A circa-1940s textbook for the Esterbrook Drawlet Pens (similar to Speedball pens) offered numerous samples of lettering that could be obtained by following the simple directions and using the book as a guide. One example was a classic Art Deco design made with a round nib pen, and it has been redrawn digitally as Lettering Book JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

A lovely script face remastered from found drawings, great for antique, vintage and romantic designs.

A bold new look great for magazines and paperbacks a strong yet beautiful headline face.

An open, evenly spaced book face designed for quality headlines and enhanced readability in text.

Cute emoticons showing a variety of smiles, frowns, and faces and words reflecting those emotions.

A unique serif face with a happy look; great for kids books or fun ads.

Jasper is a script face drawn with a broad nib suitable for a handwriting impression.

A beautiful very bold serfi face, formal legible design, with matching Italic, Powerful yet elegant.

The Aviano series returns with a vigorous and futuristic sans serif. Aviano Future’s powerful squared forms lend intensity and authority to your designs. Aviano Future’s extended forms give the face strength and muscle. Aviano Future is a versatile new addition to the Aviano titling series. Aviano Future comes in six different weights with “fast” Fasts and is packed with OpenType features. Want to use more traditional rounded forms? Need swash forms? Art Deco alternates? Aviano Future includes 390 alternate characters. Eleven style sets are available, two sets of art deco inspired alternates, small forms, tough swash, constructivist titling and traditional stylistic alternates. Aviano Future also includes 40 discretionary ligatures for artistic typographic compositions. Please see the informative .pdf brochure to see these features in action. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. This family also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages. Aviano Future is a great choice for a professional designer that wants to achieve a technological, futuristic or epic look. Be sure to check out the rest of the Aviano series which can be used as complementary faces, including Aviano, Aviano Serif, Aviano Sans, Aviano Didone, Aviano Flare and Aviano Slab.

Minotaur is an original monoline design based on an Oscan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscan_language ) votive inscription from the second century B.C.E. The letterforms immediately caught my eye in the wonderful book, Lettering by Hermann Degering, and I decided to create a typeface based on them with only enough compromises to make it usable as a modern alphabet. Not quite as straightforward as I had hoped. For example, the Oscan language (the predominant language in the Italian peninsula before the ascendance of Latin), has no letter "O", so the distinctive curve of the "D" was used as the model for the rounded letters "C" and "G" and more subtly for "O" and "Q"; this shape is also echoed in the original design of "B", "P" and "R". Also, the Oscan letterforms for A, K, L, M, N, S, and U are rather quaint, so I've included modern forms as alternates. Minotaur offers the best of both worlds: Just as the mythical Minotaur is half man and half bull, the font Minotaur is half modern and half ancient. Thanks to OpenType features (stylistic sets), you can easily switch from ancient letterforms to modern (if you have an OpenType-savvy application such as Adobe InDesign) for Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets. Minotaur supports all modern European languages, including Modern (monotonic) Greek and those that use the Cyrillic alphabet. And, yes, it supports Oscan, both right-facing and left-facing. Minotaur includes 3 OpenType Stylistic Sets: 1 - converts ancient (default) letterforms (A, K, L, M, N, S, and U) to modern alternates; 2 - converts Latin letterforms to equivalent left-facing (standard) Oscan letterforms; 3 - converts Latin letterforms to equivalent right-facing Oscan letterforms.

Darmhagh Underwood is a “rough” monowidth font based on the face used on the old Underwood manual typewriter. Darmhagh Underwood was first digitized in 1999 by Michael Everson and originally used the MacGaelic character set on the Macintosh platform, and ISO/IEC 8859-14 on the PC. In 2008 Darmhagh Underwood version 3 was released in OpenType format, completely compliant with Unicode encoding and with an extended character set. The particular Underwood typewriter from which samples were taken to design Darmhagh Underwood is on display in the National Library of Ireland. It belonged to Conradh na Gaeilge and was used to draft armistice documentation which led to the end of the Irish War of Independence in 1921. Darmhagh is pronounced [ˈdaɾuː].

We produce original printing press letter fonts, for example from the journal Southern Literary Messenger (circa 1830 - 1870). The only one in the world. What makes our fonts so attractive to the eye, are the myriad imperfections. It's not an approximation to the printing-press letters--- these are the actual letters, complete with all their manifold differences. If you look closely you will notice that the letter 'e' say, each time it is printed, is slightly different. These differences arise from the mechanical action of the inked-wooden press on the paper, and cannot be faked by artificial means. The eye subconsciously picks up this text as the actual printing press letters. Edgar Allan Poe published many of his great works in the Southern Literary Messenger, as did many other great nineteenth century writers, ie. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne &c.

