Back in the days when we earned our living with a travelling magic show, we took the shaded font Lithotint, filled it in, modified some characters, and here is the result. In those days, to use the font we had to cut and paste stats of individual letters by hand. You have it easier!

Sheet music for a song featured in "East to West", a film starring Mexican bombshell Dolores Del Rio, had the movie's name lettered in a bold sans style with early Art Deco influences. East to West JNL preserves not only the name, but all of the characteristics of this wonderful bit of typographic nostalgia.

Karara Shadow, a complete font set and additional font style of Karara. The word Karara means patience & steady. The style is achieved by practicing and studying the modern techniques to deliver high-end professional font. This specific font had a tint of wall chalking & texture. Carefully engraved and stenciled to delivery clean cuts and design.

A 1930s WPA (Works Progress Administration) poster advertising an exhibit of New Jersey area posters had its main lettering rendered in a very condensed hand lettered interpretation of the ever-popular Futura Black Art Deco style. This has now been re-drawn and digitized as Art Event JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

A 1930s travel poster from American Airlines had the airline’s name in a classic thick-and-thin Art Deco design of hand lettering. With the addition of angular spurs, some of the characters become semi-serif in nature. This type style is now available as Travel Plans JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Drakoheart Revofit is an initiative to make sans fonts. It’s one of my personal favorites, in fact. In its first release, this font had a cool appearance but was improved with better kerning and a cool look in this new release. Perfect to write some digital texts as in web articles, blogs and branding.

A font perfect for not just one, but many projects! Introducing Oceanwide Pro, a sans that loves to be used in just about any situation! Designed with ultra clean lines and versatility in mind, Oceanwide wants to be your new favorite sans! Oceanwide’s ultra clean letters work anywhere you want to communicate orderliness and competence, and designed to build trust and rapport with your audience. Its wide proportions make it ideal for display and logo use. Oceanwide especially shines for white/bright letters on black/dark backgrounds! That’s because the inside shapes are nearly perfect circles in many weights. Here's a quick video tour of Oceanwide Pro by Dave Lawrence, including all the great things Oceanwide can be used for! We've tested Oceanwide for these industries, with stunning results!: Tech Arts Fashion & Style Business & Branding Corporations Logistics Architecture Food and many more... Oceanwide can be used for: Headers Subheadlines Logos Even body text, if tracked. Print & Screen The styles it can take are also many. It's great for: Modern/minimalist design Flat design Cut out design User Interface (UI) Technical designs In combination with text effects, even for grunge and other situations. And many others... DESIGN FEATURES Simplicity Tall x-height Hand-sloped obliques (italics) Narrow spacing Semi-wide proportions Expert kerning Well proportioned, usable lights & extra lights Large caps Great ALL CAPS MODE Uppercase punctuation Uppercase spacing with California Type Foundry’s Smart Tracking™ Advanced fraction support Proportional lining figures Thick joins Smooth curves Sturdy—great for textures and effects Variable font available Latin Pro character set for Central European languages. That's the writing for over 782 languages and transliterations worldwide! DESIGN STORY—THE FORGOTTEN SANS by Dave Lawrence, Lead Designer, California Type Foundry Adrian Frutiger was the 20th century master of sans, but I didn't realize he had made—not one—but TWO geometric sans! It wasn't until I had purchased the book “Adrian Frutiger: Typefaces”. I had hoped to someday meet Adrian Frutiger, but he passed away that very same year. Here is the story of Frutiger's forgotten sans. Back in 1968, Frutiger was approached by Pentagram to make a design for British Petroleum. They wanted a "new version of Futura". However, they wanted him to make a couple adjustments. First, they felt that Futura was "too fiddly." By this, they meant that it narrowed too much at the joins. (Joins are for example where the round and straight parts of the 'd' meet.) This is something that is necessary for small print text (to prevent ink clogging), but is not necessary at large sizes. Second, they wanted it to be entirely geometric, using the circular shape with minimal optical corrections. Unfortunately this font was not even used very consistently in the BP brand. A haphazard mix of Futura and Frutiger's BP font ensued. It was then replaced by another font design very soon after. My design is different in several ways. First, the commas and quotes are a more modern style. I tried his original commas, but these just didn’t work to 21st century eyes. Second, in his drawings, Frutiger went for a more standard u with a downstroke on the right. However, Oceanwide has a simpler u. Third, I made more optical adjustments. At the direction of his employer, Frutiger reluctantly put no font optical corrections into the letters. So I think my optical adjustments are similar to what Frutiger would have wanted. Fourth, I extended the weight into the light and extra light ranges. Fifth, the rest of the font I created according to the principles of Adrian Frutiger, but with no sources for inspiration. Here is Frutiger’s design philosophy, in his own words: “If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The spoon and the letter are tools; one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page... When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful.” The words about the spoon were the ones I kept in my mind as I tried to make the curves ultra smooth, and the shapes ultra simple. Hopefully this font is a worthy successor to the font that inspired it. Released on the 93rd birthday of Adrian Frutiger, to celebrate the life and achievements of this amazing designer. ——————— Simplicity. Versatility. Oceanwide.

