These charming little cartoon figures, known in the trade as "midgets", added a little extra oomph to everything from business cards to matchbook covers from the 1920s to the 1950s. Each font contains 52 different cuts, ready and waiting to spice up your layouts, and each carefully hand drawn from authentic historical sources.

A lovely decorative Victorian period font taken directly from samples printed on an old press right from the metal type in the collection of typophile Steve Saxe.

From cartoons to ad helpers to embellishments and ornaments, Letterpress Pieces JNL is another collection of vintage imagery from the pre-computer era of printing and advertising.

Party Invite JNL is a thin, condensed Art Deco sans based on lettering from a letterpress holiday stock cut (the predecessor to clip art) from the 1940s.

From a few hand drawn letters seen on a poster from 1939 you may find this font familiar. Miss Scarlett resembles the Gone With The Wind poster lettering.

Southern colonialist is a new slab typeface from Intellecta, based on ancient advertisements from the Wild West of America Good for titling and display usage; in many styles.

Breeze is a fun font from Frank Marciuliano where the letters are formed like the sails from the boat. He may have been inspired from the sailboats which he sees on the walks along the shore on the Hudson River. There are two forms available. Left and right define the direction of the blowing wind.

Handbill JNL takes the type design from Broadletter JNL and gives it an open drop shadow treatment to emulate a popular style of many wooden typefaces from the 1800s.

Xylo Sans letterforms are based on a typeface from Miller & Richard type foundry, from circa 1911. They are presented here with a rough wood texture, in two xylographic flavors.

Cartelle is a sexy small caps bitmap design characterized by it's whimsical curls and ornate flourishes. It's inspiration came from a French poster design from the early 1900's.

Derived from Freiheit.

This original typeface appears to be lifted straight from an old crumpled piece of parchment or from a pirate map. An absolute must-have for Halloween, children's publications, pirate-themed texts, and any writing that needs to convey a haunting feel. These tattered letters conjure up spirits and spooks of buccaneers, swashbucklers, and conquistadores from centuries past.

Birch Beer JNL comes from lettering spotted on a European business sign found in some stock footage that was used for an old black and white film about World War II. The name is derived from a popular root beer-like soda sold by the Royal Castle Restaurants that were popular in Florida from the 1930s through the 1970s.

This delightful semiscript is based on an offering from a 1930s specimen book from the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, originally called, simply, "Card Italic". Elegant without being stuffy, it is equally “at home” announcing anything from formal occasions to casual get-togethers. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Printing Set JNL by Jeff Levine comes from a toy rubber stamp printing set imported from Japan in the 1950s and 1960s that's been revived, but is now imported from China. The font has a serif letter so typical of import toys of the day, but actually reads quite nicely in short headlines and specialty ad copy.

Artful Nouveau JNL was modeled from the hand lettering on the sheet music cover for the 1910 song "Gee, But It's Great to Meet a Friend from Your Home Town".

GansBlasones images were selected from the vignettes catalog from Fundicion Gans published in 1920. Represents heraldry devices, Spanish city seals, world nations seals, coats of arms, helms, crowns, crests etc.

Party Noids goes all the way - from cartoonish to romantic, from funny to serious. Write in all caps, all lowercase or mix upper and lowercase to create ounces of fun!

Once again we have added a lowercase to a caps-only type from late Victorian times. We made quite a few changes from the original to make words flow better.

Monadic is a modern singular monospace display font. The typeface is made from groups of single basic triangular geometric units. Monadic is inspired by structured and organic geometry. The name is derived from the Ancient Greek μοναδικός (monadikós, “single”), from μονάς (monás, “a unit”); it is the adjective of monad, an elementary individual substance which reflects the order of the world and from which material properties are derived. Monadic is great for display work, logos, structures, architecture, technology, biology, sports, monograms, quotes, headings and posters.

Tritura is my personal take on textura fonts. Several methods of drawing were used, both analog and digital, to bring its overall rough feel. Each and every character was designed not from historical references, but from my view on this very peculiar typographic style. Instead of following established rules of character construction, I preferred to just keep in mind the mechanics of the pens used in textura drawings, as well as the little I already knew from the style, to create my own characters from there.

Rubbish JNL from Jeff Levine is simply letters scribbled from an old stencil as if made by a child... But the look takes on a form of "stencil grunge" as well!

Cryptic font from space.

For well over a century, stencil machines allowed manufacturers, shippers and even the military to quickly mark and identify objects. Mechanical Stencil JNL was created from examples from one of these machines.

