Havel is an updated interpretation of a Czech type design from the 1930s. It is powerful and very condensed. At a quick glance you might find kinship with other condensed typefaces of the same period, like Spire (Sol Hess, 1937), Onyx (Gerry Powell for ATF, 1937) or Quirinus Bold (Alessandro Butti, 1939). But Havel has its very own look, rooted in the rapidly disappearing "Eastern European Type", a typographical tradition where poster and packaging design were the highlights. Torbjörn Olsson has revived this classical Czech beauty, and the Open Type version, Havel Pro, can also be used for Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian.

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.

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.

Bourget is a Display-Sans, which is inspired by the Art Déco Typo­graphy of the 1920´s, 1930´s years. It has a very characteristic and unique style by its thin line through every letter. The upright and italic versions have each 750+ Glyphs with Open Type Features, playful Ligatures and a lot of Alternates as Stylistic Sets. So there is a lot to discover and to play around with. Bourget is good to use for Branding, Signage, Packaging, Invitations, Advertising, Headlines, Displays, Magazines, Book titles or everything you want to use it for. Bourget has an extended character set to support 219 latin based languages in 212 countries and Pinyin.

Influenced by the 1960’s typeface, Design Fineline.

The typefaces Largo Mager (Light) and Largo Halbfett (Medium) were cast for the first time in 1937 by Ludwig & Mayer based on the designs by Hans Wagner. One weight Largo Licht (Outline) was added in 1956. All fonts were only configured with capitals. The digital version of Largo has pointed serifs and not the slightly rounded ones seen in the hot metal versions which gives the typeface a more elegant note. Largo is often used for fine printing jobs as business cards or formal invitations, or in the fashion and cosmetics fields. Hans Wagner was born in Munich in 1894 and died in 1977 in Altenburg where he had worked as a painter, graphic designer and book designer. In addition to the Largo typeface, he developed, among others, the Altenburger Gotisch (1928), the Welt-Antiqua (1931-1934) and the Wolfram (1930).

inspired by and advertise lettering publishing from 1920's

At first glance, Transcendental JNL looks like a 1960s or 1970s-era "Hippie" type face, hence its "love generation" name. However, the actual inspiration comes from a piece of sheet music from the early 1900s with Art Nouveau influences. It is often proven that what goes around certainly does come around in art, fashion and lettering. Transcendental JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

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.

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.

Nimrod was released by Monotype in 1980. Designed for current newspaper technology, the Nimrod font family evolved as a result of extensive examination of newspaper industry needs. Nimrod retains many of the features of the traditional newspaper Ionics, but some of the fussier detailing has been replaced by the more sober forms of the old styles, such as Plantin. A highly legible font family, especially in smaller sizes, its clear unambiguous character shapes make easily readable blocks of text. Nimrod also withstands the degradation encountered in newspaper production and printing. First used for body text in the Leicester Mercury newspaper, the Nimrod font family has subsequently become a popular choice in newspapers for text and headlines.

The above-the-store signage for many newspaper stands, soda shops, candy stores, luncheonettes and pharmacies of the 1950s and early 1960s were what was referred to as “privilege signs” provided by one of the major cola brands. Consisting of the brand’s emblems on the left and right, the remainder of the sign would carry the desired message of the storekeeper (such as “Candy – Soda – Newspapers”) in prismatic, embossed metal letters. Inspired by these vintage signs, Privilege Sign JNL recreates the condensed sans serif lettering style in both regular and oblique versions. The typefaces are solid black, but adding a selected color and a prismatic effect from your favorite graphics program can reproduce the look and feel of those old businesses.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Revers is a rough, grunge slab serif based on newspaper headlines from the 1950s. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic and Turkish languages.

Roundpoint Pen JNL is based on instructional lettering found in an old Speedball® Pen textbook. The effect of a round nib pen letter evokes the charm of the 1920s or 1930s.

From a vintage textbook on "modern" lettering circa the 1930s or 1940s comes a simple chamfered sans with oddly irregular shapes. Amateur Lettering JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Gramercy Eight JNL is an outline and drop shadow treatment of Crestview Six JNL, inspired by some 1930s-1940s era Art Deco hand lettering spotted on a sales flier for some decorator decals.

