When designing a font, I often imagine how I think it should be used or where I'd be likely to see it out in the real world. With Barataria I envisioned it on decorative, antique-looking signs hanging outside shops in the French Quarter of New Orleans - hence the name. Barataria is based on samples of 1920s period poster lettering. It's a bold, heavy roman font with strong, rounded character forms. Barataria also has some unique alternative character forms, like the super-looped 'g' shown in the sample.

Slocals! Check out the action of our radical new font, PLEASURE POINT! It's Bananas, Totally Tubular, Stoked and ready to ride some waves. Back in his grom days, Comicraftsman John JG Roshell could be found down at Pleasure Point, waiting for The Big One, and this is IT! Don't be a criddler, paddle hard and rip this font to your motherboard to keep it real every time you gun, rail or tail. And if you get rag dolled, dude, don't blow out your squeaker. Pleasure Point will hang loose and chillax you to the max.

Graúna is Typeóca’s first ‘serious typeface’. The idea was to produce a revival of Block Heavy, removing the ‘rough’ texture from its outline. Though other revivals existed, most of them approached the Block family as a whole, leaving aside the idiosyncrasies that make the Heavy weight so unique. In the early stages of its development, however, we realized that a lot of its quirkiness is only possible precisely because of the ‘rough’ texture we were trying to remove. That way, we started going further and further away from the original model, and thinking about the typeface in its own terms, resulting in an impactful yet friendly sans serif, ideal for logos and short titles.

Introducing unusual Sans Serif font family. Font is concise and minimalistic. But behind the apparent simplicity of the font is hidden the original feature in the form of modernized uppercase glyphs, which can be used as an accent in the header or logo. Pure letterings with excellent readability have 2 thicknesses. Font will emphasize the high status of the business and complement modern branding design, and the general versatility of the font provides for its widespread use in various directions and is combined with different styles in design. Balanced glyphs will fit into the typographic design and will not distract attention from the main point. Features: Bold, Bold Italic, Regular, Regular Italic Upgraded uppercase letters Kerning ld.luxfont@gmail.com

Songs of the early 1900s were anything but the status quo in topic or style. Excessively long titles, novelty tunes and "foreign themes" permeated the piles of sheet music in the local music shops. 1916's "Oh How She Could Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki Woo (That's Love in Honolu)" covered a number of these quirks within one publication. This Hawaiian-tinged song evoked the mysterious ways of the South Seas islands, despite the abridging of Honolulu to "Honolu". Nonetheless, the hand lettered title of this particular piece of sheet music featured an Art Nouveau-influenced bold block letter with rounded corners. It's now available digitally as Smooth Sailing JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Made in La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland), Hyper Top is born while the designer (Bisou) watches "One from the Heart", a movie from Francis Coppola where Las Vegas is completely rebuilt in studio. The opening scene stages the signboard of the Dunes hotel and casino. This is the starting point of the most modern font ever designed by Bisou. Hyper Top is thought from ground up to give a strong impact. Dynamic, joyful, fast, this modern bold font is best suitable titles. It works perfectly with short texts for advertisement like candies, fireworks, protein bars or chewing gums. Just hang it over a prank and trap shop and see the coolest bad ass kids come in.

Graphic designers, meet Angelik: a stylish typeface that you can really put through its paces. This unique font can bring one of its multiple personalities to a wide variety of design challenges. It’s a louder and prouder version of a typical assertive editorial-style bold serif headline font. But it can also really shine as a great choice for logos and branding, spanning a variety of vibes and styles. Works superbly in a high-fashion context, as well as in lowbrow surf-skate-ski-snowboard gear branding, or perhaps as an understated – yet exotic – vacation travel poster font. With its finely-tuned contouring, extensive kerning, and a multilingual character set, Angelik will not let you down.

Proudly Introducing ‘Royal Tropic‘ – An expressive, quick dry stroke, signature style brush script font. With multilingual support, ligatures, and an extra slanted style. Royal Tropic is great for when you want to grab attention, especially within print design; Packaging, branding, posters, book cover design, etc. The goal was to create a fast-flowing, legible script font with enough personality to take center stage and shine, and I think the end result has delivered exactly that! TIP: Through trial and error, I feel Royal Tropic works best with clean serif/sans-serif fonts. Any other 'handwritten' fonts can disturb the rough/clean contrast, taking with it some of the impact of your design.