Cities often have their own voice, a voice that can be read... in each location and each business, voice portraying a cultural fabric with an array of manifestations. Balneario Script is a small tribute to a coastal port and tourist city. Through the Sign Painters, in its golden age, a clear, friendly, practical, and functional way of making itself heard evolved. Far from wanting to be perfect, a typeface seeks to be close, warm, and casual. Inspired by the gestures of the brush, Balneario Script reverts to the use of “Casual Letters” so used by Sign Painters. In this adaptation, we sought to adjust its morphology to optimize its performance in small formats and extend the system to include lower case letters as part of the set. The set of fonts has two script weights in addition to an all caps version. The design emphasizes creating a harmonious morphological criterion. Friendly, rhythmic, and with a firm stroke Balneario Script is unique, ideal for headlines and short texts that need to be gestural but simple and highly functional. This typeface was designed to be used in promotional posters or for relaxed and fun Packagings. Balneario Script goes beyond constructive or functional aspects. It seeks to capture the smell of the sea, the warm summer breeze and the nostalgic feeling of a city that from its daily life, knew how to forge a unique personality. This atmosphere allows it to host millions of tourists year after year, and with them reinforce their spirit each summer.

«Quotes» is the second typeface calligraphed by Yani Arabena, designed along with Guille Vizzari and Ale Paul, for Sudtipos. Being thrilled by the use of the pointed brush, spontaneous messages, gesture and freshness to represent inspirational phrases and quotes written by hand, «Quotes» comes in two handwriting styles: Script and Caps. «Quotes Script» and «Quotes Caps» are thought together and complement each other filling with rhythm and infinite sensations to the spoken words. A more free and spontaneous version –Script–, joined by an uppercase system –Caps–, that offers a huge amount of alternate glyphs, ligatures and connectors, to enrich different messages brought to life with this type family. «Quotes Script» counts on a great variety of alternate signs in its lowercase as well as its uppercase letters. It hands a combination of ligatures and capital alternates that allows to shape the beginnings and endings of words and phrases intended to be inspiring and to inspire others that read them. «Quotes» also stands for the fashion universe, Gourmet, Natural, the D.I.Y. passionates, and for all those who seek for the Handcrafted spirit and agrees that it adds an added value to its products and in their communication possibilities. Nowadays, new trends in the calligraphic and drawn letters fields, have lead to the use of the brush pen as a daily practice, bringing to life phrases that motivates people to share their thoughts. «Quotes» is a typeface that invites to write, share and influence others to make their own. Sometimes a feeling can’t be explained, but «Quotes» is a font that can.

An old printer's advertising cut for Red Star Oil Stoves yielded a typeface that was both vintage and somewhat techno at the same time. Originally drawn as a slanted logo, the individual letters had an array of chamfered, angled and flat sides combined with a bold outline. This font is available in both vertical and oblique versions.

