Up until the late 1920s, it was a popular habit in American songwriting to use African Americans as the topic of compositions using denigrating themes, words and even exaggerated character illustrations on the covers of the published sheet music. One such example of what was considered "entertainment" for its time was a piece entitled "Little Black Me". While this now socially and morally unacceptable piece of forgettable tripe is collected by some only for the historical documentation of the times they reflected, one good "positive" came out of this negative chapter of our country's musical heritage: The beautiful floral ornamented letters in the song's title has yielded Fancy Free JNL. Originally hand-lettered on an arc, these spurred Roman letters have been re-drawn, and are offered in both the regular design and a companion version with the ornamentation removed for lettering that is less ornate.

Living from 1545 in Lyon, France, the famous punchcutter Robert Granjon created a typeface that looked like his own handwriting. The first book printed with this font, in 1557, was probably Dialogues de la vie et de la mort by Innocent Ringhier. We offer the complete typeface. It is a charming font with historical forms (long s, final s and others) and many ligatures, enriched with accented letters and other characters that did not exist in the original (thorn, eth, lslash and others), and a lot of alternates that permit rich and varying typography. Warning: all characters appear with the 1500s manual blackletter old style, especially letters “e” “r” or “h” alternate and some ending forms, and may be difficult to read at first, but it quickly becomes very easy. The font contains all characters for Baltic, Western European (Including Celtic), Eastern European, Northern European, and Turkish languages.

Redwater Banker is a Western slab-serif typeface. A historical frontier lettering, this font is rough and eroded, with a tough and confident attitude. Redwater Banker is a serif font with a strong cowboy personality, reminiscent of a bank or saloon in the Old West. Use the parenthesis characters ( ) [ ] { } to make patriotic symbols like eagles and crowns. Redwater Banker comes in three styles: The normal Regular, the slanted Italic, plus the bonus Corner font for a decorative edge. The font is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from North Europe to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

Chamberí is designed to be Vogue España's bestpoke typeface. An ambitious typographic branding project made for one of the most iconic magazine headers of the world, it defines the Spanish edition’s personality through a blending of the functionality of XIX Century Modern Romans (also known as “Scotch" typefaces) and the gestural expressiveness of typographic Baroque. Chamberí is a peculiar combination of the rational and the delicate, the sturdy and the feminine. The family is organised in a broad spectrum of 56 variants in which the transition from the restrained text version to the flamboyant, elegant display is modulated by contrast. The family is organised in seven weights: from Extra Light to Black, plus four optical sizes : Text, Headline, Display and Superdisplay. All this with its own Italics, Small Caps and Old Style Figures, besides the due refinement to resolve any editorial and communicative requirement.

Carmensin is a beautiful humanist serif typeface created by Rafael Jordán. Designed in the 21st Century with all the flavor of the Renaissance. The conclusion of a story that began in Type@Paris program in June, 2015 & ended at February, 2020. Inspired by historical models, its classic conventional appearance with small details, smooth curves, large x-height and open counters made of Carmensin a great, efficient and solid typeface for long text settings. Also, its bigger sizes styles show the beautiful shapes and contrast, exhibiting its exuberance. Carmensin has a great collection of OpenType features that will satisfy any typographic necessity as ornaments, ligatures, stylistic sets, small caps, automatic fractions and more options along 3 optical styles (Text, Headline and Display) plus a fancy Stencil style. With an extensive Latin character set, Carmensin covers a wide amount of Latin-based languages, including Latin Plus encoding.

Cal Uncial Rough is a calligraphic font based on sketches written with cane calligraphy pen and ink on coarse-textured paper. Because of the fact that the Uncial don't have lowercase letters, there are small capitals instead of the lowercase. As the Latin version of the Uncial was created from the Greek Uncial script (translating the Bible from Greek into Latin), in addition to the standard Latin graphemes, the font contains the Greek alphabet (and also the Cyrillic letters (Ustav), derived from the Greek Uncial too). Regardless of the stylistic connection, there is a difference between the morphology of related Greek, Latin and Cyrillic letters. Most of the graphemes are based on traditional roman and insular uncial calligraphy. Cal Uncial Rough is suitable for the preparation of calligraphic sketches as well as an application in typography that should bring us closer to historical topics (European literature, quotes, history, film ...).

