Frank H. Atkinson was a popular Art Nouveau sign painter in Chicago, Illinois. He designed signs for the Cadillac Motor Car Co., Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the department store Marshall Field. Oddly enough, he even designed signs for other sign painters. In 1908 he published a book, Sign Painting, which sold well. French Plug, a bold, rounded, all-cap design in an American Art Nouveau style from that book. It has a relaxed, easy-going informality that is useful for ads and flyers. It also would have fit very nicely with many French posters of the period.

Roma Initial Caps JNL is a set of alphabet caps drawn from elegant lettering found in an old sign painter's manual. The upper case keys have the letters in white on black backgrounds, while the lower case has the letters in black on a white background with a black border.

Adhesive Letters JNL was drawn from sample letters and numbers once manufactured by the Tablet and Ticket Company of Chicago. Originally sold under the brand name of Willson's, these gummed letters were available in a number of styles and sizes.

This popular type was manufactured by the Crescent Type Foundry of Chicago and sold on their behalf by a half dozen other foundries. Introduced in the early 1890s, just as tastes were swinging away from the excesses of the Victorian period.

In the early 1960s, the Duro Decal Company of Chicago, Illinois added to its line of water-applied decal lettering a retail sign cabinet of die-cut, pressure sensitive vinyl letters and numbers. Four of the six sizes offered for sale were cut from white plastic with a black outline and a secondary gold inline for a tri-color effect. Sign Stickers JNL emulates as closely as possible the look of these nostalgic pieces, complete with the slight shifts in line weight due to hand-cut silk screens and the printing process. For those of you who prefer to make your own multi-colored letters, a three piece fill font set is available for the low price of a single font purchase. Combine the backfill, midfill and frontfill layers for a truly retro look!

A September 29, 1920 edition of The San Diego Union ran the headline “Cicotte Confesses Baseball Fraud; Eight White Sox Players Indicted”. The White Sox baseball scandal was the first to reveal illegal gambling on the game. However, the headline itself was set in a bold slab serif type style [likely ATF Foster] which served as the model for Good Reporting JNL; which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

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.