Originally designed in 1996, Mrs Eaves was Zuzana Licko’s first attempt at the design of a traditional typeface. It was styled after Baskerville, the famous transitional serif typeface designed in 1757 by John Baskerville in Birmingham, England. Mrs Eaves was named after Baskerville’s live in housekeeper, Sarah Eaves, whom he later married. One of Baskerville’s intents was to develop typefaces that pushed the contrast between thick and thin strokes, partially to show off the new printing and paper making techniques of his time. As a result his types were often criticized for being too perfect, stark, and difficult to read. Licko noticed that subsequent interpretations and revivals of Baskerville had continued along the same path of perfection, using as a model the qualities of the lead type itself, not the printed specimens. Upon studying books printed by Baskerville at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, Licko decided to base her design on the printed samples which were heavier and had more character due to the imprint of lead type into paper and the resulting ink spread. She reduced the contrast while retaining the overall openness and lightness of Baskerville by giving the lower case characters a wider proportion. She then reduced the x-height relative to the cap height to avoid increasing the set width. There is something unique about Mrs Eaves and it’s difficult to define. Its individual characters are at times awkward looking—the W being narrow, the L uncommonly wide, the flare of the strokes leading into the serifs unusually pronounced. Taken individually, at first sight some of the characters don’t seem to fit together. The spacing is generally too loose for large bodies of text, it sort of rambles along. Yet when used in the right circumstance it imparts a very particular feel that sets it clearly apart from many likeminded types. It has an undefined quality that resonates with people. This paradox (imperfect yet pleasing) is perhaps best illustrated by design critic and historian Robin Kinross who has pointed out the limitation of the “loose” spacing that Licko employed, among other things, yet simultaneously designated the Mrs Eaves type specimen with an honorable mention in the 1999 American Center for Design competition. Proof, perhaps, that type is best judged in the context of its usage. Even with all its shortcomings, Mrs Eaves has outsold all Emigre fonts by twofold. On MyFonts, one of the largest on-line type sellers, Mrs Eaves has been among the 20 best selling types for years, listed among such classics as Helvetica, Univers, Bodoni and Franklin Gothic. Due to its commercial and popular success it has come to define the Emigre type foundry. While Licko initially set out to design a traditional text face, we never specified how Mrs Eaves could be best used. Typefaces will find their own way. But if there’s one particular common usage that stands out, it must be literary—Mrs Eaves loves to adorn book covers and relishes short blurbs on the flaps and backs of dust covers. Trips to bookstores are always a treat for us as we find our Mrs Eaves staring out at us from dozens of book covers in the most elegant compositions, each time surprising us with her many talents. And Mrs Eaves feels just as comfortable in a wide variety of other locales such as CD covers (Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief being our favorite), restaurant menus, logos, and poetry books, where it gives elegant presence to short texts. One area where Mrs Eaves seems less comfortable is in the setting of long texts, particularly in environments such as the interiors of books, magazines, and newspapers. It seems to handle long texts well only if there is ample space. A good example is the book /CD/DVD release The Band: A Musical History published by Capitol Records. Here, Mrs Eaves was given appropriate set width and generous line spacing. In such cases its wide proportions provide a luxurious feel which invites reading. Economy of space was not one of the goals behind the original Mrs Eaves design. With the introduction of Mrs Eaves XL, Licko addresses this issue. Since Mrs Eaves is one of our most popular typefaces, it’s not surprising that over the years we've received many suggestions for additions to the family. The predominant top three wishes are: greater space economy; the addition of a bold italic style; and the desire to pair it with a sans design. The XL series answers these requests with a comprehensive set of new fonts including a narrow, and a companion series of Mrs Eaves Sans styles to be released soon. The main distinguishing features of Mrs Eaves XL are its larger x-height with shorter ascenders and descenders and overall tighter spacing. These additional fonts expand the Mrs Eaves family for a larger variety of uses, specifically those requiring space economy. The larger x-height also allows a smaller point size to be used while maintaining readability. Mrs Eaves XL also has a narrow counterpart to the regular, with a set width of about 92 percent which fulfills even more compact uses. At first, this may not seem particularly narrow, but the goal was to provide an alternative to the regular that would work well as a compact text face while maintaining the full characteristics of the regular, rather than an extreme narrow which would be more suitable for headline use. Four years in the making, we're excited to finally let Mrs Eaves XL find its way into the world and see where and how it will pop up next.

Editorial Comment JNL is another wood type in the Grotesk (also spelled Grotesque) style of sans serif faces. Popular in newspaper headlines as well as posters, the slightly irregular stroke widths add an old-fashioned charm to any print project.

Aorta was designed for independent subcultural zine. It have stencil in place of lower-case and digit stencil in place of old style digit. Aorta good for headlines, posters, editorial design... Aorta have condensed proportion and good in solid matter.

Famosa was designed by Anita Jürgeleit. Its lively and handmade character makes for a charming image for an unmistakably elegant typography. Seven styles, old-style figures, and special ligatures serve as titles and headlines about the finer things in life.