This family was created/inspired from the well-known Baskerville Roman and Italic typefaces created by John Baskerville, the English font designer. We were inspired by the original family sent by Baskerville’s wife after his death. The full Baskerville collection was bought by the French editor and author Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais who used it to print - in Switzerland - for the first time the complete works of Voltaire (known as the “Kehl edition” from the "Imprimerie de la société littéraire typographique"). We have used this edition, with copies from 1785, to reconstruct these two genuine historical styles. The font faces, kerning, and spacing are scrupulously identical to the original. This Pro font includes characters for Western, Eastern and Central European languages (including Celtic) and Turkish, with a complete set of small caps, standard and “long s” ligatures in each of the two styles.

Even though the name seems not to tell much, Indecise shows a clean and coherent design. The shapes of the characters reference the Latin typefaces that were promoted by great figures like Enric Crous-Vidal and José Mendoza y Almeida in the 50s. Indecise uses the body of incise typefaces and gets rid of the subtle terminals for the strokes. It is a high-contrast sans divided into 5 elegant subfamilies, which use different widths. From the condensed version to the extended one, the family includes 50 fonts counting upright and italic. This collection of widths make for many possible combinations of styles. Indecise is a humanist typeface, it puts geometry apart and embraces the calligraphic gesture. This helps to suggest the movement of the strokes while avoiding to create text with a static appearance. Thin and thick strokes come together and define a smooth rhythm for reading.

The best way to radicalize your typographic expression is to use Blackletter! Gothic calligraphy had been used throughout all historical periods without much of the principal development the Latin typefaces underwent. However, since the invention of movable type, even now its slight variations over time can be seen. Blackletters are always used where emotions are required, be it spiritual literature, romantic novels, decadent poetry or extreme music. Dracula is a typeface dedicated to classical horror. I started to draw its letters along with my illustrations for Argo publishers in spring 2017. I needed a specific typeface for book cover and chapter titles to emphasize the mysterious atmosphere of the text. Sharp teeth and claws on a thin blackletter skeleton shall remind of the early vampirism in literature. Its slightly narrowed face enhances a thrilling feel of anguish and despair, whereas the darkest cut may work well on funeral announcements.

Versina is a display typeface with a unique and expressive yet moderate personality resulted from its organic elegant shapes which are inspired by Spanish transitional typefaces from the 18th century. This font is perfectly suitable for both titles and short text. Versina features a flowing organic stroke and asymmetric bracketed serifs, and its shapes convey rhythm and dynamism. The font has a large x-height and its ascenders are shorter than the cap height, making it look more slender and modern. Calligraphic and crescent-like terminals give the design great formal richness. Versina comes in 5 weights with matching italics plus a set of ornaments, in Regular and Black styles, and also includes old style/lining/tabular figures, fractions, superscripts and subscripts as well as a set of small caps, standard ligatures, historical ligatures, symbols and frames. Versina contains a set of 694 characters that support over 200 Latin-based languages.

The main inspiration is from Art Nouveau which flourished in Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. This design included furniture (Majorelle, Lalique) and architecture (Victor Horta, Henry Van de Velde, Gaudi, Alfons Mucha). But Hector Guimard remains the favorite for all aspects of its art and, of course, its typefaces used on the Parisian Metropolitan posters. In particular, the various kerning of the various letters he used to make the poster a whole design from singular designs, leading to numerous variations. As a designer, I initially worked a first version, called Metro New One, which is more geometric and traditional. This design "Two" has more flexible shapes and long vertical hooks. It can be used to enhance specific parts in letters and books in the context of Art, specially Art Nouveau and Art Deco of course, posters of any kind.