This is a font imitating the stage of outline construction of letters using drawing tools - compass and ruler. It is very geometric (with auxiliary lines, axes, centers of circles, tangents, and conjugation of circles), although the circles are somewhat compressed from four sides. The second style, which plays the role of Bold style, is a hatched version of the Regular style. The font has very small elements that appear in a sufficiently large size, so it is better to use it for large compositions, in particular, advertisements, posters, large headings, etc. The family is named "Khachatur" after the name of the father of designer Ruben Tarumian — architect Khachatur Hakobyan, his first master.

In designing an advertising poster to show off the unconventional Safefont typeface, Steve drew what appeared as relatively traditional letterforms for the expository text. When these characters were as well received as the typeface which was the subject of the poster, Steve decided to expand them into a full-fledged graffiti style typeface of their own. While exploring where this new design might lead, Steve worked to elaborate the poster segment which had inspired it. He soon found himself staring at a drawing of a weapons-wielding Bonnie and Clyde. The desperate duo resonated with the graphic elements of the drawn letters; thus leading to the effortless fleshing out of the design, and to its name, Big Clyde.

Cantilever is a variable, 20 style display typeface designed by Stew Deane. The idea came from using variable type mechanics to create a typeface that became more than type — it's designed to be impactful, fill space and turn text into something graphic and visual. Being fixed-width (at whatever width you choose) means it is perfect for stacking, as well as stretching ultra wide. It's a typeface designed to take centre stage and own space. By using the variable sliders in your design software you can give your typography a bespoke, ownable aesthetic. The sliders in Cantilever are Weight and Width, and are designed for maximum impact in any space. Play around.

Argyle Rough was originally developed for a packaging campaign in the late 80s in my studio and sat around in various stages of completion until I decided to autotrace my original drawings. I liked the quirky roughness and decided that it did not detract from the charm of the original, in fact it improved it and saved me a whole lot of work. The original campaign called for a few additional alternate characters for use at either end and double in the middle of words, ee, ff, ll, ss etc and a stylized Th, always useful. I hope you enjoy Argyle Rough, named after the world’s largest diamond mine – a rough diamond, get it?

Akira Kobayashi’s Between™ typeface comes in three main states. While different from each other, they all offer human-centered design to ensure that copy set in them is affable and approachable. An added benefit is the ability to transition “between” font designs, choosing different styles – or even individual characters – to create hierarchy, contrast or emphasis. Kobayashi designed the Between typeface in response to the current popularity of rounded, humanist sans serif designs over the cool grotesques of the 20th century. Between 1 melds industrial and humanist sans ethics. Between 2 represents a sans version of Kobayashi’s Cosmiqua® typeface, striking a balance between crisp and legible, organic and friendly. Between 3 is a freestyle sans with an uplifting sprightly mien. Between has 48 styles; each has eight weights of roman with its own italic counterpart. The family offers a large set of alternative glyphs and OpenType® features. A full interactive type specimen can be viewed here: http://www.monotype.com/fonts/between/ Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos

After previously collaborating on the bestselling Distillery Set, Carolina Marando and Alejandro got together once again to create this Scrapbooker Set, a new series of fonts that multiply the possibilities. One reason scrapbookers became a kind of design demographic is the appeal of what they do. They make albums of memories, diaries composed of different elements that converge together to lead the viewer to a special moment in time. A paper, a photo, a letter, an event ticket, or a dry petal — everything ends up being part of a collage that tells a story. Words have a key role in such a collage. They use different shapes and forms and combinations to state what cannot otherwise be expressed. They make the collage stronger by clarifying a concept, defining an image, and solidifying a memory. These words for memory albums are the reason for this Scrapbooker Set, six different fonts with different impressions and different personalities — so each part of the memory can have its own identity. People tell you to write your own history. Now you can do that in style.

