A sales catalog sheet from the American Decalcomania Company circa the late 1940s-early 1950s provided some hand lettering that served as the inspiration for Sign Painter JNL. Emulating the look of characters made with a round pen nib, this Deco-style typeface conveys nostalgia and charm seldom found in advertising of today.

Inspired by that iconic sign in the Hollywood Hills, this font is a must for film buffs, movie lovers and designers who want to bring a bit of big screen glamour to their projects. It’s a caps only face, but by using the upper and lower case keys type can be set above or below the base line, thus creating the signature stagger effect. See also Jazz Age and Tea Dance by Studio K

Don’t ask me why I called this font Blabbermouth, as I really don’t know. I guess it reminded me of a person who talks too much, as Blabbermouth is kind of in your face, uneven and slightly crazy. Blabbermouth won’t keep your secrets, but I’m sure it’ll make your designs get the attention they deserve.

The Cleveland Type Foundry strikes again, with this delightful little number from their 1893 specimen book, originally named "Mikado". This version takes its name from one of the characters in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta of the same name, and the name aptly describes the tasty nature of this frolicking face. Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252 and CE 1250 character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

Homelessfonts is an initiative by the Arrels foundation to support, raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people in Barcelona Spain. Each of the fonts was carefully digitized from the handwriting of different homeless people who agreed to participate in this initiative. A biography/story of each homeless person captures their story, to help raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people. Monotype is pleased to donate all revenue from the sales of Homelessfonts to the Arrels foundation in support of their mission to provide the homeless people in Barcelona with a path to independence with accommodations, food, social and health care. Juan Carlos was born in Barcelona, Spain 46 years ago. Since the age of 17 – and during eleven years – he worked double shifts of eight hours every day in a factory. Excessive work and family problems debilitated his health and he lost his job. He then faced a dilemma: to spend unemployment benefits to pay for rent or for food. For a few years, he worked helping in the kitchens of different restaurants while he lived on a pension, until he was definitively left without work and ended up living in the street for 10 years. “In the street I tried to find rest in the ATMs of banks. I preferred to be alone, and if I ran into conflictive people, I looked for somewhere else” he explains. Living in the street he was the victim of an aggression. Since then, with the help of Arrels he moved into a pension. Today, Juan Carlos is a volunteer in the shower service of Arrels, the same showers he used during years. He also collaborates with the maintenance team, helps prepare hygienic and cleaning material, and participates in activities such as the theatre group and the football team.

The German designer Emil Rudolf Weiss originally created Weiss Rundgotisch for the Bauer typefoundry in 1937. In their catalog for the typeface, Bauer began with this quote from Leonhard Wagner: The round gothic (rundgotisch) script is the most beautiful kind of script; she is called the mother and the queen of all the rest." While designing Weiss Rundgotisch, Weiss was inspired by Renaissance types cut by the Augsberg printer Erhard Ratdolt. Ratdolt had spent some time in Venice, which is most likely where he became familiar with round gothic letters. This sort of letterform was never as popular in Germany as Fraktur or Gotisch may have been, but round gothic types were used there for centuries to represent arts and craft feelings, as well as old-fashioned handwork. For a blackletter typeface, Weiss Rundgotisch is very similar to normal serif and sans serif designs, especially its uppercase letters, which seem to have some uncial influence in them as well. Therefore, Weiss Rundgotisch is more legible for contemporary readers, making this an excellent choice for anyone looking to set text, logos, or headlines with in blackletter. Weiss Rundgotisch was apparently quite a difficult typeface to design, even for a master designer like Weiss. He began work on the face in 1915; Weiss Rundgotisch's development took over 20 years to complete."

MVB Fantabular proves that monospaced faces needn’t be formal or bland. Inspired by the letterforms of older typewriters, Akemi Aoki designed a playful family of three weights with italics. With every character the same width MVB Fantabular works wherever a monospaced font is needed, but the face is so loose and carefree it hides its fixed pitch construction well, allowing it to be used in other settings too. MVB Fantabular Sans is the sans serif version of MVB Fantabular.

Endurant is a font inspired by futuristic conceptual arts from the late-20th century. The question it answers is, "What if someone in the late 20th century were to imagine a futuristic font?" Endurant is a brave, all-caps display font. Because of what it's inspired by, it is suitable for futuristic and retro-modern designs in the modern-day world. It can be used for graphic design, poster design, web and mobile UI design—and many other applications.

This stunning display face is based on Hans Bohn’s 1929 opus for Gebr. Klingspor, originally named Orplid. One of the treasures discovered in the legendary green vinyl binder that launched Nick’s love of type, it’s a real crowd pleaser. Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets.

This engaging headline face is based on a rather pudgy typeface named “Bullion Shadow”, which was originally released somewhere on the cusp between the hippie and disco eras, and was equally at home in both. Now available in shaded and plain. Both versions of this font support the Latin 1252, Central European 1250, Turkish 1254 and Baltic 1257 codepages.