Aviator, also known as Ventura Slim, is based on an old 1930s lettering style popularized by Carl Holmes in his wonderful book on the subject. Angular and at the same time aerodynamic, this low-waisted typeface is great for tight-fitting headlines and other condensed titling situations. You may find it equally useful in developing company logos with a truly retro look. This resurrected digital version of Aviator comes with a convenient and stylish set of alternate characters and small figures. Now enjoy your flight! Aviator is now available in the OpenType Std format. Some new characters have been added to this OpenType version including stylistic alternates and historical forms. These advanced features work in current versions of Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

I am a HUGE fan of Bernard Cornwell’s ‘The Saxon Stories’. Ever since a television series has been made, the series of books is also know as ‘The Last Kingdom’. I have read them all, at break-neck speed and I can’t wait for the next book!! Wintanceastre (Winchester) is based on a 10th century Latin manuscript. I have tried to stay close to the original letters, but since Latin does not have all modern glyphs, I found myself designing the missing ones. So, before you scold me for having made a font that is historically inaccurate: it was never meant to be an exact replica, nor would anyone want an exact replica, as it would be useless for modern texts and designs. Wintanceastre comes with a whole bunch of ligatures and alternate glyphs. Use it for any design that needs a little ‘Dark Ages’ look!

Edgethorn is a beautiful, italic-only transitional serif typeface that was born after I became obsessed with a few small paragraphs of italic text on a type specimen broadside from 1785. Working on this type revival allowed me to delve much more deeply than I ever have before into type history and typeface classification, and I’ve included some type history for you with your download so that you can play around with the smattering of historical characters I included (like the medial s). Although it is based on centuries-old typefaces, Edgethorn is elegant, timeless, and perfect for 21st century projects. Edgethorn includes approximately 525 glyphs — including 64 standard and discretionary ligatures and a handful of contextual alternates and character variants — and supports over 200 languages. The OpenType features can be very easily accessed by using OpenType-savvy programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign.

Philip Bouwsma returns with yet another great manifestation of historical calligraphy. Luminari is an amalgam of High Middle Ages writing, a blend that combines the ornate Church hands with the simple Carolingian from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries. Its majuscules are particularly influenced by the versals found in the famous Monmouth psalters, as well as those done by the Ramsey Abbey abbots in the twelfth century. The minuscules also exhibit some influence from the book hand of prolific humanist Poggio Bracciolini from the early fifteenth century. Italian and essentially romanesque in style, Luminari exercises a slight tension between the round forms and the angular “gothic” styling. Luminari was updated with plenty of alternates and expanded language support in 2012. It now supports a very wide range of codepages, including Cyrillic, Greek, Central and Eastern European, Turkish, Baltic, Vietnamese, and of course Celtic/Welsh.

Galena Pro is an extended version of Galena, a typeface published for Bayer Corporation in 1996. Galena Pro is based on the open and organic forms imagined by the writers of humanist Italy, who designed the first so-called Roman characters. Humanist style fonts have moderate stroke contrast, uneven widths, and a classic, but soft and easy-to-read appearance. Galena Pro gives a new birth to the 15th century incunabula, a typographic drawing where the gestures of this standardized handwriting are not mechanical, but more fluid. The Galena Pro series can provide professional typography with OpenType features such as alternative sets of numbers, fractions and an extended character set to support Central and Eastern European as well as Western European Languages. The different styles of the Galena Pro are enriched with a condensed variant to meet the need for space savings in titles and texts.

Jolie personifies romance. With its dramatic swashes, generously curved lines, and full, richly fashioned upper case characters, it evokes floral perfumes, roses, violin music and romantic evenings. The richly complex uppercase characters provide a backdrop and a contrast for the simple elegant and readable lowercase characters. The font is perfect for wedding stationery, clothing branding, packaging, music posters and all other romantic possibilities Jolie introduces a simple method for applying the elegantly beautiful end-of-word or end-of-sentence swashes. Simply type in a three-character code and [hey presto] the swash suddenly appears. Clear and readable, Jolie has all the features usually included in a fully professional font. Language support includes all European character sets, Greek symbols and all punctuation. Jolie makes use of OpenType features to avoid the mechanical look caused by two identical characters that are placed side by side.

The Metalista font was created as a sign of undying admiration for the persistence of heavy metal culture. The angled font of almost fixed width proportions combines capitals with small letters for more variety and better definition of individual letters. Stressing the horizontal strokes subdued the historical Gothic character and emphasized a more modern signature, which is far different from the majority of current attempts at a modern adaptation of Fraktur fonts. We offer Metalista in three styles, or rather widths to be exact: Speed is inspired by the whiplash pace of 70s and 80s speed metal, and can tell and perform a lot even in a very small space; uncompromising Death balances on the fine line between expression and readability; and Metalista Black is the universal go-to, whether as megalomaniacal titles sprawled across the entire LP cover or as tiny texts for glam rock CD booklets.

