Brush-style lettering has been a perennial favorite for designers and sign painters because it brings to mind casual, relaxed or friendly themes. A vintage piece of sheet music called “Pretty Butterfly” by Sunny Skylar features the titled hand lettered in a simple, informal design which became the inspiration for Casual Tune JNL.

British designer Tim Donaldson created the lively typeface Etruscan in 1995. Based on Etruscan letters from ancient Italy, this unusual and condensed sans serif face whimsically mixes soft lowercase characters with more angular capitals. Etruscan brings light and airy classical form into contemporary documents, and a sunny Mediterranean flair and jollity into your projects.

A personal calligraphic series commissioned by Bitstream from Gudrun Zapf von Hesse. Although Carmina BT is a neutral design, optimized for use in digital publishing, Zapf von Hesse’s unique calligraphic spirit is still quite visible in the family’s letterforms. This is not surprising, as all of Zapf von Hesse’s typefaces are calligraphic in nature. Yet Carmina BT is suitable for almost any conceivable digital text application, from book design up through signage use.

Rosebud is a great blend of simple yet organic rosy caps. Each big caps has a single rose while the small caps has the prickly, thorny stems. This decorative TrueType font is great for any occasion (from Wedding to Sweet 16 Party) or for surprising a rose lover with a flowery note. Plus, you can create your own border patterns or flower arrangements by using the rosy and/or the thorny punctuation marks.

This is not Hollywood. You may be surprised but I am not inspired by the famous Hollywood sign for this type but a grid on a roof of Barcelona. I walked down the street observing the architecture of buildings in the area of the Marina when I saw a grid on a roof. One of the workers put a board on them and the magic happen. Hollywood 69 is now free with 99 !

Massive text suits my Only Kidding very well. Even at small sizes it is super legible, and it really keeps that handmade image. At larger sizes the crunchiness really comes forward and may surprise you how detailed edges the letters has got! I am going to use this font for one of my children's books - I am thinking something adventure-ish! What you think? Comes with fi and fl ligatures and double letter substitutions!

Mo' Funky Fresh is the work of New York designer David Sagorski. It is an all capital typeface which includes a set of alternative capitals, compatible symbols and lively illustrations. Mo' Funky Fresh brings to mind sunny days, tiki bars, surfboards and cool drinks and is a great choice for headlines requiring a vital, energetic look.

Adria Grotesk is a superfriendly and sunny humanist typeface that comes in 7 carefully crafted weights and charming upright italics. Try combine it with its stylish family member Adria Slab. You will find a fine choice of lining, tabular and old style figures, numerators, denominators, tabular figures, fractions, ligatures, some sweet symbols and even alternate arrows.

Carpe Noctem (Latin for ‘Seize The Night’), was a bit of a surprise. Someone asked me if I could create a lower case for my Closet Skeleton font. I began working on it and lo and behold, a beautiful font started taking shape. So, if you’re in need of a slightly scary fairytale font, complete with angled edges, swirly bits, a couple of alternate - even more curly - glyphs and an alternate medieval ampersand, then Carpe Noctem is your typeface!

Linotype Afrika, from German type designer Jörg Herz, is part of the TakeType Library, chosen from the entries of the Linotype-sponsored International Digital Type Design Contest 1999 for inclusion on the TakeType 3 CD. Dancing, jumping, and playing, the lively beings of this symbol font exude joy. Ornaments and a few frolicking animals complete the font. Combining the single figures, whether as decoration or border, creates a pattern which will surprise you with its lightness and dynamism.

Simple Crush is my down-to-earth-comic-font with no hassle! Well, actually Simple Crush might take you by surprise here and there - because there is no real rules to height, width, curves and thickness…or whatever. When it comes to Simple Crush, you’re in luck - because Simple Crush is legible and stands out as a strong comic font, ready for action…even though the mission is a party invitation, birthday, poster or products for kids and pets!

Empire State Gothic is, from basement to spire, an exultant, soaring skyscraper of a font, distinguished by its high arches, steel-framed construction and the glory and pride of Comicraft's fine woodwork and stonework! You might find it surprising, then, that this tall, lanky font was something of a loner during its teenage years, mingling with others of its kind in the shadowy corners of coffeehouses, nurturing feelings of belittlement while craving attention it may not have rightly deserved.