At first glance, the lettering style of Technopen JNL seems to emulate the computer-age fonts of the 1980s. In actuality, this font is derived from an alphabet sample found in an instructional booklet for the Esterbrook Drawlet Pens. The Drawlet line was Esterbrook's answer to the iconic Speedball pen points sold through their chief competitor, the Hunt Pen Manufacturing Company. So, what seems to be late 20th Century typography is actually from vintage source material. In fact, the entire contents of the instructional booklet were copyright 1929! A few minor changes were made to the original A-Z alphabet and additional characters were added. The name Technopen is a shortening of the term 'technical pen', which is both a nod to the techno age of the 80s and the technical instruments of the past utilized for drawing and lettering.

The Clog font family is represented by four different outlines - Normal, Open Face, Shadowed and Engraved. Each of them could be your best choice when designing a wine label, package or magazine headline. By using Open Face and Shadowed outlines you will discover how easy it is to produce unique design of its own style.

Darling, you don’t just look GOOD, you look FANTASTIC! IRRESISTIBLE! IMMACULATE! Those soft curves, those sharp lines, those INLINES... that MAGNIFICENT symmetry. This is a face that could launch a thousand spaceships, a face that doesn’t care if you feel good, because Heavens to Betsy, you LOOK good. Just utter those magic words: Simply Marvelous.

An ebay purchase of a vintage Speedball lettering pen set yielded an extra bonus… numerous alphabets on paper rendered in both pen and ink and via pencil sketches. One such design in rough pencil layout is a classic serif typeface often found on many passenger and freight trains, trolley cars and busses. This “Railroad Roman” was scanned from the original sketches and then re-drawn digitally, all along retaining the charm and attractiveness often found in hand lettering. The end result is Streetcar JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The typeface is inspired by our love of old hand-painted signs in butchers, and based on some very quick sketches using a brush pen to find what shapes worked. There is quite a quirky element to the type, as we tried to create the original sketches by rotating the brush pen to reflect the strokes of a paint brush. This lead to a horizontal stressing, which is most noticeable in letters like C, G, S and J. Sidestroke comes in 2 styles, both a standard solid version, and a pre-shadowed outline version. This can be outlined and divided in Illustrator to quickly create an alternate coloured fill for your letters. The lowercase letters have been designed to automatically horizontally align with any uppercase letters, which is a great shortcut when creating logos or other unique type layouts.

There are thousands of pieces of vintage sheet music available for collectors and curiosity seekers. Prior to the 1930s, a large percentage of them had wonderfully hand-lettered titles on the covers, but gradually there was a shift by music publishers to utilizing metal type for the bulk of their output. Normally set in an all-caps format, certain type faces reappeared in growing frequency and familiarity. Composer JNL is one such example of a “workhorse” font, and has been re-drawn and reinterpreted by Jeff Levine Fonts in both regular and oblique versions. It is based on the design "Glamour", released by Lanston Monotype in 1948; which in turn was based on "Corvinus", designed by Imre Reiner.

The hands on the clock tick inexorably on... the numbers on the digital display roll inevitably toward zero... time is tight, the fuse is getting shorter and the beads of sweat on your forehead are glistening in the red light of the LCD... you have come to a place where the only thing you feel are loaded guns in your face... can YOU handle the DREADED DEADLINE DOOM?!? TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK THRAKAKAKATHOOM! Uh oh… you blew it. Deadline Remastered features 18 static weights, including the new nearly square "Block", each with complete Western & Central European language support. Use the Solid & Open Variable fonts to access unlimited width and angle options.

Bernhardt Standard, which was designed in 2003 by Julius de Goede, is a flowing Bastarde script. Bastarde is one of the sub-categories of Blackletter typefaces. The term Blackletter refers to typefaces that have evolved out of Northern Europe’s medieval manuscript tradition. Often called gothic, or Old English, these letters are identifiable by the traces of the wide-nibbed pen stroke within their forms. Of all of the various sorts of Blackletter styles, Bastarde scripts are the most flowing, or Italic. The first Bastarde typefaces, cut in the late 1400s, were based on French handwriting styles, especially those styles popular in Burgundy. The flowing nature of Bernhardt Standard makes it similar to some other sorts of Blackletter typefaces as well. Bernhardt Standard, because of its handwritten roots, is also similar to Kurrent, a style of handwriting that was popular in Germany prior the 20th Century. Bernhardt Standard is a very calligraphic face, suitable for formal applications. This typeface would be an excellent choice for certificates or awards. The old style figures in the font allow for nice short settings of text as well.