Inspired by 16th century Venetian roman book texts, Fifteen36 has a traditional elegance and lots of character. Whether used at larger sizes for headings or at book sizes with plenty of leading Fifteen36 has a very attractive old school letterpress appearance.

Hoxie JNL is based on an example found in an old sign painter's design book from the early 1900s and has been translated to digital form by Jeff Levine. All of the quirks and charm of hand lettering have remained.

Sunday Monday font is a cursive, handwritten typeface. It has been crafted using India ink and an old steel pen. I have added some splatter and stain, to give it a 'grungy' look. Sunday Monday comes with kerning and all diacritics.

Inspired by old books and misprinted type, Subway Novella is perfect for adding that washed and worn look to your designs without going over the top making it look fake or over done. A little distress goes a long way!

Atenea Egyptian is a Slab serif, inspired in humanistic typeface references. It is a contemporary style based on high contrast and modular proportion with stylized rhythms. Atenea Egyptian includes standards and discretional ligatures, small caps, fractions, old style and lining numbers.

Tramp Steamer JNL is a re-interpretation of an old metal typeface that's been around for years. This is a bit different from many of Jeff Levine's other stencil revival fonts, which are modeled from actual paper and metal stencil guides.

Abstract is a contemporary and eclectic serif typeface inspired by today's life and created in times of pandemic. This family includes a true italic variant —that has its own personality— alternates, lining and old style figures, numerators and denominators & Cyrillic support.

If you're regularly compelled to scrawl fiery French poetry, declare independence, or design indie folk albums, then Chris Watson's romantic Steel Pen typeface is for you. With old-school edge and spirited opentype alternates, it's as gallant as type gets.

If you like a rough-hewn, rugged and vintage typeface, then Shadowlawn JNL will certainly please you. Re-drawn from vintage examples of a hand-cut wood type, the rustic charm of this typeface brings a reminiscence of Old West themes.

Quorfid JNL is Jeff Levine's version of an old classic- Orplid. Especially popular in the 1950s, this cast shadow outline font has a decidedly hand-made look to it. From headlines to point-of-sale signage, it fits into all applications.

The Chivel Mind is a new vintage font. The combination of class and a nostalgic, retro feel make this font a true standout. It’s inspired by old-school caps and labels, and will turn any design project into a historical masterpiece.

This font was adapted from an old lettering book, circa 1900. The book got away from us many years ago, but we had made stats of all the potentially useful fonts. Original had no lowercase or numerals, so we designed them.

The Anabelia is a handcrafted monoline font. It has a vintage and classic feel with an old, handmade look. Included in this download are various styles which gives you the opportunity to create unique designs, every time you use it!

This font, based on old Olympia SM and SF typewriters from the 50’s and 60’s provides a nice clean, yet quirky look for your documents. Being a reproduction inspired by a typewriter, it works better at smaller sizes.

Blastered was originally inspired by an old horror movie poster - but I find it more laid back and less horrifying…but feel free to use Blastered for your next horror project and use the more than 300 interlocking ligatures! Wow!

Inspired by the H.G.Wells science fiction novel War of the Worlds, first published in 1898. Wells Grotesque also contains Small Caps, Old Style Figures and alternate glyphs, plus all the high-end features expected in a quality OpenType Pro font.

Designed at ParaType in 1997 by Tagir Safayev. Based on Gasetny Chorny (“Newspaper Black”), of Ossip Lehmann foundry, St.-Petersburg, 1874, and Kompakte Grotesk of Haas. An old-fashioned German sans serif “Grotesque”. For use in advertising and display typography.

Oksana Sans Condensed is designed for tight-fitting text. It has six weights from Thin to Heavy. Supports Western, Central, Baltic Latin and European Cyrillic codepages. Old-style digits, some ligatures, alternative characters and Ukrainian hryvnia sign are also included.

Dungeons font is vintage monoline script font. It has vintage, elegant, old school, classy, and cool. It’s a great font for fashion, apparel projects, signature, album cover, logo, branding, magazine, social media, & advertisements, but also works great for other projects.

Hello! Introducing a vintage style font — Retroid. It's a pixelated old-school typeface that imitates 8-bit console graphics. Retroid font has multilingual support (check out a screenshot with available letters and signs). Thank you and wish you a peaceful sky!

From an old wood type owned by a San Francisco printer. Wood types were customarily given somewhat generic names (Antique Tuscan) or, more frequently, numbers to identify them. Our clients liked colorful, easily-remembered names better, and so did we.

Sepian is a wickedly fresh update on the centuries-old textura blackletter form. Use its razor-sharp “gothic” face and darkly cool character to create tattoos, horror-movie posters, or scary video game text. See what’s included! http://bit.ly/2c5MnNN

East Bouvent is based on references to old luxury lettering, retro, vintage illustrations, and Victorian calligraphy. The retro East Bouvent style is suitable for a number of applications such as product labels, advertising, interiors, and more Including : Alternate Multilingual support

ATC Abernathy, is a soft serif typeface based on retro package design. With a modern influence, it bridges the gap between old and new. Contains 330+ glyphs, full alphabet, ligatures, numerals, accents and punctuation. ATC Abernathy was released in 2018.