Step back in time and discover the unique personality of Goldburg—a typeface that draws its inspiration from the typography on Idaho’s historical markers. Developed in the late 1950s by George Bowditch, this lettering has a distinct style that sets it apart from other typefaces. Based on unknown historical sources, it brings a touch of mystery and intrigue to your design projects. With its diverse elements and unusual personality, Goldburg offers your message a truly distinct voice. Whether you’re designing a logo, creating a poster, or crafting a unique branding package, Goldburg is sure to capture the attention of your audience. The vintage typographical theme of Goldburg adds a touch of nostalgia to any design project. Its strong, bold lines and unique curves are reminiscent of a bygone era, making it a perfect choice for anything from retro logos to vintage-style packaging. Incorporate the Goldburg typeface into your next design project and let its unique personality shine through. With its timeless appeal and vintage charm, Goldburg is sure to become a beloved classic in your design arsenal. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

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.

Drawn shortly before Jim Rimmer's passing in 2010, Loxley was designed to be used in a fine press edition of the folklore story of Robin Hood. It was named after the cited birthplace of the story's classic hero. Loxley's shapes were inspired the same early Roman faces (such as Subiaco from the late 1400s) that influenced Frederick Goudy's Aries, Franciscan and Goudry Thirty types. It exhibits the preculiarities of Jim's left-handed calligraphy, as well as his outside-the-box thinking with exit strokes and serif variations. Loxley was remastered for the latest technologies in 2013. Now it comes with a character set of over 450 glyphs, including plenty of stylistic alternates, a full compliment of f-ligatures, a Th-ligature, basic fractions, ordinals, a long s for historic setting, comprehensive class-based kerning, and extended Latin language support. 20% of this font's revenues will be donated to the Canada Type Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

The Clearface types were originally designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1907. Their forms expressed the Zeitgeist of the turn of the 20th century; typical and distinguishing characteristics are the forms of the a" and the "k." The ATF version did not include an accompanying Italic. In 1978, ITC's Victor Caruso was licensed by ATF to develop a new serif typeface and matching italic based on the forms of Clearface. The result was ITC Clearface, a serif typeface with marked stroke contrast and italic weights. The teardrop-formed endings of the lowercase a, c and f (also found in Caslon) define the character of the face. The type's design is also distinguished by its small -- almost slab -- serifs, a large x-height, and little stroke contrast. ITC Clearface, with its historical touch, is good for both texts and headlines, but its slightly condensed nature performs at its best when it is allowed its space.

In 1529, Geofroy Tory, French scholar, engraver, printer, publisher and poet, was publishing the well known so called Champ Fleury, printed by Gilles de Gourmond, in Paris. It is a fully illustrated handbook where the author explains how to draw Roman characters. The font used for the text - a Humane/Jenson type - was not a very beautiful one, but rough and ready, and the book is well known for its capital letters designs. We are offering here the two complete historical type sets and more -- we have entirely redrawn the lacked letters: J, U and W, Eth, Lslash, Thorn and Oslash in the two initial forms. The text font, 1529 Champ Fleury Regular is now containing all characters for West European (including Celtic), Baltic, East and Central European and Turkish language, and the Initial set 1529 Champ Fleury Init is containing two complete alphabets, with a very great effort to be as close as possible to the original pictures.

Sinkwitz Gotisch is a new release of the font of the same name originally designed by Paul Sinkwitz in 1942. The Sinkwitz Gotisch was 1942 by Schriftguss AG Dresden font cast first cast and later supplied by the East German firm VEB Typoart. Paul Sinkwitz (1899-1981) has created them. This font displays not the characteristics of a chunky Gothic, which have influenced the image of national socialism. Paul Sinkwitz was a painter, graphic artist, wood engraver, was interested in religious topics, which he had presented in numerous graphics. But also his interpretation of his Gothic font is modern, without having the font this is ugly. In addition to the GOTISCH he created Roman Uppercase letters, which perfectly harmonize with the lowercase letters. This extra font is called BASTARD. The digital version of Sinkwitz is a beneficial addition to a Gothic with calligraphic character and should be in any historically interested graphic design.

