Inspired by the hand lettered phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword” in a 1923 promotional blurb for Speedball lettering pens, Pen Nib Western JNL recreates the decorative style of this vintage artistic gem in both regular and oblique versions.

A 1922 piece of sheet music entitled “Japanese Sailor” had its title hand lettered in a Far Eastern motif. This design is now available as Sea of Japan JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

The title on the cover of Street & Smith’s “Wild West Weekly” for Jan. 27, 1934 made for an interesting contrast in terms. Here was a pulp magazine dedicated to stories of the Old West, but its title was hand lettered in an extra bold, squared shape style using a round pen nib – not exactly an alphabet that represented cowboys and desperados… This aside, this type style made for a good digital font revival, and it is now available as Bold Pen Lettering JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

To blend a handwritten style with a graphical aesthetic, Monotype designers paid attention to the balance between the two, hence harmoniously combine their qualities like a mix of tradition and modern. M Felt Pen references the unified stroke thickness and rounded terminals of rounded Heiti typefaces, imitating the fluidity of marker writing. The linked strokes are vivid and suggest the presence of the human hand.

The idea started with the 1934 sheet music of “Mazurka Amabile”. Its hand drawn title had most of the letters rendered in a rectangular shape [‘square’ in the sign trade] that featured rounded corners and terminals made by the shape of the lettering pen nib. A few letters were rounder in design than others, so those were scrapped in favor of a more consistent character shape throughout the font. Pen Nib Square JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

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.

To blend a handwritten style with a graphical aesthetic, Monotype designers paid attention to the balance between the two, hence harmoniously combine their qualities like a mix of tradition and modern. M Felt Pen references the unified stroke thickness and rounded terminals of rounded Heiti typefaces, imitating the fluidity of marker writing. The linked strokes are vivid and suggest the presence of the human hand.

The 1920 edition of “How to Paint Signs and Sho’ Cards” by E. C. Matthews offered a number of examples of then-modern lettering styles for sign painters and show card writers. A bold display alphabet made with a round lettering nib is now available as Show Card Pen JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

The hand lettered title on the cover of the 1938 sheet music for “If It Rains – Who Cares” featured a condensed Art Deco typeface made with a round nib pen. The square shaped characters with rounded corners were a perfect subject for a digital font revival, and are now available as Dip Pen Deco JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

A 1935 song with the unusual title of "Dinner for One Please, James" had its title hand lettered on the cover of the sheet music with simple, condensed letters made by a round point dip pen. This has been reproduced in a digital font as Pen Lettering Sans JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Inspired by the decayed lettering on the signs at Siesta Key beach painted on weather-worn old wood in Florida, these letters are made to look like peeling paint.

Any prototype you can imagine, Skolar Sans can materialise. This industrious type family is more than just a versatile partner for our award-winning Skolar collection: it is a true sans-serif type system envisioned for the age of responsive design. We developed Skolar Sans to accommodate contemporary typographers and the challenges they confront: an ever-changing spectrum of outputs and devices, in which serious typography can get lost. Skolar Sans is engineered to cope with complex editorial texts and data-rich layouts alike. Its construction is designed for easy reading, and its subtle personal style and a touch of flourish. From gently thin to black, the finely-tuned weight variants will fit any composition from wide-screen dashboards to compact mobile editorial designs. Its four subtly graded width variants allow you to fit any page context with comfort. The 72 styles; 36 weight and width variants in uprights and true italics with ligatures, arrows, scientific figure variants, and fleurons. The two variable fonts (one for uprights and one for the italics) allow user precise navigation of the Skolar Sans design space and streamline delivery. The linguistic scope of Skolar Sans PE is an exact match to Skolar PE: Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek (including polytonic) scripts and support for hundreds of languages and transliterations.

The two great technical constraints a type designer can tackle are low resolution, which limits detail and dictates proportions between negative and positive shapes, and uniform width, which restricts each letter to a fixed horizontal space. Wrestle with both at once, and each letter becomes a black-and-white chessboard that challenges every design decision. Sometimes battling these constraints gets in the way of a good idea, but other times, tinkering with fewer options can make the job irresistibly easy and lead straight to a grid addiction. Gridlite, an experiment with a modular negative space, is the side effect of such an addiction. It’s simplified, monospaced, and variable: foreground and background alike are ready to be animated, typed, scaled up, scaled down, rounded, or otherwise deformed. Gridlite is primarily a variable font with axes that control the size of the elements, their shape, and the background (one for the rectangular field and one for the compact envelope around the letters). The fonts cover Cyrillic, Greek, and Latin scripts. Small caps are included, for no apparent reason ... and there is a monospaced elephant, too.

Clone Rounded is a retrofuturist typeface by Lasko Džurovski from Macedonia, fusing the vintage look of CRT monospaced forms with the organic mutability of a multi-weight, proportional family fit for reading. This lovechild of cyber-culture and genetic font modification takes inspiration from coding, technology, and architecture. Its quasi-monospaced design gives a nod to the quirkiness of engineered fonts but bends enough to never sacrifice a natural reading experience. Biomechanical morphology augmenting a laboratory-built frame.

The LCT Ragnarök is inspired by the cinematographic universe. Its thick and generous shape makes this typeface naturally stand out. In addition, its lines embody soft serifs thus adding elegance to it. This original font endows two styles; regular and slant. It is an asset for the creation of titles, logos or even generics. LCT Ragnarök encompasses a rich alphabet going from Latin PRO going to Greek , Polytonic Greek and Cyrillic.

The lettering found on an 1878 Salt Lake City advertisement for the Forepaugh’s Circus inspired Faux Pas JNL, which is a bit of a pun on the circus’ name and also a commentary on how this unusual lettering style seems to break all of the rules on stroke width and balance. According to Wikipedia: “Adam John Forepaugh (February 28, 1831 - January 22, 1890) was an American entrepreneur, businessman, and circus owner. Forepaugh owned and operated a circus from 1865 through 1890 under various names including Forepaugh's Circus, The Great Forepaugh Show, The Adam Forepaugh Circus, and Forepaugh & The Wild West. In 1889, Forepaugh sold his circus acts to James Anthony Bailey and James E. Cooper and he sold his railroad cars to the Ringling Brothers. The Ringlings used the equipment to transform their circus from a small animal-powered production to a huge rail-powered behemoth, which later purchased the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Thus, in liquidating his circus assets, he indirectly contributed to the demise of his arch-rival.” Faux Pas JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.