Boochie is a fun font, created as a homage to 1960's movie posters.

Reo is a novel two layered, display font with a decidedly retro look and feel, inspired by the toothy grins of 1930�s and 40�s era truck grilles and the gleaming, streamlined efficiency of the automat. Reo Front (Foreground) is where all the detail resides, and Reo Back provides a background layer.

Caltic-Holiday, Caltic-Festival, and Caltic-Straight are three eye-catching, very bold typefaces that are suitable for posters and signage. Caltic-Holiday and Caltic-Festival base letter shapes on trapezoids with curved sides but with curves that are reversed going from one to the other. Caltic-Straight has letters based on trapezoids with straight sides. None are suited for text and with their built-in spacing will not work as all upper-case or all lower-case. All three come in two widths, regular and wide, giving the Caltic family six members. Caltic has nothing to do with Celts. The Calt refers to the calt or contextual alternative OpenType feature that makes this typeface work. When the letters on the upper-case keys alternate with the letters on the lower-case keys, they fit snuggly together. As long as the user has a word processor that supports the contextual alternatives feature, there is no need for the user to alternate letters; the calt feature does it automatically. Although the fonts seem similar to hand-drawn lettering that was done on posters and signs during the hippie era of the 1960s and 1970s, I can find nothing quite like them. My inspiration for them is older, in a newspaper from 1932 that led to the typeface family PoultySign. Caltic (and Lentzers) are the result of seeing what else I could do with the inspiration that sprang from that 1932 newspaper.

The lettering for Fine Dining JNL was inspired by the opening titles for the 1940 Barbara Stanwyck-Fred MacMurray film "Remember the Night". A stylized Art Deco sans, the typeface conjures up images of elegant dining, being out on the town and all we warmly associate with the night life of the 1930s and 1940s.

Aloe is a characterful and friendly display font family inspired by headlines from 1930’s newspapers and calligraphy. The family consists of 9 weights, ranging from Thin to Heavy, with matching ornament fonts. It features a variable font with weight axis. Each weight has over 900 glyphs including advanced typographic features, such as vast number of stylistic alternates, swashes, titling and terminal forms, case sensitive forms, ligatures, symbols, ornaments as well as lining and old style figures, fractions, subscripts and superscripts. This original mixture of display typeface with calligraphy gives a versatile family great for all sorts of uses - from advertising, packaging, branding, wedding invitations, menu cards and other editorial uses to screen and web projects.

A vintage set of die-cut letters and number by Village Toys (circa 1930s or 1940s) featured a playful, bold serif typeface. This is now available digitally as Toy Letters JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

This stylish stout script was originally issued in the 1930s under the name “Fulgor” by the spanish foundry Fundición Gans. Cursory research suggests that Saks-Fifth Avenue found it suitably snooty to use extensively in its newspaper ads of that period. Perhaps somewhat ironically, this version takes its name from one of comedian W. C. Fields' many odd aliases.

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.

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.

Westbrook JNL is a simple monoline all-caps font with a strong Art Deco feel. It's light, delicate appearance is great for announcements, ads and retro materials that wish to evoke the elegance of the 1930s and 1940s.

A classic, comic book sound effects font, inspired by 1970's horror books! Contains dozens of European characters!

Designed for the newspaper technology of the 1980s, Clarion uses many of the findings made in the preparation of Monotype Nimrod, from which it is derived. The Clarion font family differs from Nimrod in its detailing, which is more akin to that of the Ionics, a style which influenced most designers of contemporary newspaper faces. The large x-height and sturdy construction of the characters make Clarion well suited for use on laser printers as well as being an excellent choice for setting newspapers, journals, newsletters and circulars.

Aldrans Medium is a homage to the poster style used in the 1920’s to promote skiing in Austria.

Temporal is one in a series of fonts designed for use in creating replica vintage newspapers. It is inspired by the nameplates of major metropolitan newspapers from the 1920s. Its rough character is apparent at headline sizes, and it remains nicely legible at small sizes. In addition to a complete international character set, it contains east and west coast variations for some letters, along with extra ligatures traditional for blackletter typesetting.