The first cuts of Kabel appeared in 1927, released by the German foundry Gebr. Klingspor. Like many of the typefaces that Rudolf Koch designed for printing use, Kabel is a carefully constructed and drawn. The basic forms were influenced by the Ancient Roman stone-carved letters, which consisted of just a few pure and clear geometric forms, such as circles, squares, and triangles. Koch also infused Kabel with some elements of Art Deco, making it appear quite different from other geometric modernist typefaces from the 1920s, like Futura. Linotype has two versions of Kabel in its library. Kabel has a shorter x-height, with longer ascenders and descenders, making it a bit truer to Koch's original design than the second version, ITC Kabel, which was designed by Victor Caruso. This version, also known in the United States as Cable, has a larger x-height, shorter ascenders and descenders, more weights ,and a diamond shaped i-dot. Typefaces in the same oeuvre include Avenir Next, ITC Avant Garde Gothic, Metrolite, Metromedium, Metroblack, and Erbar, just to name just a few."

Jazmo is an offspring of an assignment I did for a Dutch architect. A classic building and coincidently the place of my studio in my hometown Zwolle, Netherlands, needed to be renovated. My job was to design the house numbers and signs for this building. This building I refer to was built in 1932 and designed according to the ‘New objectivity’ architecture. Now it accommodates several artist and craftsmen and also houses students. In my design I used elements of the Art Nouveau, which is related to the ‘New Objectivity’. Words as stately, angular, linear, stylish, artful, playful and frolic came to mind. It should be a design with a hint of the past and a flirt with the future. This house numbering is the root wherefrom Jazmo arises. The name Jazmo cites to the Jazz scene, which was a new and very popular artistic influence that time and age and is still a vibrant source of musical renewal. Mo stands for my Name Marit Otto. Together with my intern Arie Blok I created the missing characters and completed the font. Welcome Jazmo!

The typeface “Hand Stamp Slab Serif Rough” was designed for the Typo Graphic Design font foundry in 2017 by Manuel Viergutz. It is a display font with a classic slab serifs based on real rubber stamp letters for a authentic, rough & dirty, stamped-by-hand appearance. It provides a vintage look through state-of-the-art Open Type features such as contextual alternates that cycle automatically through 5 different letter variants for each character to create a varied look, just as if the letters were stamped by hand. The font is intended for use in logos, magazines, posters, advertisements, and as a webfont for decorative headlines. The font works best for display sizes. There are 1031 glyphs with 5× A–Z, 0–9 & a–z and 70+ decorative extras like arrows, dingbats, symbols, geometric shapes, catchwords, and many alternative letters. A range of figure set options including oldstyle figures and additional deco­ra­tive liga­tures (type the word “love” for ❤ … ), Ver­sal Eszett (German Capital Sharp S), symbols, and emojis. Have fun with this font & use the DEMO-FONT (with a reduced glyph-set) FREE!

P22 Saarinen is a typeface based on the architectural lettering of Finnish American architect Eero Saarinen.The Saarinen fonts were created to help commemorate the 75th anniversary of Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo, NY, which was designed by Saarinen in collaboration with his father Eliel Saarinen and is recognized as one of the greatest concert halls ever built in the United States. Saarinen’s own lettering styles were combined with various lettering manual suggestion for proper lettering to create a flexible casual lettering style in regular and bold weights. The Pro fonts include multiple variations of each letter for a more natural lettering style as well as stylist in variants to achieve various highs for crossbars and other customizable variants. The Pro fonts also include Central European character set, fractions, small caps and an array of hand drawn directional arrows. Individual non-pro versions feature: Saarinen Regular - characters with low cross bars Saarinen Alt 1 - characters with high cross bars Saarinen Alt 2 - characters with mid cross bars and old style figures Saarinen Arrows - bold and regular arrows combined in one font

Glyphic Neue was inspired by the Op Art style of lettering in the United States that ran rampant in many photo type houses in the 1960's and 1970's. The Glyphic Series from the Franklin Photolettering group was an influence and spring board for this family of fonts, hence it's name. But Glyphic Neue departs from its unicase Franklin influence in several ways. Firstly the designer created both upper and lower case forms. The lowercase has been designed with barley protruding ascenders and descenders and with an x-height equivalent to the cap height, so that upper and lower can be exchanged indiscriminately for a quirky effect. Some of the letters take a cue from the original Glyphic series but many have been redesigned entirely to fit the designers vision. The italic forms differ enough from the upright version making it almost an entirely different display alphabet. Glyphic Neue is a versatile family of 6 fonts -- 3 widths, each with an accompanying italic that look equally at home when used on a party flier or a sports team visual identity.

