A Sponge is an useful thing, as much as this cute typeface. TOMO Sponge is great for communicating messages to the young peeps in a friendly, yet legible, way. Comes with a lot of diacritics, plus a handful of cute stylistic alternates.

The hand lettered words “Pere Noel” under a vintage French magazine’s photo of Santa with two bikini-clad beauties inspired the digital version of this quirky, condensed type style. Unusually Deco JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions From Wikipedia: “Père Noël “Papi Christmas”, sometimes called ‘Papa Noël’ (“Daddy Christmas”), is a legendary gift-bringer at Christmas in France and other French-speaking areas, identified with the Father Christmas and/or Santa Claus of English-speaking territories. Though they were traditionally different, all of them are now the same character, with different names, and the shared characteristics of a red outfit, workshop at the North Pole/Lapland, and a team of reindeer.”

Stone and steel FS Benjamin is a flared serif typeface designed by Stuart de Rozario. Consisting of 12 styles ranging from Light, Book, Regular, Medium, SemiBold and Bold with Italics it has clear, delicate letterforms, punctuated with brutal chiselled angles. With a pure and crafted feel to the forms the typeface has traditional roots but has been designed to work in a contemporary setting. Archetypal proportions in terms of x-height to cap height and ascender to descender ratio, allow the typeface to feel familiar and be legible in all platforms. Delicate brutalism Inspired by the contrasts of London and named after Big Ben, FS Benjamin was designed by Stuart de Rozario and founder, Jason Smith. Walking around London Jason was inspired by the juxtaposition of the old and the new. Glass and steel architecture can often be found amongst traditional signage and coats of arms seen around the City. These surroundings sparked an idea to create a modern design based on an alphabet that would traditionally be carved from stone. “Much of the typography we see today is so similar. I thought what if we created a typeface with traditional roots but modernised it to sit amongst the punk and noise of the streets of London? Old with new. Business with busyness. This is what London is all about.” Jason Smith

Cast in iron and burnished by the feet of a million Londoners, this font derives from the manhole covers of England’s capital city. It evokes heavy duty machinery, metal castings and worn urban decay with gritty immediacy.

Worthington Arcade is a classically-proportioned capitals-only type incorporating a selection of ligatures and alternates. It loosely resembles the hand-painted architectural lettering of the 30s to the 50s, exemplified by the likes of Percy Smith’s interior signage for the BBC or George Mansell’s lettering for the University of London and the signs found on London’s bridges. However, rather than a slavish copy of any historical model, it is more an examination and evocation of certain idiosyncratic quirks of civic lettering of the period, and an attempt to create a peculiarly English titling typeface. The round letters, for example the O, Q and C, are wider than the perfect circle usually found in such designs, while the straight-sided characters, usually drawn on a square, are narrower. This lends the whole a subtle elegance that is also emphasized by the raised crossbars on the H, E and F and extended lower leg of the E. Includes old-style numerals.