A 1928 menu for the restaurant “Rotisserie Du Cardinal” had the word “Cardinal” hand lettered in quite an unusual Art Nouveau type design consisting of thick and thin lines using angles to form the letter shapes. This eccentric (yet charming) style of lettering is now available as Rotisserie Menu JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

The concept of this letter is calmness. I created a variety of sans-serif fonts, and when I listed the fonts I had created, I was surprised that their shapes were not very different from each other. Among them, this font calmly caught my eye. The power of quiet progress is felt in this unremarkable form.

Rock Face was inspired by a crude but effective home made sign I came across advertising a garage sale. The lettering was created using sticky black insulation tape which, like a child's drawing, had a certain naive charm. The type design presented here is obviously more considered, but I like to think it has the same raw dynamism.

A friend bought me a Chinese calligraphic brush set in a beautifully decorated box. I started to letter the alphabet on parchment, in my own hand, using quick strokes and found the resulting script had an interesting energy to it. After further refinement in my font application software 'Swordtail' was born. A great free-hand script.

The Century Old Style font family was modeled on Century Expanded which had been cut in 1900. Similar weights and proportions were maintained but the letter shapes were made more elegant by the introduction of a number of old style characteristics. The Century Old Style font family is a useful text design that offers good legibility and economy.

The Century Old Style family was modeled on Century Expanded, which had been cut in 1900. Similar weights and proportions were maintained, but the letter shapes were made more elegant by the introduction of a number of old style characteristics. The Century Old Style family is a useful text design that offers good legibility and economy.

Venecian Old Face fonts had a strong influence on typeface design in the 1930s and 1940s in England. Such influence is evident in the font Electra, designed by William A. Dwiggins for Linotype in 1935. Electra combines its classic roots with the Zeitgeist of the 1930s, also displaying characteristics of the Bauhaus and Art Deco styles.

One of the type examples found within the pages of “Lettering” by Harry B. Wright (1950) is a bold hand lettered serif typeface with a unique twist – the slab serifs had rounded corners, looking very much like show card lettering of the early 1900s. This design is now available digitally as Maybrook JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

A 1932 fan magazine from Spain entitled “Films Selectos” (“Select Films”) had those words hand lettered in a decorative Art Deco type style that was a cross between the “Futura Black” style of stencil influenced display lettering and “Fiesta” lettering. This hybrid design is now available digitally as Dance and Sing JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

I was doing the laundry the other day and, as usual, I was going through the pockets of my jeans. After I had emptied my party pockets, I figured it was a great name for a new font! So, without further ado: here’s Party Pocket: a handwritten all caps font - great for product packaging, greeting cards and posters!

This charming, disarming, roly-poly typeface is based on handlettering discovered on a Sabena Airlines travel brochure of the 1930s. Include it in your next project, and a good time will be had by all. Both versions of this font contain complete Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

Originally designed in 2005 to be used in a brochure project, Jessica is a typewriter face with a sinister mood. Its peculiar original features have been retained but on the other hand, the font has had a monospacing treatment and some Open Type programming added for a more contemporary feel. The extended character set covers most European languages.

Tequila… I have to admit that I am not a drinker. I do like Tequila, though, even though I can’t remember when I last had a shot. Tequileria is a very recognisable inline display style font. It would look great on posters and book covers, packaging and even bottles (with or without tequila). Comes with an abundance of diacritics.

A British boxing film from 1953 called “The Square Ring” had its titles and credits hand lettered in a slab serif type style commonly referred to as “Egyptian”. Other familiar type fonts which share this influence are Karnak, Stymie and Beton. Sporting Event JNL was modeled from the film’s titles and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

A 1935 song with the unusual title of "Dinner for One Please, James" had its title hand lettered on the cover of the sheet music with simple, condensed letters made by a round point dip pen. This has been reproduced in a digital font as Pen Lettering Sans JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Tombstones tumble as the night shift begins; as bloodsucking bats turn into pale predators and the undead reach through the dirt that covers their coffins to crush and destroy those who dare cross the cemetery path... Finally there emerges a cold cast of creepy characters, a macabre cadre of lurid letters we had to call… GRAVEYARD SMASH.

