Samuel Welo’s “Studio Handbook – Letter and Design for Artists and Advertisers” was a go-to source of inspiration for generations of layout artists, graphic designers and sign painters. An interesting example of free-form pen lettering was found amongst the pages of one edition and it has now been recreated as a digital typeface called Nouveau Cartoon JNL; available in both regular and oblique versions.

The pattern for this face was designed by Will Bradley in 1894 for the cover of Inland Printer magazine, and was licensed the following year to American Type Founders. Its classic lines and condensed footprint make this typeface a natural for elegant and inviting headlines. All versions of this font include the Unicode 1250 Central European character set in addition to the standard Unicode 1252 Latin set.

Eckhardt Casual JNL was modeled from an example of poster lettering found in a 1941 Speedball® Lettering Pen instruction book. The font is named in honor of Jeff Levine's good friend, the late Albert Eckhardt, Jr. (owner of Allied Signs in Miami, Florida until his passing) and is one of a number of releases with a "sign painter" theme that comprise the "Eckhardt Series".

Stay Alive Typeface is Inspired by victorian style, poster, sign painter, 1800s bring classic touch on this decade, which is combining modern and classic typography with some awesome features that have a strong shapes so it will create more attention for people to look more closely. You can use this font for various purposes.such as logo, t-shirt, posters, lable, letterhead, book cover, and many more.

Eckhardt Poster Brush JNL is part of a series of fonts emulating many of the various styles of hand lettering employed by sign painters and show card writers. The series is named in honor of the late Albert Eckhardt, Jr. - a talented sign writer and a good friend of the font's designer, Jeff Levine. Eckhardt Poster Italic JNL is an angled treatment of the font.

The hand lettering found on a small catalog sheet for decorative decals from the 1930s-1940s era was the perfect source material for Crestview Six JNL. Handmade typefaces or signage from past decades offer a wonderfully humanistic change from the perfectly-crafted designs of printer's type (or digital type in the modern era). The font's name comes from the old alpha-numerical phone exchanges of the past.

Spur Wide JNL was modeled from an example of hand lettering from the antique French alphabet book L'Art du Tracé Rationnel de la Lettre. Heavy Roman style letters with spurs (often referred to as Latin) were most popular with sign painters and show card writers in the early part of the 20th century. Spur Wide JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Boomville is a bouncy and upright script font. It is fun and lively with a lot of personality. This script is sketched with quite quick brush strokes with a pointed brush to achieve this casual and playful feeling.

Willoughby JNL by Jeff Levine is a typeface whose lettering was inspired by a 1950s package of toothpaste. Slightly Deco, it also fits well into 1950s-retro projects. This type design is best used at large point sizes.

The bold round point pen lettering on the cover of the 1934 sheet music for “New England in the Rain” was the model and inspiration for Poster Pen JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Kasuga, Japanese for spring day, is a contemporary script with eastern influence. Kasuga's pointed and fluid brush strokes evoke the orient with just a hint of the west. Kasuga is perfect for designs that need an Asian atmosphere.

Alf R. Becker was a noted sign painter, designer and the creator of hundreds of unique alphabets which were published in the trade magazine Signs of the Times during the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media [and who is also the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati], Jeff Levine received some reference material on Becker's work. Becker displayed many of his type styles within decorative panels—a popular trend in the days when signs were hand-lettered. Using the reference material as a guide, Jeff has re-drawn twenty-six sign panels for adaptation to digital print work. While the designs in themselves are not thoroughly unique to Alf Becker, he has left behind some tangible examples of how sign painters embellished their lettering work. With the use of complementary colors and tones, these panels—joined with vintage lettering - classically recreate the warm and attractive advertising of years ago.