Isabella was designed by Hermann Ihlenburg in 1892 for MacKellar, Smiths and Jordan, one of many type houses that were later amalgamated into American Type Founders. As testimony to its long-lived appeal, Isabella was one of the first PostScript® language typeface releases (in 1988) of Agfa Compugraphic. With its unmistakable 19th-century characteristics - swirls, loops, and surprising letter shapes - Isabella is a natural for display situations that demand high drama or, dare we say, melodrama.

I am reading a great book by David Mitchell, called Number 9 Dream. One of the characters is called Buntaro, so I decided to call my new inky font after him. Like the book, Buntaro is quite unusual: it has no real baseline, comes with some strange characters, feels familiar, but surprises you nonetheless. It was made with a broken bamboo satay-skewer, Chinese ink and a lot of patience. Buntaro comes with a wealth of diacritics.

Conica is a bold, condensed typeface that aims to grab your attention. By playing with heavy, dark shapes and small counters, this single weight typeface explores the contrast between defined shapes and gentle curves to produce a surprising headline font. It equally includes a range of Opentype features, with a set of small capitals, stylistic alternates and ligatures, users can choose which forms best suit their needs. Conica includes an extended Latin glyph set covering most Latin based languages.

Linotype Animalia is part of the Take Type Library, chosen from the contestants of Linotype’s International Digital Type Design Contests of 1994 and 1997. The font was designed by German artist Johannes Plass and is full of surprises. It is like a walk through the zoo, where the j is a shark chasing a small fish and the K is a moose gazing at the sky. Linotype Animalia is intended exclusively for use in headlines with large point sizes.

Inspired by an image of a 1960s rock and roll concert poster for “The Beach Boys Summer Safari”, this typeface captures the casual, informal lettering of the main headline and makes it available digitally. Evoking sunny days of fast cars, pretty girls and riding the waves, the playfully hand lettered Summer Safari JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

After a long period of wind, rain and cold, summer has finally arrived. It almost felt as if the sunny weather came as a special delivery! Sunshine Delivery is a handmade display font. It comes in a regular, angular version and a rounded one. Need Vietnamese support? Check! Want some Sami? Got it! Feel like a bit of Greek? Dive right in!

Habana Vieja is inspired by hand-painted signage in Havana’s old town. Letters are defined by their drop-shadow and worn outlines; suggestive of a sunny environment. This playful sans-serif, bold font, will work well used for headings and short paragraphs especially for posters or signage. Habana Vieja is extended, containing West European diacritics, making it suitable for multilingual environments and publications.

A very glitzy Blitz! I always wanted to design a typeface that was top heavy, but I never knew how not to make it look like Antique Olive, until recently -- I had an idea. My new family is very readable despite it beeing top heavy, thin on the low end and thick on the upper end. The font gets a special shine because of this effect. And it stays readable despite its special design. Your designer of surprising typefaces, Gert Wiescher

From completely OUT OF THE BLUE, here’s a font you'll need when, unexpectedly -- with a sense of immediate urgency -- your characters abruptly call out without warning and on the spur of the moment! When Suddenly ’s prompt! It’s abrupt! It responds in a flash! Now you can put all the words you need in your comic book in such a way that they'll come as a complete surprise to all your readers! When Suddenly is BOLD! It’s ITALIC! It’s anything but REGULAR!

When looking for a neutral typeface with no historic reminders, we always end up with notorious designs made about 60 years ago. It’s a part of the whole Trivia type system. To our surprise, there are still people who can’t distinguish three basic latin type categories. The present font family has been created for them. A simple typographic Trivia: three ways to look at printed word, three fonts to design anything from business card to a billboard, three tunes for endless variations.

The inspiration source for MFC Billow Monogram is a beautiful letterset from the "Manuel de Broderies No. 179" by N. Alexandre & Cie. from the late 1800's. We've drawn out some flourishes and ornamental glyphs based on the original design in order to offer more versatility with this monogram. Experiment with the flourishes in different combinations. You may be surprised at what you can create! Download and view the MFC Billow Monogram Guidebook if you would like to learn a little more.

