The set of vintage brass alphabet stencils that inspired Stencil Mark JNL was manufactured by the Chicago Firm of Meyer and Wenthe. Pete Skoglund of Unadilla, NY was selling a set of these stencils on Ebay, and was nice enough to provide Jeff Levine some images to use as models for the design of this typeface.

Featuring condensed, block hand lettering, Informational Sans JNL was modeled from a selection of water applied sign decals once made by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago and is available in both regular and oblique versions. About fifty different small decal signs covered a wide range of general purpose information such as “Open”, Closed”, “Please Pay When Served”, etc.

Plastic Display JNL was sketched from photo examples in an old sales promotion sheet for the Movitex Do-It-Yourself Plastic Sign Kit. The set was manufactured by Pryor Marking Products of Chicago, and featured a board with pre-spaced holes in a grid to which the letters and numbers would be inserted to form the sign.

Folsom JNL is one of the many stencil fonts Jeff Levine has recreated from original sources. This particular design was modeled from a kit made by the Meyercord Company of Chicago. In the original, some of the letters were solid rather than stencil forms, but Jeff gave all of the letters the traditional treatment for continuity.

Jeff Levine acquired a set of original water-applied decals made by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago (now Duro Art Industries) and painstakingly recreated one of the classic hand-drawn typefaces from the Duro line. Named after the street where the company is located, Juneway JNL is an authentic reproduction for the computer-based designer.

Signs of Yesterday JNL brings another twenty-six vintage signs inspired by a series of decals once made by the Duro Decal Company (now Duro Art Industries) of Chicago. This font complements the original twenty-six designs found in Too Much Information JNL. There are two blank sign panels on the parenthesis keys for use in creating custom retro signage.

This revival of Harry is based on the original design by Marty Goldstein (and C.B. Smith). Goldstein, born in Chicago in 1939, was the co-founder of the groundbreaking Creative Black Book. He graduated from the Pratt Institute in 1960. Harry, first published by VGC in 1966, was named for his father. ITF has added four new weights to the original six.

Retro Signs JNL collects nearly 50 designs modeled from old water transfer sign decals once manufactured by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago, Illinois and adds in a generous amount of additional phrases newly-drawn in the same hand lettered style. These vintage sign panels are perfect for creating nostalgic signage to fit projects centered around the 1950s and early 1960s.

The CaliCholo font is inspired by the wide array of Chicano styles seen on the bay area and southern California streets. This simple representation is natural & rough in emulation of hand written letters using spray paint. Two alphabets, numbers, symbols.

A series of lettering guides called “Mimeostyle” for the A. B. Dick Company of Chicago (produced for use in making mimeograph machine printing stencils) were custom manufactured by the Wright-Regan Instrument Company (Wrico). One design featured a sans serif letter produced in Shadow relief, with a touch of Art Deco flair. This is now available as Template Shadow JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Sheldrake JNL is the second in a series of display fonts modeled from actual water-applied decals that were manufactured by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago (now Duro Art Industries). The font's name derives from the actual phone exchange for Duro, back in the days when a telephone listing had a name-number assignment for recognition. In this case, their number began as "SH(eldrake)-3".

A vintage matchbook advertising the New York Liquor Mart – oddly enough, located in Chicago, Illinois – featured a pen and ink line drawing of the store’s exterior. The Art Deco lettering on the mansard was portrayed with a straight left shadow (as opposed to drop cast or extruded), making for an interesting multi-line typeface design. This is now digitally available as Packaged Goods JNL.

WAVE is characterized by curved lines and intricate details. Each character was individually made in Illustrator and Type Tool using my original illustrations. Wave is a decorative font best used for titles or short bursts of texts in large point settings. The typeface is based on the uppercase letterforms, but I have also created lowercase letters, numbers, and glyphs. The motion lines used in the making of Wave mirror an art deco-style. Inspired by an illustration of a large wave, I was fascinated that by using only lines and solid colors we as artists can depict the translucency and ever-changing movement of waves. I began by delicately sketching out all of the letters using graph paper and micron pens. My work always begins with traditional media. I'm an illustrator, freelance artist, and graphic designer from Chicago, IL. I studied at Texas Christian University, and received my Bachelors of Arts in Graphic Design from Columbia College Chicago. Visit www.jennyddesigns.com for more! :)

Do It Yourself JNL was modeled after self-adhesive vinyl letters and numbers manufactured by Duro Art Industries of Chicago - formerly the Duro Decal Company. The hand-drawn look of the original lettering was retained by Jeff Levine to stay true to the design, and the rectangles that border each glyph represent the pieces of self-adhesive vinyl onto which the characters were silk screened. Limited character set.

