A former lettering artist at Hallmark Cards, Rob Leuschke now has his own thriving design businesses, Alphabytes and the new TypeSETit. Growing up in St Charles, Missouri, where he still lives, Rob showed great artistic promise at an early age. He earned a BFA in graphic design at the University of Missouri at Columbia. After graduation, his stint at Hallmark Cards gave him the opportunity to learn from and work with some of the best lettering artists in the industry. Rob struck out on his own in 1987 and now boasts a long list of clients from all over the world. Rob has created over 250 custom typefaces, and his work has been exhibited in New York. Ambiance BT is Rob’s first typeface published by Bitstream, with more to follow.

The 1920 edition of “How to Paint Signs and Sho’ Cards” by E. C. Matthews offered a number of examples of then-modern lettering styles for sign painters and show card writers. A bold display alphabet made with a round lettering nib is now available as Show Card Pen JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Sign Stencil JNL was modeled from some vintage lettering stencils spotted in an online auction that were part of a store sign making kit. A variety of styles, sizes and designs were contained within a carrying case along with paints, brushes and instructions on how to paint attractive signs.

In the 1920 edition of “How to Paint Signs and Sho’ Cards” by E. C. Matthews is an example of what is termed “poster lettering” that is so free form and unusual it borders on the eccentric. Resembling lettering more commonly found in 1960s “underground comics” of the Hippie generation rather than of the Art Nouveau period, it oddly enough works well in both styles. This novelty typeface is now available as Hippie Comics JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Haritta Handwritten Script Font is a cursive, paint-brushed script font, featuring characters that seem to dance along the baseline. Add this font to your most creative ideas, and notice how it makes them stand out.

The free form hand lettering from the titles and credits of the 1964 French film comedy “Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez” [“The Policeman from Saint-Tropez”] was the basis for Off Duty JNL – which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The 1957 French publication “La Letra Dans La Peinture et la Publicite” (“The Letter tn the Painting and Advertising”) had an illustration of split-serif letters and numbers with a decidedly Western feel. This is now available as Horse Thief JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Black Diamond isn't your average brush font, it’s raw, edgy & bursting with attitude! Hand-painted with extra attention to quick-strokes and dry textures, Black Diamond is guaranteed to deliver a loud, proud & unashamed message - ideal for logos, handwritten quotes, product packaging, merchandise, advertising, social media & branding projects. Black Diamond comes as a single font packed full of great features. It contains a full set of lower & uppercase letters, a large range of punctuation, numerals, and multilingual support. The font also contains several ligatures and stylistic alternates for those who have opentype capable software. Lastly you can add some finishing touches to your work with the added bonus extras; Just type out any of the square-bracket characters { } [ ] on your keyboard for quick and easy access to 4 different swashes, and the arrow up ^ key to produce paint splatters. Huge Language Update; Black Diamond has now been updated to support Greek & Cyrillic alphabets.

This font packs some punch Remember the TV Batman Blurbs POW, BANG, WOW, and of course SHAZAM!

P22 Acropolis is P22's tribute to the enduring contribution of Classical Greece to world culture. This set features two typefaces in the style of ancient Greek stone carvings (one modern: Now, and one of authentic ancient Greek characters: Then) and 52 graphic extras drawn from coinage and vase paintings.

Zebra was originally designed by Karlgeorg Hoefer in 1965 for the Stempel foundry in Germany. This unique font was designed as a two-color script face and is now available digitally for the first time. The P22/IHOF release presents six separate fonts based on the original painted drawings and Stempel proofs.

Inspired by the hand-painted paper signs typically seen in grocery stores during the 1920s to 1970s. This is now available in a digital format that still has the appearance and feel of hand-painted letters. Take a look at a few samples in the thumbnails to see what you can do with them. Local Groceries comes with a combination pairing font. It combines both regular and script fonts. Local Groceries is suitable for vintage and contemporary marketing, branding, merchandise, and packaging designs. Features: Uppercase & Lowercase Numerals & Punctuation Alternates and Ligatures Multilanguage Supports 60+ Latin based languages

Painted using tempera paints and a paintbrush, these letters are messy and angular.