Tita is dedicated to my grandmother Hebe, witty and arrabalera 1. The font is inspired by Milonga 2 music and the fileteado porteño 3. I picture it at The Moulin Rouge, sparkling, provocative, loving. It evokes Tita Merello and my grandmum singing her music. Tita is Argentinean to its very core. A font to shout goal and dulce de leche 4 with passion! Its curves originate from polirhythmic calligraphy, which I learnt from my mentor Silvia Cordero Vega. Tita is a pedigree script that is based on hand lettering and Sandra Biondi’s calligraphy works. Font digitalisation by Daniel Hernández. Edited by Javier Quintana / Programmed by Manuel Corradine. 1. A person from the arrabal (a working class neighborhood on the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires) 2. Musical genre originated in the Río de la Plata areas of Argentina and Uruguay 3. Decorative hand lettering and artistic style that is frequently spotted in Buenos Aires 4. Sweet milk sauce

The original version of Salloon was what has become Salloon-Wide. It was designed a year or two before 1990. The narrower version, which is now the regular version of the face, was constructed a few years later. There never has been a true lower-case set of letters for these fonts, but the narrower version introduced a second set of caps by removing the side bumps from the letters. Although Salloon may look like an old font, no historic font closely resembles it. Fonts with bold, thick stems such as Salloon invite interior decoration. The five striped versions and the shattered version of the font were produced a year or two after the construction of the narrower Salloon when the arrival of a font distortion program made it easy to cracked and stripe fonts. In 2019 an outline style and two highlighter styles were added to be used in layers with the Salloon-Regular and one highlighter style was added to be used with Salloon-Wide.

The 10th Regiment of Foot is a British military unit raised more than three centuries ago—and perhaps most famous in the U.S. for seeing action on American soil during the Revolutionary War in the Battle of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill. Military Scribe is modeled after the compact, utilitarian script on the mid- to late-1770s muster rolls of the Tenth of Foot. I incorporated the work of at least three separate scribes, merging their neat old penmanship into a legible disconnected cursive. Perhaps the most versatile of all our vintage handwriting fonts, Military Scribe might faithfully reproduce antique letters, labels, lists, or just about any document of the period. OpenType features include multiple stylistic sets, scores of historical, contextual, and discretionary ligatures (including nine terminal “d”s) lining and old-style figures, ink blots, cross-outs, and full support for Central and Eastern European alphabets—more than 1,000 glyphs in all.

Trapped home during the Coronavirus outburst of March 2020 the Zetafonts team found some solace from the world-wide anxiety by designing letters for the #36daysoftype challenge. To fight dark thoughts and spread some good karma we decided to add a free font twist, selecting the best glyphs drawn to develop a collection of ten free typefaces for download. We did our best to make this little gift to the community valuable, though developed in record time: although playful and excessive, these typefaces all stem from our current research in contemporary trends and historical design solutions, bridging calligraphy and design. The typefaces have been published daily starting Monday, March 30. You can download and use the typefaces in any way you desire, as they are totally free for commercial and non-commercial use. We are not asking anything back, but feel free to share the good karma and, if you want, please consider a donation for hospitals.

A NEW HOPE! You begged with us..! You pleaded with us..! But we decided to release the official Richard Starkings font anyway! Huh? WHAT? You heard that line before? Where? Hmm... on this very site...? Well, yes, the Hedge Backwards font is all fine and dandy and does resemble the lettering legerdemain of comic book lettering robot, Richard Starkings... but has it been tweaked over the years to better suit the writing stylings of ELEPHANTMEN creator and writer, Richard Starkings? Has it been refurbished and digitally remastered by ELEPHANTMEN designer and Comicraft Secret Weapon, John JG Roshell? Hmm? No? Well then... here it is, retooled, reimagined and reStarkingsed...ah, what the hell, we started from scratch! This ain't no Greedo Shoots First -- you won't have to keep your pasty '70s VHS recordings of previous Richard Starkings Fonts inside a concrete bunker. Because any other font that claimed to be the official Richard Starkings font would have been called The Official Richard Starkings Font, would it not?