Letrista Script is a product of observation and sensitivity of sign painter artists not only from United States but from other parts of the world, where the brushstrokes letters have reached a high level of importance in different context, where the writing makes fundamental part. With more than 1000 glyphs, this typography was created to achieve a unique texture without losing the legibility or force, to interact with the alternation of decorative characters and adornment that will surprise. After a year of working and checking with many artists, Letrista Script come up to the public with the guarantee of being an useful tool in your computer in the design time. When you know it, you surely won't stop using it, because of its beautiful characters and great texture. It is full of surprises and facilities for the users. Letrista Script includes standard ligatures, stylistics alternatives, discretionary ligatures, swashes, titling alternates and terminal forms, Stylistic Set 1, 2, 3 and 4, ornaments and a complete package of Catch Words. See specimen and samples here. Letrista Script was selected at the Bienal Tipos Latinos 2012. Check out some uses of this font here https://fontsinuse.com/uses/20207/ica-beverages

Ridiculous is a complete whack-a-doodle sans-serif font inspired by the titling sequence from the 1964 film, "Yours, Mine, and Ours". Fun and full of personality, it is a lettering style that is completely insane. With ligatures enabled, the font will auto-substitute between cases for an even more random appearance. With a pseudo unicase character set, and offbeat letter weighting, Ridiculous is pure lunacy to typeset with, with ligature combinations that are quirky surprises. You’ll find this font will live up to it's name.

Elegance meets accident. A sturdy distressed all caps typeface that gives you the feeling of the happy little incidents that may happen when you print with silkscreen or letterpress. A whole bunch of alternative letters embedded in a pseudo-random OpenType feature does the magic. Get yourself surprised CA Mystery Girl speaks a lot of languages, at least all those covered by the extended Latin character set. Which means you can travel to Iceland, Turkey, France or Poland, this girl will always be your interpreter.

Strangelove Next is inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s movie “Dr. Strangelove”. The original titles were designed by Pablo Ferro, who is one of the most acclaimed film title designers, especially famous for his hand-drawn lettering. The Strangelove Next family contains the highly successfull narrow version, a new expanded version and finally a mix of the first two, which gives it a surprising and unpredictable look. All three styles have more glyphs than the original family. Looking for a serif version? Have a look at Strangelove NextSlab!

Halfway There… We love to go camping as a family and we usually go to France (because France is only a 5 hour drive from where we live, it is usually sunny and they have the best bread in the world - enough said!). Somewhere around Lille, or Luxembourg City (depending on our destination in France), the kids always ask: ‘are we almost there?’ and my answer is always: ‘we’re halfway there!’.

Bubblegum Sans Pro is upbeat, flavor-loaded, brushalicious letters for the sunny side of the street. It bounces with joy and tells a great story. Designed by Angel Koziupa and produced by Ale Paul, this typeface is a loud 21st century shoutout to the kind of the 1930s lettering that sold everything to everyone through every medium. Bubblegum Sans Pro version covers all Latin-based languages and includes some alternates.

NORTH SHORE – The ultimate Hawaiian surf spot typeface, both groovy and mid century inspired. Designed by Lauren Kilbane (on the other coast!) in sunny South Florida, USA. USE THIS FONT FOR: ads, album covers, apparel, cards, flyers, invitations, logos, menus, merchandise, packaging, signage, web, and more. 204 Glyphs Total: Uppercase ONLY, Numbers, Symbols, Punctuation, Emojis, & Language Support. Language Support: Danish, English, French, German, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, & Swiss German.

Ruth Pro is a creative work horse primarily designed to be used for typographic design of magazines, posters and books. Though roughly inspired by fonts like Mendoza and Stone Serif, it has its own distinctive look, carefully crafted following all the classic ideals of typography. If you are also looking for that special display font, you will be surprised by all the great details of Ruth Pro, including dingbats, arrows, alternative characters, special designed ligatures and small caps characters—and much more! Ruth Pro also includes a vast selection of Slavic and Scandinavian characters.