The front page of a late-1940s sales catalog for the [now defunct] Duro Decal Company of Chicago had its company name hand-lettered in a tall, condensed chamfered sans serif type design. Although chamfered lettering had been popular for decades, the way the "R" was shaped gave the letters a bit of an Art Deco influence, and this influence was carried through in the creation of Durable JNL.

White Rose is an original hand-drawn typeface that was made for the White Rose Catholic Worker house in Chicago. White Rose (the Catholic Worker house) follows a long tradition of providing hospitality, being active and involved in the community and living a sustainable lifestyle. In the same way, White Rose (the typeface) follows a long tradition of typefaces, mimicking Old Style and Transitional forms while retaining an element of style.

Teenage Riot is a Display Font. Inspired by the awesome Chicano lettering style. Look simpler with 2 styles (Regular & Outline) in today’s modern era. Suitable for poster designs, logos, merchandise and others. Features: Uppercase, Lowercase, Numeral, Punctuation & Multilingual. For any questions please contact me 🙂 Thanks!

A massive grotesque in four weights + obliques! Perfect for your massive poster or news paper headlines as well as your massive text chunks. The four weights elegantly complete each other as the obliques add tension to your work. Each font consists of a 241 glyph character set with beautiful ligatures for ff ffi ffl fi fl st ts es tt ST ET TT and ES.

This is a hand drawn quick-sketch font. I wanted to create a high contrast serif in a cartoonish, kid style. It contains basic latin western and central european language extensions and accents. Looks natural and playful, and really nice on chalkboard texture as you can see on the example above. It comes with the classic default ligatures of fi, fl, ffi and ffl.

In 1994, Apple® Computer, Inc., asked David Berlow for “a future gothic” to replace Chicago®, their system font. Now called Charcoal®, the design was released with Mac® OS 8 in 1996. Through operating system bundles it found its way into every form of design. Released from constraint, Berlow designed Truth FB, a radical series with a spectrum of seven weights. Like its forbear, Truth FB opens new design avenues; FB 2005

The Wright-Regan Instrument Company (Wrico) was one of the leading manufacturers of lettering templates for many years. Aside from their own line of products, they also did custom manufacturing. A series of lettering guides called “Mimeostyle” for the A. B. Dick Company of Chicago (produced for use in making mimeograph machine printing stencils) featured an art Deco squared letter design with rounded corners. This is now available digitally as Template Sans JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Alphacal JNL and Alphacal Black JNL are variants of the same lettering style found in Jeff Levine's Juneway JNL font... all based on water-applied decals once made by the Duro Decal Company (now Duro Art Industries) of Chicago, Illinois. Alphacal JNL can be used alone as an outline font (best at 18 pt. and above) or with Alphacal Black JNL as a backfill. Note: Perfect registration is not guaranteed. Some user adjustments may be necessary.

Mandarin font first appeared with the Type Founders of Chicago and is an interpretation of artistically drawn Asian brush calligraphy. The stylized Asian atmosphere is not created only by the forms of the figures but also by the very name of the typeface. A mandarin was a high official of the ancient Chinese empire. Alphabets like Mandarin font are often used for the menus, signs and advertisements of Asian restaurants as well as for businesses with Asian products.

Offense is an unyielding rectangular slab-serif face designed with consistently balanced letterforms and a refined finish. It’s extremely angular geometric form commands attention in display settings, yet is also legible in short text blocks. Numerous alternate character sets allow room for customization, while the expanded ligatures push letter combinations to the limit. Stylistically, Offense’s almost crude, sharp-cornered construction is balanced by it’s sophisticated finish and attention to detail, often unrealized in similar faces of this genre. The upright weights are complimented by pairings of true italics, completely rebuilt, slightly narrower in width with modified letterforms, increasing their contrast and flow. Features include: Precision kerning Standard Ligatures set including 'f' ligatures (fi, fl, ff, fh, fj, ffl, ffi, ffj) Discretionary Ligatures set including (ft, rt, ae, oe, st, ft, ct, oc, oo, ry, AE, OE, AL, TH, HE, AK, AN, TT, HD, AM, AP, AR, NF, NE, NH, NL, NB, FL, ND, FE, AB, OB, OD, OF, OG, OH, OK, OL, OM, ON, OO, OP, OQ, OR, OU, AH, UE, UF, UB, UD, UH, UK, UL, UM, UN, UP, UR, UU, MP, XY, YX, KY, WY, VY, AF, FF, FI) Alternate characters (O, o, S, s, a, h circumflex, @, ®, ¶, $, &, _, and various ligature alternates) Case forms (shifts various punctuation marks up to a position that works better with all-capital sequences) Capital Spacing (globally adjusts inter-glyph spacing for all-capital text) Slashed zero Full set of numerators/denominators Automatic fraction feature (supports any fraction combination) Extended language support (Latin-1 and Latin Extended-A) *Requires an application with OpenType and/or Unicode support.