The Data Error AOE Family was one of my earliest typefaces, at a time when I had become obsessed with all forms of "digital/techology" typestyles. It's been awhile since the early 2000's, but I've had a hankering for awhile now to revisit this typeface, giving it a more expansive language character set and fill it out with some Opentype features. Inspired by some old printouts of BASIC programs and an Atari 1050 Disk Drive manual with pin printer examples, comes the familiar yet oddly restricted style with this Data Error family. This family comes complete with Regular and Bold versions with their respective Oblique versions. Odd pin printer restrictions inherent in this typeface are: no characters extend below baseline or above ascender line, (except international accents). A nostalgic typeface for computer programmers everywhere, strong and legible at any size, Data Error is perfect for so many purposes, get it today!

Jugendstil Initials were designed by Heinrich Vogeler around 1905, based on the German blackletter tradition. A similar set of initials by Vogeler, but based on roman letters was released by Rudhardsche Geisserei of Offenbach at about this time. I believe the originals were woodcuts. The backgrounds to the letterforms may be seen as examples of Heimatkunst, an art movement within Germany that drew deliberate inspiration from the rural countryside. Like the Arts and Crafts Movement in England a little earlier, Heimatkunst may be seen, in part, as a romantic rejection of urban industrialization, while at the same time representing a back-to-roots nationalism. Like any river, it was fed by many streams. Jugendstil Initials is an experiment with which I am most pleased. It is far and away the most complex font HiH has produced and I was uncertain whether or not it could be done successfully. To oversimplify, a font is produced by creating outlines of each character, using points along the outline to define the contour. A simple sans-serif letter A with crossbar can be created using as few as 10 points. We decided to make a comparison of the number of points we used to define the uppercase A in various fonts. Cori, Gaiety Girl and Page No 508 all use 12 points. Patent Reclame uses 39 and Publicity Headline uses 43. All the rest of the A’s, except the decorative initials, fall somewhere in between. The initial letters run from 48 points for Schnorr Initials to 255 for Morris Initials Two, with 150 being about average. Then there is a jump to 418 points for Morris Initials One and, finally, to 1626 points for Jugendstil Initials. And this was only after we selectively simplified the designs so our font creation software (Fontographer) could render them. The average was 1678, not including X and Y. There was no X and Y in the original design and we have provided simple stand-ins to fill out the alphabet, without trying to imitate the style of the orginal design. We did a lot of looking to find a compatible lower case. We decided that Morris Gothic from the same period was the best match in color, design and historical context. We felt so strongly about the choice that we decided to produce our Morris Gothic font for the purpose of providing a lower case for Jugendstil Initials. The long s, as well as the ligatures ch and ck are provided. at 181, 123 (leftbrace) and 125 (rightbrace) respectively. This font was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it. I hope you agree.

Kubera was designed to be a display and text face. It has six weights with same height. Kubera Serif is modernized letterform. It has square serif, high contrast stress, with large x height. Serifs are given soft corners, rather than pointy ones. Kubera Serif font family is designed by Gunjan Panchal based in India.

Big Country is a versatile bold new font that is great for headlines or product logos. It is an elegant design but can also be used playfully. "Big Country" is easy to read even at fairly small point sizes.

Ampersorts JNL is a collection of many wood type ampersands along with a smattering of question marks, exclamation points, dollar signs and cent signs. A vintage wood type embellishment is also included on the keystroke for the number 6.

A classic blackletter Which looks best at 16pt and above. Due to the modular nature of this design there may be a slight lack of smoothness to the curves at very large point sizes (around 100 pt and above).

Shavano is a bold, smooth-flowing typeface based on pointed brush script. It comes in a clean-edged and a rough style. It is ideal for branding, packaging, headlines, and apparel. This font comes with ligatures, swashes, and alternates.