ITC Johnston is the result of the combined talents of Dave Farey and Richard Dawson, based on the work of Edward Johnston. In developing ITC Johnston, says London type designer Dave Farey, he did “lots of research on not only the face but the man.” Edward Johnston was something of an eccentric, “famous for sitting in a deck chair and carrying toast in his pockets.” (The deck chair was his preferred furniture in his own living room; the toast was so that he’d always have sustenance near at hand.) Johnston was also almost single-handedly responsible, early in this century, for the revival in Britain of the Renaissance calligraphic tradition of the chancery italic. His book Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering (with its peculiar extraneous comma in the title) is a classic on its subject, and his influence on his contemporaries was tremendous. He is perhaps best remembered, however, for the alphabet that he designed in 1916 for the London Underground Railway (now London Transport), which was based on his original “block letter” model. Johnston’s letters were constructed very carefully, based on his study of historical writing techniques at the British Museum. His capital letters took their form from the best classical Roman inscriptions. “He had serious rules for his sans serif style,” says Farey, “particularly the height-to-weight ratio of 1:7 for the construction of line weight, and therefore horizontals and verticals were to be the same thickness. Johnston’s O’s and C’s and G’s and even his S’s were constructions of perfect circles. This was a bit of a problem as far as text sizes were concerned, or in reality sizes smaller than half an inch. It also precluded any other weight but medium ‘ any weight lighter or heavier than his 1:7 relationship.” Johnston was famously slow at any project he undertook, says Farey. “He did eventually, under protest, create a bolder weight, in capitals only ‘ which took twenty years to complete.” Farey and his colleague Richard Dawson have based ITC Johnston on Edward Johnston’s original block letters, expanding them into a three-weight type family. Johnston himself never called his Underground lettering a typeface, according to Farey. It was an alphabet meant for signage and other display purposes, designed to be legible at a glance rather than readable in passages of text. Farey and Dawson’s adaptation retains the sparkling starkness of Johnston’s letters while combining comfortably into text. Johnston’s block letter bears an obvious resemblance to Gill Sans, the highly successful type family developed by Monotype in the 1920s. The young Eric Gill had studied under Johnston at the London College of Printing, worked on the Underground project with him, and followed many of the same principles in developing his own sans serif typeface. The Johnston letters gave a characteristic look to London’s transport system after the First World War, but it was Gill Sans that became the emblematic letter form of British graphic design for decades. (Johnston’s sans serif continued in use in the Underground until the early ‘80s, when a revised and modernized version, with a tighter fit and a larger x-height, was designed by the London design firm Banks and Miles.) Farey and Dawson, working from their studio in London’s Clerkenwell, wanted to create a type family that was neither a museum piece nor a bastardization, and that would “provide an alternative of the same school” to the omnipresent Gill Sans. “These alphabets,” says Farey, referring to the Johnston letters, “have never been developed as contemporary styles.” He and Dawson not only devised three weights of ITC Johnston but gave it a full set of small capitals in each weight ‘ something that neither the original Johnston face nor the Gill faces have ‘ as well as old-style figures and several alternate characters.

Alpha Midnight, reconstructed from an unnamed source by Dick Pape for Solotype, provided the pattern for this big, bold, unconventional stencil face, sure to grab your readers' attention. Both versions include the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, as well as localization for Moldovan and Romanian.

The chapbook Pen & Brush Lettering and Practical Alphabets, published by Blandford Press, Ltd., London, in 1929 averred that these letterforms suggested a lightface version of Neuland. And so they do, with the added bonus that this typeface, unlike its inspiration, includes lowercase characters.

The 1918 specimen book of the Miller and Richard Type Foundry of London and Edinburgh featured this endearing typeface. Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252 and Central European 1250 character sets, as well as a very tasty f_f_i ligature.

An eccentric chamfered sans serif wood type design with a right side engraving line from the 1800s was found within the pages of the Thorowgood foundry of London, England. This font is now available as Chamfer Engraved JNL in regular and oblique versions.

A handful of these spiky, sprightly letters made up the twittering title page of 'Message Of The Birds', a song by one Flora Warner, found in stacks of crumbling scores on an old upright piano in the basement of a favorite London bookstore.

A reasonably accurate rendering of an old favorite font from Victorian times. Quite readable in lowercase, and very eye-catching in all-caps. We got the proof for this in London many years ago, but neglected to learn the name. Zorro sounds good.

NewJune is a very strong unique character. It is already used in many magazines all over the world. Like Harvey Nichols magazine in London and later W magazine in New York. NewJune is the corporate typeface of the Academy of the Arts in Munich.

Originally called Bohemian in the 1918 specimen book of the Miller and Richard Type Foundry of London and Edinburgh, this Jugendstil typeface still retains its freshness and quaint charm. Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252 and Central European 1250 character sets.

Clarendon is the name of a slab-serif typeface that was released in 1845 by Thorowgood and Co. (or Thorowgood and Besley) of London, a letter foundry often known as the Fann Street Foundry. This current design is a somewhat condensed version of the font.

Roquette is the work of British designer Martin Wait, a casual all capital wedge serif typeface which brings the 1950s back to life. The undulating baseline and lively spot illustrations of Roquette will pep up any headline.

Pontif is a typeface based on the inscriptional lettering work of Luca Horfei, the Vatican scribe who designed the major inscriptions for Pope Sixtus V's Baroque-makeover of Rome in the sixteenth century. Garrett Boge modeled the design on a Horfei manuscript and on-site research in Rome in 1996. Pontif is part of the LetterPerfect Baroque Set.