Based on the all caps decorative face Fournier le Jeune of 1768 by Pierre Simon Fournier for the Peignot Foundry. This version uses more elaborate "Vouge Initials" caps which were offered by ATF in 1920s. Because of the decorative nature of this design, a full character set is not included, but accented characters and basic punctuation are included.

At first glance, this unusual display face might appear to be a product of the 1960s, with its highly unconventional letterforms and its plastic, fantastic highlight treatment. However, this font is in fact inspired by a ca. 1930 poster for a Belgian beer of the same name. The uncredited Flemish designer was clearly a head of his time (ouch!).

This older, somewhat funkier relative of the classic face, Engravers Roman, made its last appearance in the 1912 ATF Specimen Book. Here, it has been revived to do yeoman-like duty in a new century. This font contains the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

If you still think that an antiqua is a typeface with a strong historical character that difficult to apply in modern realities, meet the new typeface from TypeType! TT Livret is an elegant, modern and functional antiqua featuring a calm text and an expressive display subfamily. TT Livret useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options This font looks harmonious in books and other periodicals, on posters or on magazine covers. The scope is not limited to the printing industry, because TT Livret looks aesthetically pleasing wherever text is used. The text subfamily has uniwidth proportions and a calm spirit, oval round characters, free spacing and more open apertures. The glossy display subfamily is proportional and has round signs that are as close to a circle as possible, the apertures are closed, and the spacing is dense. The font has an intermediate subfamily - Subhead, which can look more relaxed when used as text font, or be contrasting and used as a display font. In TT Livret, we have embodied the idea of ​​an antiqua that will be comfortable to use in modern realities. This is a functional font, where the text face does not distract from reading, and the display face, on the contrary, attracts attention. The TT Livret font family consists of 32 faces: 15 upright, 15 oblique, and 2 variable fonts. Each face has 1031 glyphs. The font contains 26 OpenType features, as well as a large number of ligatures. There are many alternative characters in italics, which are especially diverse in Cyrillic.

Chamferwood JNL is another interpretation of the block lettering style most popular during the late 1800s and the early 1900s. The design was modeled from examples from a set of wood type.

Schoolyard Blues JNL is based on the hand lettered title found on the sheet music for the 1938 song "I Was Late for School". A condensed sans serif with chamfered corners, it reflects the Art Deco influences of the day in some of the letter forms. This type design is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Tradewinds JNL is based on one of many innovative alphabets designed by the late Alf R. Becker for Signs of the Times magazine between the 1930s and 1950s. Thanks go to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media (who is also the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio) for supplying the reference material used to make this font.

Chuck. Designed in 2004 by Jim Parkinson. Originally released as a Type 1 font, Chuck was refreshed (version2) and re-released as simple Open Type in 2012. The models for this massive Deco typeface appear on a bronze plaque on the South Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. The plaque commemorates the builders of the bridge.

Woodbranch JNL is a solid version of the 2013 font release Woodlawn JNL. The design was originally based on examples of an outline (open face) wood type. This interpretation takes on newer, stronger characteristics as a bold typeface when the "inner letters" of the original alphabet were removed, yet the imperfection of the wood type pieces are still maintained.

Aramus is a new serif font in my continuing objective of designing book fonts that I can really use. In many ways, Aramus is a very different direction for me. It comes from a scan of an old display face that has been radically modified to a much smaller x-height than I have been using lately, plus taller ascenders. Many of the characters needed a lot of correction to bring them into my taste. In general, I have decided that many of my fonts create a type color that is too dense. Aramus is an attempt to get away from that look. Although Amitale has been a very successful book family and excellent to work with, I find I still need something more open with a lighter color. Aramus is the first look at the new direction. The original hand-cut serifs vary a lot, different for almost every character. This gives a little looseness and helps the lightness I am looking for. It will be interesting to see where this all goes. This is a normal serif for me in that it has caps, lowercase, small caps with the appropriate figures for each case. This font has all the OpenType features in the set for 2009. I didn't bother with the CE accents (though I can add them upon request. They will be in the final new book family). There are several ligatures for your fun and enjoyment: bb gg ff fi fl ffi ffl ffy fj ft tt ty Wh Th and more. Like all of my fonts, there are: caps, lowercase, small caps, proportional lining figures, proportional oldstyle figures, & small cap figures, plus numerators, denominators, superiors, inferiors, and a complete set of ordinals 1st through infinity. Enjoy!

Marli is an adaption of a face designed by F. Schweimanns and issued by the Stempel Foundry from 6 to 48 point, as “Korso”, in 1913. In 1936 the American Intertype issued their version for the line composing machines in 12 and 14 point as “Camera”. It is a very suitable type face for personal stationery, announcements, greeting cards and the like. The font is updated with a full Open Type character set, while also a Cyrillic has been added.