Workhorse is a Sign Painter’s Gothic developed by Master Sign Painter Greg Reid. Workhorse captures the true essence of hand lettering. From the tapered waists to the elegant snaps of the brush; these elements present a warmth unseen in today’s mechanically stiff Gothics. Greg Reid and Charles Borges de Oliveira collaborated to bring this truly one of a kind typeface to fruition. With the power of Open type, Workhorse utilizes Contextual Alternates to create random variations of the capitals and lowercase letters. This allows your text to have subtle differences in the letters without losing form which helps to create an honest hand lettered look. This feature can be turned on or off to suit your individual style. You also have the ability to manually choose the glyph variations from the glyph pallet to help you create one of kind designs. Both versions of Workhorse feature complete variations of the capitals and lowercase letters (56 total), Small Caps and six alternates. The Small Caps are not just the capitals scaled down. They have been designed as a unique second set that adjusts the stroke thickness to match the existing letters, creating what we like to refer to as “Real Small Caps”. Workhorse is a timeless classic that can be used from early Americana advertising all the way up to present day modern use.
 No matter how you use Workhorse it always looks and reads well.

The late-19th-century Prussian-American printer and publisher Louis Prang, the “father of the American Christmas card”, was well-known for his efforts to improve art education in the United States. He published many instructional books and even founded a training school for art teachers. One of the books he published included a series of alphabets for sign painters, lithographers, illuminators, architects and civil engineers. There was nothing truly original there — in the book’s preface, Prang says that the alphabets were “based on foreign forms and adapted for American taste”. The one alphabet that caught my attention in that book was one simply called “Italic”. It’s a high- contrast modern, a Didone really, but with an interesting little twist: the lowercase is almost entirely connected, which makes for an interesting mix of modern typography and classic calligraphy. That stuff is right up my alley now. Whenever my eyes happen on a modern, it’s easy, even almost impulsive for me to envision swashes coming out of serifs and terminals. The caps melt and the minuscules dance with them. And so I brought my vision to life. Prangs is an italic set of three weights, each containing more than 1400 glyphs with plenty of OpenType features and Latin language support. This set celebrates the convergence of three centuries of fancy display alphabets. These fonts should work wherever moderns are used to elevate and scripts are used to appeal — namely today’s branding, packaging and glossy publications.

This circa 1910 European face was introduced into the United States by a German type foundry traveling salesman during the great depression of the 1930s. We have used it quite successfuly in sizes as small as 10 and 12 point.

Make room for Brogado JNL! This bold, yet squat slab serif font takes command when set into headlines. Although not thoroughly in the Western mold, Brogado JNL can still exude enough macho appeal to make its point strongly, yet clearly.

A decorative and fancy slice of the gay '90s (1890s that is). Due to the modular nature of this design there may be a slight lack of smoothness to the curves at very large point sizes (around 100 pt and above).

Headline Modified, also called "Modified Gothic" by some type manufacturers, has a large stroke contrast and very small, pointed serifs. Curved characters feature a brushstroke appearance. Our version is based on a typeface designed by the Hamilton Manufacturing Company around 1897.

We Love Nature is a picture font consisting of 52 high quality, hand drawn illustrations with clean outlines and a minimum of vector points. The contemporary stem flower illustrations can used on their own or combined to create striking illustrations.

Black Bear is a stylish angled monoline font family of twelve styles in six weights. Each font is fully loaded with OpenType stylistic and titling alternates to give the fonts a different feel and help with optics for smaller point sizes.

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.

OkraCubo in a distressed font with a cubist bent. This font work nicely for both grunge and modern styles. Used at large point sizes the cubist look really comes out. This font is as strange as Okra is a vegetable????

Clarendon Rough is suitable for display and text. Its large x-height provides excellent legibility at small point sizes. Clarendon Rough is extended, aged to perfection, iconic, rugged, distressed, direct, and suitable for packaging, restaurant use, websites, magazines, lively headlines.

Spring is a lively contemporary script that designer Garrett Boge modeled after his own brush lettering. It was released in 1988 at the launch of LetterPerfect's font collection, and has seen increasing use in advertising, packaging, and point-of-display promotions.

Bloomy is a picture font consisting of 52 high quality flower shapes with clean outlines and a minimum of vector points. This unique set of natural forms may be well used in graphical design projects like brochures, advertisements, posters, etc.

