Eckhardt Poster Text JNL continues Jeff Levine's series of sign painter-oriented fonts, named in honor of his good friend Albert Eckhardt, Jr. (who ran Allied signs in Miami, Florida from 1959 until his passing). Sign painters are the true heroes of lettering, for they make the alphabet and style fit the job. Printers and layout artists were constricted by metal and wood type; that is until photo lettering, then digital type opened up unexplored territories in design possibilities. There is a unique charm (and nowadays pretty much a lost art) to hand-lettering word copy in a way that draws the eye like an arrow to a target. Even a simple sanserif such as Eckhardt Poster Text JNL can have the effect of that hand lettering when applied to posters and pages with plenty of white space and matching type designs of the period.

Ocean Beach is a fun, retro, all-caps Nautical Art Deco headline font. It sports geometric letterforms, perfect circles and highly stylized crossbars with waves on several letters—think the beach, flags rippling in the breeze and Fred and Ginger tap-dancing merrily on the deck of a ship! The inspiration for this font are the many whimsical nautical-themed buildings still to be found dotting the landscapes of America, from South Beach in Miami to hidden gems tucked away in industrial areas of southern California. I was fascinated by some of them when I was growing up, and in doing research on Art Deco styles I found many images of these wonderful buildings sporting portholes, streamlined moderne details and even faux rivets. Ocean Beach is created with a 3-stroke detail, and the complexity of the design will be appreciated better in larger sizes of type (36 pts or larger). Use this font for any application that needs a bold, decorative or Art Deco look; great for signage, magazine layout, illustration, posters and packaging.

Habana Deco ML was inspired by a hand-lettered sign on the stucco exterior of a small pharmacy in modern-day city of Havana, Cuba. It, in turn, was based on the fat-faced Art Deco lettering of the late 20s and early 30s, especially the Futurismo posters out of Italy, as well as alphabets designed in The Netherlands, France, USA and even the Soviet Union. There are 24 stylistic alternate glyphs (SALT), many inspired by a variety of these sources, including a couple from the sign in the front of the Congress Hotel in South Beach, Miami. The others features of the Habana Deco include 363 glyphs, 184 kerning pairs (KERN), 14 ornaments and shapes (ORNM) and 15 discretionary ligatures (DLIG). This is a font with which you can have fun. The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

Taglio’s name is derived from intaglio, which means “incised carving” or “an impression from an engraving”. Indeed, Taglio looks like an incised engraving with a contemporary calligraphic interpretation. The down strokes start with a single horizontal line that curves into a dual vertical line and ends with the same single line at the base. The dual elongated strokes create a bold overall impression but is literally twice as sophisticated than if the two lines were solid. That was exactly the goal in creating this font. We managed to create a font that is distinctive, elegant, and crisp that is also intentionally stencilled for more flexibility. For instance, it is ideal for laser cutting signage. One of the unique features in using the capital glyphs is that they stack perfectly without losing legibility, primarily because of the slanted ends of the dual vertical lines - see the example “Miami Fashion Week” display ad. Taglio’s unusual style was carefully crafted to come to life at display sizes. It is therefore ideal for use in branding fashion, restaurants, buildings, packaging, museums, signage, etc. An ideal pairing font is our WERK family which can be seen on some of the display ads below. Taglio has a sparkling and sophisticated personality that will absolutely delight!

Vintage sheet music for a song from the 1941 animated feature "Mr. Bug Goes to Town" featured a casual, hand-lettered inline type style on its cover page. Recreated as the digital font Go to Town JNL, this design is presented in all the imperfect glory of pen and ink lettering. Go to Town JNL is available in the regular inline version as well as a solid version. A bit about the cartoon: The project was created by the legendary Fleischer Studios in Miami, Florida (they had relocated from New York City), after they could not obtain the rights to adapt Maurice Maeterlinck's "The Life of the Bee". Beset by the expenses of relocating to Florida, growing production costs on the full-length feature cartoon and other problems; mid-way through the making of "Mr. Bug Goes to Town" the Fleischer brothers were forced to sell their studio to their distributor (Paramount Pictures) in order to continue in operation. It was released on Dec. 5, 1941 - just two days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The release [and subsequent re-release by Paramount as "Hoppity Goes to Town"] was a disappointing failure, earning [as late as 1946] only $241,000 of the initial cost of $713,511 it took to make the film.