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.

Armchair travel to the Windy City with Chicago Doodles. 31 illustrations of buildings, skylines, transportation, food, Chicago landmarks, signs and a script word Chicago. For other city, state and country doodles take a look at Paris, London, Waikiki and New Orleans Doodles. Also Cowboy and Lake Vacation Doodles too.

NewJune is a very strong unique character. It is already used in many magazines all over the world. Like Harvey Nichols magazine in London and later W magazine in New York. NewJune Serif was actually the basis for NewJune Sans. And now NewJune Serif is available on MyFonts!

This casually elegant typeface is based on an unnamed offering from Pen & Brush Lettering and Practical Alphabets, published by Blandford Press, Ltd., London, in 1929. Good taste dictates that, because of the ornate and unusual letterforms of the uppercase letters, the font never be used as all caps.

Released on the occasion of the 2012 London Olympics, Olympukes 2012 was a new set of pictograms telling the ‘real’ story of the Olympics and extending the unofficial project that began in 2004. The occasion of the London games provided an opportunity to revisit the complex contradictions of the modern Olympics and to acknowledge the geopolitical shifts of the intervening eight years. The 2012 games arrived at a time of great economic and political uncertainty for the nation and Europe. Greece – the host of the 2004 games – was now located at Ground Zero of a disintegrating Eurozone and the United Kingdom was two years into a programme of austerity enacted by the coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Given that the previous London Olympics had been held in 1948, in a climate of recovery and austerity after a devastating World War (1948’s Olympiad was dubbed the ‘Austerity Games’) there was a sick irony to the 2012 games' arrival. The suppression of human rights in order to deliver the perfect games for PRoC’s Beijing games shocked no-one and yet, in London, the security measures seemed grossly excessive. Then again, in a country with an estimated 1.8 million cctv cameras, perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised. Another aspect of the Olympics that returned for 2012 was the unfettered commercialism – if you think the Games are about pure sport, about noble human endeavour, think again. Please note that Barnbrook Fonts is in no way affiliated with, or has received any endorsement from, the International Olympic Committee, the organising committees of the Olympic Games, or any national Olympic committee.

Inspired by a scoreboard of the public transport in London our best selling font family is the basic font for the german magazine Starshot and even earned feedback from Sports Illustrated. The technical look of the entire DigiBo family is making the font a worthy member of the Eurostile / DIN -league.

Coliseo is a lively and fun Art Nouveau inspired typeface, inspired by stone lettering seen on facade of the Coliseum Theatre in London. It's beautifully characterful let legible making it ideal for poster work or anything where it's useful to combine Roman display faces with a feeling of life and energy.

The Fredrick Ullmer Co. in London acted as agent for many typefoundries, and this was one of their offerings. Some of the letters were rather outlandish, so we fearlessly decided to improve them. The result is this dated but pleasant font. The original didn't have a lowercase, so we added it.

1977 was a good year for soccer. Attendance for the North American Soccer League (NASL) grew 33%, to 13,000 per game. Brazillian soccer legend Pelé played his final match, kicking for both the New York Cosmos and Santos of Brazil. And a soccerboy named Charlie was crowned with the nickname Chanky. In honor of his soccer hero Pelé, Charlie insisted the neighbor kids call him Chelé. They laughed at him and called him Chanky after Spanky from the Little Rascals. As he grew into his manhood, he became Chank the internationally renowned font designer. Chank created this font Soccerboy, as filtered through the artistic eyes of his 1977 childhood. It's a tri-line font, hand-drawn in Chank's signature cartoon whimsy. Soccerboy encourages play with color and alternate characters. Create coloring effects yourself using layers and the magic wand and paint bucket tools in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.

Transcribed from letters designed by Jan van Krimpen for The Curwen Press at Plaistow, London, in 1925; printed on pages 49, 51 & 53 of A Specimen Book of Types and Ornaments in Use at The Curwen Press (1928). A setting at 120 pt is recommended to match the size of the original.

