped writing, with deformed lines. Body text looks clear and legible, but the best use is where there is a need to escape from the clichéd, classic, sharp font. It works well for bold projects, posters, billboards, press advertisements, websites, packaging. It provides multilingual support.

Lazy Monday is a flowing and beautiful handwritten font. It is PUA encoded which means you can access all of the glyphs and swashes with ease! It features a varying baseline, smooth lines, gorgeous glyphs and stunning alternates. Fall in love with its incredibly versatile style and use it to create spectacular designs!