Salinas imitates a friendly and warm handwritten typeface. Its particular feeling is achieved thanks to several character variations, which can automatically alternate between three different (and complete) sets of characters, giving the font the proper character of hand writing, mixing: height, weight and inclination. Through its opentype programming, Salinas generates multiple character changes in the text, without losing its surprising legibility in various sizes. The added gestural strokes for titles enriches the spectrum of variants and versatility. Itís ideal for countless pieces of design that require warmth and spontaneity.

LiebeChristmas is a hand-crafted collection of Santas, Rudolphs, gifts, treats and more Christmas items in countless variations and sizes. Create pretty Christmas greetings with a personal touch. Surprise your family and friends by printing individual cards for everyone. Decorate your blog or website for the holiday season. More than 100 carefully crafted drawings are included in this single font and can be used in any text or graphics application. How about creating your own wrapping paper with LiebeChristmas patterns? Or how about making Christmas cards in combination with our popular typeface LiebeErika?

Birthday Wish is a totally off-kilter sans-serif font inspired by a late 70's birthday greeting card. Much like a typographic drunken stumble, this font wonderfully and awkwardly fumbles across designs, surprising with each letter typed. With a pseudo unicase character set, and offbeat letter weighting, Birthday Wish is fun to typeset with, with a cluster of ligature combinations that add to the quirky playfulness. You’ll find this Birthday Wish is a typesetting ride of a font. Try typing standard, all caps, or all lowercase for even more visual variety.

Imagine there's an explosion in a comic book, the exclamation that follows is set in PAGODA INTERNATIONAL. This font is inspired by the graphics on one of Honolulu's 1950's skyscrapers - The Pagoda Hotel with the International Ballroom. Created by former wine label designer, Wesley Poole, Pagoda is the opposite of sophisticated elegance. "Big, fat, and horsy, that's what I was after. It's the wacky juxtaposition of these familiar shapes that makes it work. Just try a couple words. You'll be surprised! I'm glad this one's behind me. It's my first pancake."

A casual semi-connected script, Eubie Script’s letterforms rise and drop to create surprising word shapes, helped by position-specific ligatures and contextual alternates. With tenacious rhythm and dynamic connections, Eubie Script gives power to your headings and overlays. To meet its design goals, Eubie Script draws from the many lettering styles of Harry Knorr, an artist at Globe Poster for over 50 years. The script’s contours are drawn (impossible to write with any tool) like the work of Knorr, who occasionally cut his captions directly into the printing linoleum backwards without preliminary sketching.

Hello, friends! Just this year I went to the United States for the first time. To my surprise, the neighborhoods, streets, and parks that I had only seen in the movies turned out to be true. There is a soul in them. I really enjoyed wandering these endless streets, soaking up this spirit. They feel childishly carefree, as if you were in a movie.Just try this font and understand my feelings. The font will work for almost anything: social media, cards, invitations, announcements. Good luck and love to you!

Cat Burglar is another off-kilter sans-serif font by Pink Broccoli, this time inspired by the titling of a 1961 Looney Tunes cartoon called "The Pied Piper of Guadalupe". As with some of my previous type designs, it is a typographic drunken stumble, wonderfully and awkwardly stumbling across designs, surprising with each letter typed. With an extensive character set, and offbeat letter weighting, Cat Burglar is fun to typeset with, with a collection of double letter ligatures, as well as discretionary ligature combinations that add to the quirky playfulness.

BrownFox was created because I saw a need for a condensed, loose handwriting - I used my trusty nylon marker to create this font - it is rough, yet thin and elegant. BrownFox has a few surprises like some serious ascenders and descenders with an exaggerated x-height. Caps are intentionally simple to maintain an even rhythm. BrownFox works very well in caps, upper-lowercase, lowercase only, small and large. This font will be useful in many applications from invitations through CD album covers. The name was inspired by the other ipsum lorem.:-)

An original typeface designed for ParaType in 2004 by Armenian designer Manvel Shmavonyan. Based on the lettering created in 1970s by outstanding Armenian type designer Henrik Mnatsakanyan (1923-2001) of the same name. In Armenian ‘Haverj’ means ‘Eternally’. The face resembles many regular text serif fonts but elements like serifs and terminals make it eccentric and a little bit funny. The shape of diagonal legs in capital K and R resembles book lettering of the 1950s—60s. Using it in text, advertising and display typography may lead to surprising effects.