ATF Poster Gothic is an expansion of a typeface designed in 1934 by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders. The one-weight design was a slightly condensed display companion to Benton’s ubiquitous Bank Gothic family. This new family of aggressively rectilinear headline types expands the design’s possibilities, offering 30 fonts. The all-cap design sports square corners in the counters, creating tension between angular and curved details; this feature, and the generally rectangular shape of the whole alphabet, makes ATF Poster Gothic distinctive on the page or screen, while its relationship to Bank Gothic makes it seem somehow familiar. Vertical strokes on the C, G, J, and S, as well as on several of the numerals, are cut off at an angle, which suggest the curves those strokes might typically display if the characters were less boxy in design and more along the lines of late-19th-century headline faces. Certain weights also recall the style of lettering used on athletic team jerseys, television crime dramas, action & adventure movie titles, and engraved stationery. With three widths and five weights, ATF Poster Gothic is distinctive and versatile at the same time. The full family is also available in a “Round” version, with corners subtly rounded for a softer, more “printed” feel.

The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

Lotus is a traditional-style Arabic text face derived from foundry types cut earlier in the 20th Century, based on the calligraphic models in the Ottoman Naskh style (the traditional style of Arabic script for use in printing). Its graceful finials and elegant logotypes contribute to the classic look of the face making it particularly suitable for serious book and journal work. The conversion of the PostScript versions of these fonts to OpenType format has taken full advantage of the latest digital technology, allowing accurate positioning of diacriticals and kerning refinements. The Lotus typeface is available in two weights: Lotus Light and Lotus Bold. These two fonts incorporate the Arabic codepage (CP 1256), and support Arabic and Persian. They also include both tabular Arabic and Persian numerals.

Bornholm Allinge is named after a village "Allinge" on the only rocky island in Denmark "Bornholm" It is the third face in a series of rough stone cut typefaces, that shares proportions, but differs in any other aspect like different pieces of rock. It is a powerful face, but still very friendly. Good for very big sizes, but can be used for small texts, movie titles, cartoons …

Twentieth Century Poster, designed by Sol Hess for Lanston Monotype in the 1940s, provided the inspiration for this family of faces. Although, historically, the design falls outside the time period normally considered the Art Deco era, its sensibilities are pure Art Moderne. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

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

Linotype Clascon is part of the Take Type Library, which features winners of Linotype’s International Digital Type Design Contest. Designed by the British artist Rachel Godfrey, the constructed forms of the capitals are reminiscent of sketches of many famous 16th century artists, Albrecht Dürer and Nicolas Jaugeon among them. This style emphasizes the mathematic construction of the letters, based on the circle, rectangle and triangle, but Clascon’s historical roots lie in Transitional and Modern Face styles. This font is particularly suited to very short texts, headlines and initials.

"Triole 21" is the name of a gothic script font designed by Bertram Kaiser. The forms of this so called "Rotunda" script are based on the manuscripts of italian calligraphers of the late 14th century. Inspiration for this project also comes from the calligrapher Lisa Beck. The glyphs were first written with a broad-nib and then digitized. The Open-Type font is equiped with multilingual (Latin-based) alternates, ligatures and oldstyle figures for various typographical purposes. It can be used for headlines and also stays legible in smaller textsizes for longer textpassages.

We know very little about this font. A printer in Lisbon had it, but said it came from England. Nicolette Gray shows it in her Nineteenth Century Ornamented Type Faces as Lord Mayor from the British Typefoundry. We never got the complete font, but drawing the missing letters was not difficult.

1920s sheet music for the song "You Can't Get Away From It" provided the hand lettered title which acted as the basis for Nouveau Roundcorner JNL. A square letter form with rounded terminals, this condensed face is perfect for titling, yet has a bit of an informal, casual charm to it.

Another gem from the Blandford Press Pen and Brush Lettering and Practical Alphabets, this in-your-face typeface features strong geometric elements, delineated in blueprint fashion. A surefire attention-getter. Both versions of the font include the 1252 Latin and 1250 CE character sets (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

This rollicking fun face is based on legendary lettering artist Alf Becker's Super Thick-and-Thin, his twenty-third offering in "Signs of the Times" magazine. The package includes two fonts: a full Adobe Standard character set, and an Alternates version, which features the more extreme elements of Becker's original design.

Ankara is a display font that inspired by the forms of high windows, doors and gates of buildings that constructed in the early years of Turkish Republic.

Terrace JNL is a bold, sturdy Art Deco titling face based on hand lettering found on the cover of some 1940s-vintage sheet music for the organ.

An unannotated photocopy tucked inside the leaves of an old lettering book yielded this unusual and exuberant Art Deco face. The caps feature a simple “bubbly” pattern that makes this offering pack a punch, not unlike the German cherry brandy for which it is named. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

This distinctive poster face is based on the work of Dard Hunter, one of the pioneers of typographic design within the Arts & Crafts movement. Use it to create distinctive headlines, or to add some architectural interest to your designs. This font contains the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

A whimsical semi-script typeface named Belcanto, designed by Edwin Sisty for Photolettering in the 1970s, provided the pattern for this typeface. Elegant and engaging, this face is sure to put a smile on yours. The PC PostScript, TrueType and OpenType versions contain the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

This fresh face takes a number of design cues from Tomás Vellvé Mengual's eponymous design for Barcelona's Neufville Type Foundry in 1971. This version softens many of the lines of the original, and warms the design up overall with rounded terminals. Available in three weights, this font contains the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.