A little more flower and a little less power, please. Fun, friendly, fashionable, and feminine to a fault, Jojo takes display typography to a whole new level, where eyes can’t help but appreciate the day and the design at hand. It takes a graphic designer very little imagination to see these letters on posters, book covers, clothes, and craft paraphernalia. Or how about a sign over a bakery? A music sleeve? A romantic comedy titling? Cosmetics products? Pretty much anywhere! Jojo takes its name from a Beatles song about getting back to where we once belonged. It also takes most of its shapes from vintage photo-setting days, when an art nouveau typeface called Spring, by B. Jacquet, was putting happy times back where they belonged, which was everywhere. The original photo-setting face came in just 26 letters and 10 numerals. This digital retooling optimizes the original forms and expands on them, for a full character set of over 430 glyphs, including ligatures and stylistic alternates, and support for the majority of Latin languages.

A French form of Fat Face, derived from the British; matrices survive at Berthold in Berlin.

Regina is a calligraphic-influenced hybrid light-face Tuscan-serif roman with a companion swash italic.

Double Feature JNL reworks the classic Huxley Vertical into an elegant trilinear Art Deco display face.

Curbdog is a bold, playful display face with light horizontals and curved terminals in the italics.

Disjecta, derived from disjecta membra meaning fragmented or disjointed, was developed as a grunge script face.

A hot revival of the 60s and 70s a great headline face with that retro look.

The shapes of the f-holes on a violin reminded German designer André Maaßen of an italic letter "f". Maaßen used these captivating contours as the theme for his type family, Varius. The name "Varius" is an homage to the manufacturer of the violin that inspired Maaßen's project, Antonio Stradivarius, the most famous manufacturer of violins in music history. Varius has three separate styles. Varius 1 and its italic are the base style of the family, and are typefaces in the baroque serif manner. Varius 2 and its italic are slab serif egyptiennes, slightly heavier than Varius 1's more classical forms. Varius 3 and its italic are semi serif faces; their characters are serifed, but some of the serifs have been cut off. The family is rounded out with two pi faces: an ornaments font (which can be used in conjunction with the text fonts, or on its own to create beautiful borders or individual decorative elements), and a font of musical symbols and notations. Each of the six text fonts has dozens of supplemental ligatures included in their character sets. When these fonts are used in an OpenType-supporting application, such as Adobe InDesign, these ligatures automatically appear in text when the "Discretionary Ligatures" feature is activated. Additionally, the character sets include added alternate glyphs, such as a swash "m" or "n" to finish off a line of text. These can be inserted manually in applications that include glyph palettes (e.g., Adobe InDesign or Illustrator CS). All of the Varius family's letterforms appear slightly narrow, and traces of the wide-nibbed pen can be seen within their forms. Additionally, the shape of a violin's f-hole is a reminiscent element within all of the family's curves. Varius is particularly suited for use many applications, such as body text, newspaper text, display text, headlines, posters, books, screen design, and corporate identity. Use in sizes ranging from body copy text to display and poster format allow the different facets of the typeface to effectively present themselves. The effects can be as versatile as the possibilities! Due to its special character, the typeface could be used in the design of a logo, or within an appropriate corporate design context, to particularly stress individuality.

This caps only hand lettering could have come from an architect. Speedy written on a 45 degree slope with a bold felt pen or brush.

Dossier is a monospaced serif face that originates in Dwiggins's designs for typewriter. It has a soft and casual personality and comes in 8 weights and matching italics, making it ideal for text typography, package and advertisement design. Dossier is an adaptation of William Addison Dwiggins's unfinished typewriter faces. He worked with multiple typewriter manufactures including Underwood, Remington Rand, and IBM, but none of them were finished. He left a number of intriguing drawings which are now kept at the Boston Public Library. You could see in the drawings that Dwiggins was also interested in exploring designs of varied width. Toshi Omagari decided to combine these materials to make a cohesive family: the upright was taken from a drawing of monospaced lowercase for an unknown client, and the italic was from the work he did for Underwood which he called "Aldine". Toshi added narrower and wider alternates in the same way Dwiggins devised.