Fleurons are embellishments and here is my third and so far nicest round. I found some old ones in London and made them more modern ones. These go very well with my scripts Nadine and Ellida and a lot of my other scripts!!! Yours once more in a beautiful mood, Gert Wiescher

Underground Pro expands on the historical design by Edward Johnston, licensed exclusively to P22 from the London Transport Museum. The overall design of Underground Pro is kept as intended by Johnston and remains within his system of proportions. Additional OpenType features, such as Small Caps and Petite Caps, are included in all 6 weights. A Titling option that mimics London Transport signage is offered in the medium weight. The addition of many Unicode ranges for unprecedented language support makes this the most expansive P22 font family ever. Each Pro font weight collectively contains over 5000 glyphs, covering most Latin based languages, with separate Greek (polytonic) and Cyrillic versions. The outlines of the original Regular and Bold have been subtly redrawn and expanded, they are now available as Medium and Heavy respectively.

Accent Graphic was developed as the corporate typeface for a London design consultancy in 1997. The starting point was the word ‘accent’ in lower case. It is essentially a sans typeface with the thick/thin contrast of a serif and is the only family in the G-Type collection that was designed for a client.

Can you dig it, man? Comicraft's Jazzy "JG" Roshell, just swung by after playing bongos down at the coffee bar in his black turtleneck sweater, stove-pipe trousers, dark glasses and beret. Check out the rad Tiki corners on our freshest font, COOL BEANS and you'll want to snap your fingers, put on some Miles Davis and take the next train out of Squaresville, um, Daddio.

The Olaus Magnus and Olaus Bandus alphabets are inspired by the letterforms cut in the pictures and wood-cuts of Olaus Magnus great book Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus. This great history of the Nordic Peoples was printed in Rome in 1555 in his own printing shop there. Olaus Magnus, Catholic priest and appointed archbishop by the Pope, never returned to the now Lutheran Sweden.

Tipo Pèpel strikes again with a lush splurge on pure basic geometrical shapes and sizes, those that inspired Paul Renner’s typographic milestone “Futura”. A new look to classic shapes, bringing them back plenty of delightfullly details as the lowercase cursive forms’ long tiles that break the supposed linearity expected from a purely geometrical font. Rhythm given by hidden details in each character of each weight, push “Naste” out of German geometric sobriety, will help us to easily create typographic hierarchies upon the many weights available and the many and accurate details. Excellent results with minimal effort. Wide ‘x’ height, restrained ascending and descending stems; thick but elegant, easy to read and in need of generous white space around, where it feels comfortable. More is better than less. As usual in Type Pépel, full sets of Opentype alternatives and Unicode support for 104 languages ​​plus Cyrillic. 16 weights of typographic beauty in all its glory.

Here's an offering from the Blackfriars Type Foundry of London that's perfect for commanding headlines. The letterforms have been carefully kerned for a tight fit to increase the visual color of this nostalgic behemoth. All versions of this font include the Unicode 1250 Central European character set in addition to the standard Unicode 1252 Latin set.

An old wood type we picked up in London from the Fredrick Ullmer Company. It's not marked, and we've never seen it in a catalog, so we don't know who made it. We like it for antique-looking western posters and playbills. We added the lowercase. We have seen it used on British music hall bills.

Woolwich is a jolly fine display font, named after a district in south-east London. Woolwich, somewhat inspired by Futura condensed, was completely made by hand and comes in a clean and an eroded version. It is highly legible and will certainly make your designs stand out. Woolwich speaks a lot of languages, including the language of doodles.

Here's a great old face from the H. W. Caslon foundry in London; a real workhorse. The lowercase is eminently readable, so you can set entire paragraphs to good effect. We don't recommend it for setting all caps, but we did take time to kern it well; so you won't get a jumble of ovelapping letters if you do.

This curious little gem is patterned after a typeface named "Bloomsbury", released by P. M. Shanks & Sons, Ltd. of London in the 1920s. Its gentle curves and somewhat quirky construction combine to create a warm and friendly, if slightly offbeat, antique charm. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Originally made for the Observer newspaper, in London, this version of Plantin is more condensed than the standard typeface. This condensing is most noticeable in the capitals and the bold fonts. The News Plantin font family was designed primarily for use in a magazine supplement. It retains the robust nature of Plantin but provides better economy in text use.