Not to be confused with the prolific, 1980s British super-star graphic and type designer Neville Brody, this brush script typeface was designed in 1953 by the American type designer Harold Broderson. Broderson worked for ATF (the American Type Founders), who were the original publishers of this design. Body is a brush script face that mimics the show card style of lettering, which was very popular throughout the United States during the first half of the 20th Century. The letters appear as if they were drawn quickly and spontaneously with a wide, flat lettering brush. The lowercase letters connect to each other, cursive script style. Brody is the perfect display face to provoke a nostalgic feeling for the 1950s. Anything having to do with apple pie, home cooking, or last minute sales would look great in this face. You could outfit a whole supermarket signage system in a snap with Brody. If you need the original version with more lettered characters then Brophy Script is a good alternate,

Entendre is a stately, commanding and handsome sans serif typeface family that pulls reference from Trajan capitals, the history of English calligraphy, and a variety of other sources to summon a sense of warmth, consideration, trust and authority. Entendre spans 22 weights and styles including Regular and Condensed versions. The large x-height and refined characteristics of the family lend the family a sober and sophisticated appearance that is suitable for both print design and on-screen use. Entendre includes Central and Eastern European language support as well as Western European language support, including Greek and Cyrillic. Entendre’s generous x-height and medium-length ascenders and descenders offer pronounced readability, making the family useful for text typesetting both in print and on screen. Within, humanist elements are tempered with monumental construction, making the heavier weights go-tos for display design work. All of the Entendre family of typefaces feature Western, Eastern and Central European language support alongside nuanced Greek and Cyrillic. Entendre pairs well with our rounded sans serif family Elpy, sharing similar proportions and spacing.

Only occasionally are we graced with a font so pleasant and enjoyable to our company as the wonderfully amiable Mr. Darcy. The attractive elegance of the contemporary has been conveyed into Victorian times. Feel the call of modernity and friendliness with this antique Victorian-esque typeface. Itís gentlemanly elegance and grace commands the artboard. The elegant Mr. Darcy is sufficiently compete with its additional characters--to be stated precisely, more than 136 defining alternates. These optional features are carefully displayed within the supplied brochure. The employ of the Mr. Darcy family moreover demands the proper implements, such as an program that supports Opentype features such as, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe PhotoShop, CorelDRAW, or Quark. Be sure to check with the Userís Guideline for all the OpenType options and employ them with wit and vigor. OpenType options are there to help you develop your own custom vision. Five different weights offer plenty of design options and offers the versatility of character as possessed only by a refined gentleman...or a refined typeface.

Centerpiece is Psychedelic typeface refers to a style of typography that emerged in the 1960s during the height of the counterculture movement. It is characterized by its bold, vibrant colors, and graphic designs that incorporate abstract shapes, curves, and patterns. The psychedelic typeface is often associated with the mystical and surreal since it draws inspiration from altered states of consciousness experienced through the use of psychedelic drugs. It also incorporates a variety of lettering techniques such as bending, twisting, and outlining. The typefaces have a distinctive look that evokes a sense of free-spirited creativity and experimentation. Psychedelic typefaces can be used for various purposes, including posters, album covers, and promotional materials. To sum it up, psychedelic typeface is a unique style of typography that was popularized during the 1960s and is still relevant today. It incorporates bold colors, graphic designs, and a range of lettering techniques that create an eye-catching and trippy aesthetic. It is a testament to the counterculture movement and the power of artistic expression.

Based on the 1922 Klingspor model by German designer Rudolf Koch, this hand-drawn quill roman has an informal and curiously delicate appearance. The typeface was known in Germany as Koch Antiqua and in the rest of Europe as Locarno. Eve, as it was called in the United States, continues to enjoy great popularity in advertising and book publishing circles. This deluxe version includes display light, display heavy, and display black as well as the hard-to-find display light and heavy (Koch Kursiv) italics. Eva-Paramount, which is based on Morris Benton's 1928 ATF Paramount, has also been included. It contains a set of alternates characters that are in keeping with the light and heavy display letter styles. Eva-Antiqua is also available in the OpenType Std format. Alternates are now merged together into each style as stylistic alternates or as swashes. These advanced features currently work in Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress 7. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

With the intention to create a family of modern calligraphy, Vild Scapes offers different feels in different effects. The Normal option cuts back the imperfections created from freehand writing, while Inkless keeps those details. There’s also the Rust option, which imitates letterpress printing effects. In addition, the family comes in three designs: Brush (big paint brush style), Script (small paint brush style), and Marker (brush tip maker style), offering you more possibilities for creativity.