This sleek, high contrast typeface means business, but it looks great on any project, no matter how big or small. Solitas Contrast was developed because existing high contrast sans options were neither modern nor crisp. This design challenge was solved through a series of typefaces: the original low-contrast Solitas, its serifed cousins, and now a high contrast sans—each carefully considered for an organic and free flowing look. It evokes a Dutch or european feel. Solitas Contrast is a modern, clean sans-serif with a distinctive style and impact.

Created from real hand-painted letters, this font is designed to look like a painted sign.

There was a time in this country when many young people studied a trade via a correspondence course through the mail. While this method still exists, it's now more common to find students taking online classes. From an early-1960s course in sign painting comes Sign Merchant JNL, a classic brush stroke type design popularized on show cards and posters.

DANKEN is an all caps display typeface that was created to mix font styles and create unlimited variety of effects. Now it has 25 font styles but it’s growing.

Inspired by a workshop with iconic American sign painter Mike Meyer, Ulrike of LiebeFonts set out to create a versatile, lovely typeface for sign painting that looks not at all like a font but rather like the letters on a unique, hand-painted storefront sign. LiebeDoris combines the best of two worlds: the beauty of all-American sign painting and the meticulous craft of German engineering. Each and every letter in each of the four different styles in LiebeDoris was hand-painted on large sheets of paper with a brush and ink, then carefully transferred for digital typesetting. So rather than being one typeface with different weights, think of LiebeDoris as a package of four individual designs that go together very well. Advanced OpenType features enable this font to really shine: every letter in this all-caps font comes in four variations, so that two of the same letters typed in a row won’t look the same, giving a truly handmade charm. (This feature requires layout software or a word processor with OpenType support.) And if you do have a storefront or a restaurant menu to prettify with LiebeDoris, you will love the integrated collection of store-themed catch words like “FREE”, “NEW”, and “SALE”. If you fall in love with LiebeDoris, you may also like our other best-selling fonts, LiebeErika and LiebeGerda, or our whimsical pictogram fonts such as LiebeMenu.

The PM Doorbuster Collection is based on retro hand-painted paper signs primarily seen in grocery stores from the 1940s through today. We meticulously hand-drew each font, modeling the spacing and uneven baseline found in vintage sign painting. The purposely organic ascenders and descenders, along with a huge set of ligatures/contextual alternates to avoid the same letters repeating when paired, give it a real hand-lettered look. PM Doorbuster Casual is perfect for both vintage-inspired and contemporary marketing, branding, and packaging designs. It's a classic uppercase sign painter font that has been used from the 1950s thru today. You've probably seen hand-lettered versions used in tattoo studios, workshops, and chalkboard menus. Now it's available in a digital format with all of the authentic look and feel of actual hand-painted letters. Check out a few of the samples included in the thumbnails to see what can be done with it.

Franz Kafka’s manuscripts have always been a source of inspiration for designer Julia Sysmäläinen. At first she was just interested in literary aspects but later she noticed that content and visual form can not be separated in the work of this ingenious writer. Analyzing Kafka’s handwriting at the Berlin National Library, Julia was inspired to design the typeface FF Mister – by now a well known classic. Over the years, FF Mister K became a handsome typeface family and even produced offspring: the Josef K Patterns. Some of Kafka’s most expressive letterforms were the starting point for these decorative ornaments. How do the Patterns work? Outlines and fillings correspond to the uppercase and the lowercase letters on your keyboard. You can use them separately or layer them on top of each other. If you write a line of “pattern-text” in lowercase and repeat it underneath in uppercase you get a row of fillings followed by a row of outlines. Now you can color them and then set line space = 0 to get a single line of layered colored ornaments. Alternatively, activating OpenType / stylistic set / stylistic alternates will also unite the two lines to a single layered line. Further magic can be done with OpenType / contextual alternates turned on. On the gallery page of this font family is a downloadable Josef K Patterns.pdf with an alphabetical overview of forms. Hundreds of patterns are possible … we’d love to see some of yours and present them here on the website!

Let this free-flowing brush script add a little hand painted goodness to your works. Cheaper than a bucket of paint, use Brushed to add brush painted letters to your works or manipulate the many glyphs in this font using image editing software to create art as shown above.