Sign Vendor JNL is a simple sans modeled from hand-lettering with a touch of Art Deco influence. The design is from a 1930s poster promoting winter activities in New York State.

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.

Sales Slip JNL is derived from the core lettering of Sales Book JNL, an outline font with a cast shadow; modeled from wood type examples found in an old printer's supply catalog.

The Charta family of fonts draws its inspiration from the letter styles used in early manuscripts and printed books. Charta is also remarkably versatile: it’s equally at home in a traditional or modern context and can be used for a wide range of applications from an automobile badge to a newspaper masthead and from a fashion label to a candy bar wrapper.

The chamfered block style of lettering has been a workhorse for years. From the early signage of the 1800s to military markings to the techno fonts of the 1980s and beyond, its clean and simple look gets the message across easily and boldly. Industrialist JNL and its oblique partner were modeled from the title on a piece of sheet music from the 1940s.

This exuberant face was suggested by a piece of French sheet music from the 1930s for the song Sur un Air de Shimmy, The name comes from an Australian song from the 1950s about a noncompliant boomerang. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

The Vtg Stencil fonts from astype are based on real world stencils from several countries. The Vtg Stencil Marsh design was derived from 1 inch stencils, cut by a Marsh R machine. Marsh produced stencil machines since 1922 and was one of the most important manufacturers for such marking machines. The design is part of the American industrial heritage. PDF Specimen

Here's a handy collection of 72 type adornments gleaned from American Type Foundry catalogs from 1913 to 1934, featuring little treasures from some of the early twentieth century's most respected designers, including Will Bradley, Frederic Goudy and George Trenholm. Among the goodies are fleurons, pilcrows, guidons, bishops fingers, mortised initial frames and several other useful elements to dress up your documents.

Vicentina has been created starting from gothic cursive calligraphy, widely used in Italy during XIV century. The ductus of Vicentina has been derived from the documents redacted by Master Domenico Dominici from Vicenza, while most of the inspiration comes from books preserved in the archives of Orvieto Cathedral (Archivi dell'Opera del Duomo di Orvieto). As a result, Vicentina takes form with an elegant, but fast and simplified ductus respect to gothic graphs, rich in ligatures and with over 400 OpenType glyphs, in perfect harmony with the rules of readability of a modern typeface.

Steel Grrrder is an industrial-style joining script with a stencil effect, available in six weights ranging from Light to Black. Great for all kinds of display purposes including posters, film titles, book covers, magazines, advertising, signage, packaging, logos and tanks, this is a script with a sharp personality and a steely presence. However, if you’re searching for a “nice” script - sorry, bud - you’re looking in the wrong place. Steel Grrrder Script doesn’t entice the reader with voluptuous curves, flowing swashes or frisky letterforms, instead its sharp chiselled features compel the reader to pay attention. Characters muscle their way along like robotic bulldogs in steel-toe cap boots. Steel Grrrder Script is a veritable slab fest, best categorised as a constructivist joining script. Forged from carbon steel and wrapped in a layer of Graphene, this is a robust display typeface family able to withstand even the most demanding typographical situations. The Steel Grrrrder extended family also includes a six-weight sans-serif with corresponding italics and two display fonts, Groove & Nutjob - all designed to work with each other.

Steel Grrrder is a robust, industrial-style stencil typeface family consisting of six weights, from light to black, with corresponding italics. Suitable for all kinds of display purposes including posters, film titles, book covers, magazines, advertising, logos, packaging, signage and games design, Steel Grrrder is especially useful where the message needs some serious geometric bite behind it. Steel Grrrder is best categorised as a constructivist sans family. The character shapes are sharp, angular and slightly condensed - it’s a rigid, no-frills, no-curves, mega-metallic design. Legible? Not really. Readable? I think not. In your faceable? Absolutely! This is a tough display typeface, designed to work in the most demanding typographic situations. It won’t buckle under pressure or wilt when the heat’s turned up. Forged from carbon steel and wrapped in a layer of Graphene, Steel Grrrder is unashamedly rugged, a rock-hard pound-for-pound boxer specialising in thumping knockouts. The Steel Grrrrder extended family also includes a six-weight joining script and two display fonts, Groove & Nutjob - all designed to work with each other.

Picaflor is a sans typeface family perfect for titles, it contains 6 weights from thin to Black in addition to Greek and cyrillic alphabet with many alternatives from ligatures and letters, enjoy it!