A few scant examples of die cut gummed letters (R, C, Y and &) provided the design inspiration for Adhesive Serif Letters JNL. Influenced by the Caslon style, this typeface offers clean, legible titling. The sample letters were once manufactured by the Tablet and Ticket Company of Chicago and sold under their brand name of Willson's [named for the founder of the company]. Gummed letter sets were available in a variety of styles and sizes for various sign, merchandising and marking needs.

Another offbeat typeface inspired by the lettering on a design by Patrick Owsley for the Chicago Bears. There's nothing more lively than animated text, and Bear Club has that flavor in two ways. With counter inspirations drawn from fonts like Ad Lib and Nightclub, an automatic alternating caps and alternate caps feature, as well as a contextual alternates set that creates a true animated bounce, just like Hip Hopper. Let the fun begin with this spunky, lighthearted and heavy-weighted comic typeface.

Hypothesis is a typeface inspired in tattoo letters, chicano culture and calligraffiti. It works well with normal size text, but it works even better for large displays, short words, or even just to incorporate a few or single characters in a design. Suitable for many creative products & tattoo designs, like posters, t-shirt, street wear, logo, signage, headlines, etc.

The box cover of “Drawing Stencils No. 3 for Use on Slate or Paper” [a children’s drawing set produced by Montgomery, Ward & Company of Chicago circa the 1890s] had its title in an elegant spurred Roman type face. Working from the few letters available, a complete character set was created that resulted in Antique Packaging JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. To note, this is the 1500th font release from Jeff Levine Fonts since its inception in January of 2006.

NoExit is an industrial vernacular type system with multiple widths. Originally designed for the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, its inspiration was an old sign that said “STAIRWAY” found the hotel’s old building. A pointed uppercase letter A stood up against the mechanic aspect of the rest of the letters, and that discrepancy was love at first sight. From that, we developed a type system in multiple widths and weights that looks best at large sizes. It’s an ideal typeface for signage systems, magazine headlines, posters and packaging.

Defense is an unyielding rectangular slab-serif stencil face designed with consistently balanced letterforms and a refined finish. It’s extremely angular geometric form commands attention in display settings, yet is also legible in short text blocks. The stencil mark width varies accordingly with each weight, helping to further define each style. Numerous alternate character sets allow room for customization, while the expanded ligatures push letter combinations to the limit. Stylistically, Defense’s almost crude, sharp-cornered construction is balanced by it’s sophisticated finish and attention to detail, often unrealized in similar faces of this genre. The upright weights are complimented by pairings of true italics, completely rebuilt, slightly narrower in width with modified letterforms, increasing their contrast and flow. Features include: Precision kerning Standard Ligatures set including 'f' ligatures (fi, fl, ff, fh, fj, ffl, ffi, ffj) Discretionary Ligatures set including (ft, rt, ae, oe, st, ft, ct, oc, oo, ry, AE, OE, AL, TH, HE, AK, AN, TT, HD, AM, AP, AR, NF, NE, NH, NL, NB, FL, ND, FE, AB, OB, OD, OF, OG, OH, OK, OL, OM, ON, OO, OP, OQ, OR, OU, AH, UE, UF, UB, UD, UH, UK, UL, UM, UN, UP, UR, UU, MP, XY, YX, KY, WY, VY, AF, FF, FI) Alternate characters (O, o, S, s, a, h circumflex, @, ®, ™, ¶, $, &, _, and various ligature alternates) Case forms (shifts various punctuation marks up to a position that works better with all-capital sequences) Capital Spacing (globally adjusts inter-glyph spacing for all-capital text) Slashed zero Full set of numerators/denominators Automatic fraction feature (supports any fraction combination) Extended language support (Latin-1 and Latin Extended-A) *Requires an application with OpenType and/or Unicode support.

A few scant examples of some condensed Roman style water-applied decals inspired Sign Letters JNL. The decals were once part of the gold and black "Signmaker" letters and numbers once manufactured by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago and were sold through hardware and variety stores across the country. The condensed letters (which were eight inches in height) did not sell as well as Duro's mainstay sizes of 1/2 inch to 3-1/2 inches and were discontinued long before the rest of the line was supplanted by self-adhesive lettering.