Sign Helpers JNL is a collection of silhouette images carefully redrawn from two distinct sources. Prior to their bankruptcy in 1984, the Holes-Webway Company of St. Cloud, MN produced thousands of their "Webway" sign kits that were utilized by merchants, libraries and schools throughout the country. At one point they included in their sales catalog a selection of die-cut images for embellishing sign work. In the late 50s and throughout the 60s, the Joseph Struhl Company (now known as Magic Master Industries) produced cling vinyl sign kits for business, and a home movie titling set for do-it-yourself film makers. This set also featured die-cut embellishments. A generous selection of designs from both kits have been faithfully re-drawn in digital form to pay tribute to two innovative companies. Other fonts based on products from these companies are Sign Kit JNL (Webway® Sign Kit), Cling Vinyl JNL, and Sign Maker JNL (Magic Master® Sign Kits). Trademarked names are used purely for reference purposes.

Ultra Brush was born from the interest of the maker of display fonts that are currently present. By using a natural dry brush, Ultra Brush was born to meet the needs of designers to make posters, tshirt, quotes, branding, packaging, logos, advertise, and etc. What will you get? - Support 20 languages and Multilanguage - More +50 swash styles - Simple Installation - Ligature Support We hope you can experiment and explore with Ultra Brush. Thank you very much for visiting

Fido Pro is the official font of dog owners everywhere. Woof! When the original Fido font was published in 2009, it became an instant hit with cartoon channels, comic book artists, toy makers, cereal packagers and game developers. Now, more than a decade later, we decided to pick it up and give it the Pro treatment. This new version boasts more than 800 glyphs, including 117 interlocking ligatures, plenty of alternate glyphs, and and Pan-European language support.

BoRock is a handcrafted font that comes in two pigheaded styles, inspired by the rock music scene. You can use BoRock instead of the usual neat serif fonts. BoRock Grunge is a rough crispy serif font, excellently suited for use in both display and body text. The BoRock Slick is what the name implies, a more smooth serif font, ideal for use in body text, but also suitable for titles and headings. You can use BoRock Grunge and BoRock Slick for magazines, advertising, T-shirts, posters and so on. By activating Discretionary Ligatures and typing _1 to _9 and *1 to *8 you can get your hands on some nifty bonus symbols. So get creative with BoRock and the stage is yours.

This was a creative experiment. Writing for a long period of time prior to starting erased any inhibitions that prohibited forming natural, authentic letters and by adding more duration the hands became sore and weak. Allowing minimal control, and a more eccentric outcome. It was a real slog, but totally worth it. Skribblugh is a wobbly, aesthetically pleasing, and obviously handwritten typeface full of character and versatility. Within a modern design; It adds a human’s touch, a final note, a signature. And within a playful, colorful one it helps exaggerate the atmosphere, bringing playfulness and warmth to the center of the stage. With four choices for every uppercase and lowercase letter, there are plenty of opportunities to make designs look personal and relatable!

Introducing "The Executive Casual". A duo font with an elegant combination, a perfect blend of elegance, smoothness, and casualness. The Script style has a smooth and flowing handwritten style that adds a touch of charm and sophistication to any design and the Serif style is made to bring versatile and stylish, elegance. a perfect combination and harmonious look that works well for both formal and informal contexts. Whether you need a font for business cards, logos, magazines, or websites, this font will give your text a professional and refined appearance. Experience the perfect harmony of elegance and informality, tailored to meet the demands of today's discerning designers and creators. Elevate your projects with this font, and let your creativity take center stage.

Germany has a strong heritage of industrial typefaces. These fonts seem like being constructed by engineers. The shapes seem to be built with circles and squares. DIN Mittelschrift is one very famous example, or the font on the old German car number plates. Since the Romain du Roi we know that it is tricky to draw a geometrical typeface. For optical reasons you have to go away from circles and lines with exactly one weight. Therefore the aim is not to construct a typeface but to draw it the way it seems constructed finally. The design of a typeface is like stage production. Like heavily made up actors the characters of a typeface must be exaggerated to work well. Particularly in small sizes.