An assortment of antique, hand-punched brass stencils from Australia [used for crate marking and shipping] served at the models for Aussie Stencil JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. The lettering of the original stencil punches had rounded edges to the characters; looking more machine rendered than hand punched into the brass sheets.

Dance Lesson JNL is a reinterpretation of the popular "Latin Bold" typeface. The font's name is a reference to the Latin dance craze of the 1950s, when the Cha-Cha, Meringue, Tango, Mambo and even the "Chalypso" - a hybrid of Cha-Cha and Calypso rhythms had everyone moving to the beat of Central and South America.

Imagine that you had a bunch of pencils of various sizes and you wanted to make a set of letters with them. You would probably come up with something similar to one of these three typefaces. It is caps only, but some of the characters on the lower-case keys are different from those on the upper-case keys.

The sheet music for the 1914 Word War I comic novelty song "When the War Breaks Out in Mexico I'm Going to Go to Montreal" had one of those overly-worded song titles popular during this period (13!), along with interesting sans serif hand lettering. It now debuts digitally as Conscription JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Scriptissimo-Forte is the bold version of Scriptissimo. When using the normal cut of Scriptissimo I sometimes had the feeling that I could well use a bolder cut to make a bigger impression, so I simply made that cut for myself. I think you can use it too; try it out. Yours very bold scriptissimo, Gert Wiescher

A tessellation is a shape that can be used to completely fill the plane—simple examples are isosceles triangles, squares, and hexagons. Tessellation patterns are eye-catching and visually appealing, which is the reason that they have long been popular in a variety of decorative situations. These Tessie fonts have two family members, a solid style that must have different colors when used and an outline style. They can be used separately or they can be used in layers with the outline style on top of the solid style. For rows to align properly, leading must be the same as point size. Shapes that tessellate and also resemble real-world objects are often called Escher-like tessellations. This typeface contains Escher-like tessellations of birds. A number of years ago I decided to see how many of the 28 Heesch types of tessellations I could use to make birds standing on the backs of other birds. I found standing bird patterns for all 17 of the types that had either translated or glided edges. The TessieStandingBirds typefaces contain the standing-bird shapes that I discovered. At first glance they seem to be quite similar, but small differences matter in how they fit together. Most of the patterns require more than one character. The sample file here shows how pieces fit together to give tessellating patterns. (Earlier tessellation fonts from IngrimayneType, the TessieDingies fonts, lack a black or filled version so cannot do colored patterns.)

Inka is the name by which the closest-ones called my partner. Inka is also the name of a text typeface – in its form very friendly and welcoming. The same way as relationships develop through the life, text typefaces develop, too. I had started the work on this typeface about the same time as I met Inka, while reaching the final output has been a long and progressive process. Inka is a modern serif typeface with wide universality in functions (various editorial usages as books, magazines, annual reports…). The concept and the scope of the complete type family are based on the principle of optical sizes of the typeface designed for the particular use of the size of typesetting. Inka consists of several drawing variations for the typesetting of small sizes (Small), text typesetting (Text), larger typesetting sizes (Title), and headlines sizes (Display). Two constructive alternatives, differing in the height of the construction of the font signs, further extend the variability of the usage of the typeface. Inka A has classical proportions ideal for book typesetting. Inka B has lower ascenders and descenders, lower uppercase glyphs and numbers. Typeface with such construction allows us to use the typesetting efficiently while using tighter leading and still looking more contemporary. Each of the font set (Display, Title, Text, Small) consists of four weights (Regular, Medium, Bold, Black), each has wide character set and a lot of OpenType features. “Inka is dedicated to Inka.”