No. 507 is an elegant headline font with added angled flourishes. Its unique features are angled terminals, small, pointed serifs, and no contrast in stroke weight. It is similar to No. 506, designed by William H. Page & Company around 1890.

Umkhonto is the Zulu word for SPEAR, the traditional weapon of war that the Zulus used. The sharp points of the letters face upwards and represent the sharp points of the dangerous spears. The font includes a full 256 character set: all upper and lower case letters, as well as all numerals and punctuation. It also includes the most commonly used characters used in non-English European languages such as Spanish, French, German and Portuguese. The numerals are mono-spaced so that they will line up correctly in columns of figures. The letters of the alphabet are spaced according to their width and are carefully kerned.

Pyke is a versatile serif typeface inspired by the Didone style of Giambattista Bodoni. After a detailed legibility study, Sofie Beier produced the typeface in three optical sizes; Micro, Text, and Display. The work goes beyond historic revival creating the complexities and subtleties of this classic style fit for users in the modern era. Details include six weights with true italics, specific sizes; Micro for small point sizes of 8 or less, Text for 9–14 points, and Display for larger print sizes, over 530 characters per style with 14 opentype features, and language support for Western, South, and Central Europe. Check out Karlo which is a great pair for Pyke.

Camelot was the first of over 100 typefaces designed by Frederic Goudy. The upper case characters were drawn in 1896 for the Dickinson Type Foundry. Goudy was so encouraged by his check for $10 (double what he asked for the drawings), that he spent the next 50 years designing type. The lower case was added by the Dickinson foundry. This Lanston digital release includes a Text version based on the smaller point sizes of the metal type and a Display version based on the larger sizes. The two appear different in size but share the exact same line weight when at the same point size.

Linotype Finerliner is part of the Take Type Library, chosen from the contestants of Linotype’s International Digital Type Design Contest. The American artist Gary Munch, from whom we also have Linotype Ergo and Ergo Sketch, designed Linotype Finerliner as a handwriting font with calligraphic influences. The small, regularly formed lower case letters contrast nicely with the generous, sweeping capitals. The font is available in a light and medium weight and displays no stroke contrast. The lighter weight, micro, is best used for shorter texts in point sizes 18 or larger and the medium weight, macro, is mainly intended for headlines in larger point sizes.

Linotype Schachtelhalm is part of the Take Type Library, chosen from the entries of the Linotype-sponsored International Digital Type Design Contests of 1994 and 1997. The inspiration of German designer Ilka Kwiatkowski is not hard to figure out and the font carries the German name of the plant which was its model. The alphabet consists exclusively of capital letters with clear geometric basic forms. The font is meant for headlines in point sizes of 18 and larger. The details which make Linotype Schachtelhalm unique and true to its inspiration are however best seen in large point sizes, such as on posters, and Schachtelhalm is best combined with neutral fonts.

The thing is that many sans-serif typefaces are usually intended for universal usage. But sometimes faces that work fine in body text look not so good in large point sizes for display purposes when all the contrast in non-contrast sans-serif, or ink traps, become visible to the naked eye. Every designer solves this problem in his own way. We offer a drastic solution in our Stem: a sans-serif with optical sizing. The first part of the type family, Stem Display, is for use in largest point sizes, from 36 pt indefinitely. Stem Display consists of 12 faces of widths from Hairline to Bold, and it has true italics. The development of Stem type family will include Stem Text for body text and “traditional”, universal use, and Stem Caption for small point sizes. Stem is a geometric sans-serif with semi-closed aperture, large x-height and modern proportions of uppercase letters, like in famous Avenir and Gotham. Its important feature is a professionally designed and carefully tested Cyrillic glyph set.

Ratcaps and Ratkeys were designed as a set of highly-legible keycap fonts for use in software and systems documentation destined for in-house printing. They were specifically designed for clarity and legibility even on low-resolution (300 dpi) laser printers. Ratcaps consist of representations of the basic alpha-numeric keyboard keys. Ratkeys contains the special function and modifier keys. Both fonts also come in a 3D-effect version.