BoiTu is a typeface in the BoiTu project designed by Vei Vei. BoiTu has a strong contrast between bold bars and long sharp hook strokes inspired by pheasant feathers on the hat in Hat Boi costume. "Tuong or Hat Boi is a form of Vietnamese classic opera, combining various elements of arts such as stage, music, fine art, literature, dancing, and martial arts. Older Tuong plays are usually about historical events or tales. Allegories, melodramas, soliloquies, modes of expression, forms of performance, repartee singing and recitative conventions, etc., are constantly updated and elevated, and are quintessential elements in the art of Tuong." Boi Tu is a classic design to bring traditional art and culture closer to everyone. Boi Tu is a Vietnamese font that supports multiple languages.

Germany has a strong heritage of industrial typefaces. These fonts seem like being constructed by engineers. The shapes seem to be built with circles and squares. DIN Mittelschrift is one very famous example, or the font on the old German car number plates. Since the Romain du Roi we know that it is tricky to draw a geometrical typeface. For optical reasons you have to go away from circles and lines with exactly one weight. Therefore the aim is not to construct a typeface but to draw it the way it seems constructed finally. The design of a typeface is like stage production. Like heavily made up actors the characters of a typeface must be exaggerated to work well. Particularly in small sizes.

As as a computer programmer, it is my job to stare at screens of text all day. For my first font, I completed a simple monospaced font, Debug, based on my own handwriting. Mickey Mono is much more ambitious: I wanted a humanist design - something with organic curves. It had to be clean and fresh. It had to have the advantages of Debug, like distinctive numerals (to distinguish between 8 and 3) and huge punctuation characters (so I could read complicated Perl one liners). Mickey Mono would be a good friend to me as I struggled through difficult coding tasks. It has a wide range of Latin Extended characters and diacritics, so it can speak French, Portuguese, and Ruby. Enjoy!

ZT Mota is a bold and elegant typeface. It has a temperamental character but is more flexible towards various stylistic designs, reflecting more in its graphics the transitional stage between classical serifs of varying proportions, leaning towards the stylized types of Roman culture. All the ZT Mota styles are based on the same core but with a completely different expression which is to have an extra large x-height and bold so that the font looks bold as if the writing on the font was actually carved out of stone, perfect for an efficient choice for use of distinguishable displays such as headlines, packaging, magazines, posters, and advertisements, among others. I hope you have fun using ZT Mota Thanks for using this font ~ Khaiuns X zelowtype

Made in La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland), hyperpolar is born while the designer (Bisou) watches "Godard mon amour", a biopic about Jean-Luc Godard's depression in 1967-68. A parade of murder mystery books is staged at the middle of the movie and at exactly 56 minutes and 47 seconds, the book "Confrontation" strikes Bisou's eye. It is the first inspiration for this awsome retro font. Hyperpolar is thought from ground up to give a strong impact. It’s retro 50’s crime stories style makes it best suitable book covers. It works perfectly with short texts for advertisement like a trench coat or a smoking pipe store. Just hang it over a video club and see what thrilling cinephiles will come in.

Kono is a font straight from the modern, gritty, warfare computer game genre. Rough and ready, with letters that double as numbers and look fit to be sprayed on a bunker wall, Kono brings you a bleak example of the near-future, where pragmatism rules out over artistry. Kono itself, ironically, is stylistically crafted to capture this feeling, carefully selecting the perfect mix between flat, straight lines and rounded corners, using wide, squat characters to mimic practical architectural styles. Kono is great for capturing a bleak but somewhat heroic attitude, whether you want to use that to encourage optimism or advertise pessimism.

The dynamic design duo of Koziupa drawing and Paul digitizing strikes again. This time they cover the space from light nonchalance to eerie darkness, and everything in between. Quicker than lightning and just as poignant, Brisa Pro shows unprecedented determination, presence of spirit, and finality of confidence. Brisa Pro is the teenager leaving home, the lover leaving one last note on the refrigerator door, the prophet announcing the imminence of doom, the rebel scratching anger on the wall, the bereaved clawing torment into life, and the bogeyman dropping a line to keep your eyes wide open through the night.