Marco is a lively text face, with an informal touch, inspired by 15th century Italian letter-forms with strong calligraphic traces and intended to be used primarily in continuous and intensive reading conditions. Marco is full of features required for high-quality book typography, including: strong language-support in extended Latin, Cyrillic and polytonic Greek, a multitude of swashes in the italic styles of Latin and Cyrillic, stylistic alternates to obtain the best possible solutions and other typographic niceties. Inspiration for Marco goes back to Italian humanist typography such as those of Nicholas Jenson or Aldus Manutius, and general influences from calligraphy. As a result, Marco has matured into a personal and unique text face where its lively and somewhat informal style is an ideal counterpart to its careful and ingenious crafting. Toshi Omagari’s Marco features a huge set of over 1900 characters per style —and almost 2600 in the italics— and is available in Regular, SemiBold, Bold with matching Italics.

Lately I feel reluctant to watch the news: The Amazon Forest is burning, Australian forests are burning, palm oil controversy… It really brings tears to my eyes to see all this destruction around me. It is like people hate nature with a vengeance - I cannot explain it otherwise. I made this font to take my mind off things. It was loosely based on Futura, a font I really like. Understory was completely made by hand. It comes with some cute upper case swashes and a whole bunch of diacritics. The good thing is: no trees were cut down or burned to make this font; in fact, I donated a nice amount of $ to help save the rainforests!

Seven superb scripts, to be freely mixed with one another. Alone, each of them flows nicely, but combined they reach ultimate vitality and grace. The Pleiades are one of the most beautiful constellations in the sky, and in Greek mythology they were seven divine sisters. Luxurious freedom of choice and excellent readability make Pleiad the perfect face for a variety of projects, from stylish invitations to magazine ads, from poetry books to restaurant logos. Sometimes calm, sometimes flittering – but always fair and graceful – this sublime calligraphic type family will hold an everlasting fascination.

Stroma is a serif display faces with moderate contrast and quirky cuts. Intended to use it on headlines in the editorial design environment or big type style graphics, The function of this typeface allows it to use on larger and compact text for any graphical elements that need special treatment. The details interpreted from the straight axis pointed into flourish calligraphic serif, the shape of the letter contains straight details and cuts, this gives them a rich and fine looks. The Stroma family includes four weights, ranging from Light to Bold with italic uprights.

Linotype Compendio is a part of the Take Type Library, chosen from the contestants of the International Digital Type Design Contests from 1994 and 1997. Christian Bauer designed this font based on the basic forms of Transitional faces of the 17th century. The outer contours of the letters are purposely raw and irregular, much like alphabets printed on low-quality paper. The legibility of the font is thus reduced, making it necessary to use this font only for shorter texts or headlines, but it is exactly this characteristic which lends Linotype Compendio its distinctiveness.

ITC Bailey Sans is the first typeface family created by Kevin Bailey, a graphic designer in Dallas, Texas. He was once looking for an understated block serif for a design project and could find nothing suitable. Bailey began working on his own serif face but then found that the basics of his new design worked well as a sans serif and continued on that track. ITC Bailey Sans font is available in four weights: book, book italic, bold and bold italic and even has a companion serif display font, ITC Baily Quad Bold.

Leksa is an oldstyle, even a bit old-fashioned text family in 12 faces, including six upright and six italic ones, from Light to Black, with both oldstyle and tabular digits and true small caps. The typeface works best in the books of classical style, and looks good in both small and large point sizes. One of the main features of the typeface is its professionally-designed Cyrillic which (together with sans-serif companion Leksa Sans) was awarded for excellence in type design at Modern Cyrillic competition in Superfamilies category.

A book in the library of University of Wisconsin caught David Berlow’s attention. It was set in a clear text face - a predecessor of Bookman, cast by the Western Type Foundry who called it Custer. Upon noting how well the typeface worked in 6 and 7 points, he developed it into a member of the Reading Edge series specifically designed for small text on screen. Custer RE was a broad and approachable typeface drawn large on the body with a tall x-height to maximize its size when set very small.

MagMixer, a display typeface, was designed in 2005 for ParaType by Dmitry Kirsanov. During work on Magistral the designer had an idea of creating a more decorative face based on Magistral shapes but reflecting an industrial and mechanichal approach. Each glyph has maximal contrast between strokes and horizontal shift in shape. The result is some strange and enigmatic but legible letterforms with active inner rhythm. Its letters are reminiscent of building construction, chess board, and many other things that corresponding to author's task. For use in advertising and display typography.