Once upon a time, in the days BC (that's Before Computers) there lived a very talented group of men and women whose job it was to render ads by hand. So skillful were these people that some say it was possible to actually identify the typefaces that the layout artists were emulating. Their renderings were swift and slick, no time for detail as it was necessary to do a whole bunch of variations, usually within ridiculous deadlines. Their only tools: bullet-tip markers and bond paper - often mistakes resulted but no time to re-do and white paint was totally unacceptable - just let the slipups be. Here's a simulation of their craft, we don't really know what typeface this was supposed to represent… any ideas?

On occasion, when seeking retro source material for font designs, one can unearth interesting examples of typography that bridges decades with its ahead-of-its-time style. The songwriter credits on one particular piece of vintage sheet music had both the Art Deco influence but took on more of a techno look that was popularized in the 1980s. This hybrid of generations is the basis for Deco of Tomorrow JNL.

Someday, a long time from now, in a galaxy not so very far away, you'll find yourself Suddenly transported to the nether-realms of Elsewhere, bathed in the light of the mystic moons of Meanwhile... While you're waiting for that day, check out this font by John "JG" Roshell. It may not provide you with the same transcendental experience, but JG assures us that it really is the next best thing.

Where Modern is too fragile and Century too boring, Hercules comes with its elegant forms and, at the same time, with sufficient firmness to be usable for longer texts. In its heavy, bold designs it approaches Falstaff, while in the light ones it has some features which are taken over from Didot or from Modern. The text designs have been corrected for small sizes. The range of its use is, therefore, quite extensive - from dictionaries and technical literature through magazines to art posters and advertising materials. Suitable combination: Splendid Quartett (especially recommended), Excelsor Script, Plagwitz, but also Zeppelin and Compur.

I do groceries a couple of times a week. When I am shopping for food, I always read the ingredients list; I don’t want too much sugar, nor palm oil, trans fats or a lot of E numbers. It used to be quite hard finding products that didn’t contain artificial flavours or colouring, but it is getting better. Artificial Flavour is an anti-ode to the time we couldn’t get enough of the stuff - it is a handmade, all caps font which comes with extensive language support and a sweet set of alternates.

It is an Extra Condensed, Extra Light, Extra experimental and Extra display font. Extra C is a fun font that doesn't take itself too seriously. Ideal for those who need a font with great character and personality but at the same time a delicate touch in their graphic pieces. EXTRA C has 4 static weights in addition to a variable version.

In 1932, Xanti Schawinsky (1904?1979) designed an alphabet that combines two styles: a neo-classic stroke contrast paired with characteristics of stencil lettering. This mix is a child of its time and seems to reflect the Swiss and Italian biography of Schawinski. Luca Pellegrini took on the modern look and re-drew the letterforms, interrupted by subtle spaces where thick and thin strokes meet. Although Schawinsky had already designed a complete alphabet and figures in the early 1930s, Pellegrini took the character set to another level, adding currency signs, mathematical symbols and all kinds of punctuation ? anything needed to set more than just headlines. Xants is a blend of Swiss elegance and exclusiveness with Italian charm and imperfection, a combination that never gets old.

This is the kind of letters I drew in school back in the 1980ies. I would never have guessed that I would do the same thing like 40 years later! I remember making a simple space game for my VIC-20 computer, and I needed some "data letters" (as I called it) - as far as I can remember, this is close to what I made 40-like years ago. Also, I was inspired by the well known series "Stranger Things" - you know, all that 80ies theme stuff took me down memory lane! :) Anyway, all the letters are handdrawn, using a squared paper as guide - at it may look simple, but it took me quite some time to finish this font (hence the name!)

Vulnerable is an elegant script typeface inspired by a vintage type specimen I found some time ago at an art fair. Thin to thick contrasting lines and elegant curves make Beginta the perfect font for this type of logo and display purposes. Hope you enjoy it Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns you may have and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Wroxeter is Greater Albion Typefounders' customary Black Letter release for Christmas 2013. It's a typeface family for all times of year though, a good clear traditional black letter re-creation offered in a family of four typeface:- regular, wrought (a hand-tooled look a la Mr F Goudy), oblique and narrow forms. The tradition of typefounders' black letter revivals which don't over-burden themselves with historical precedent continues in this highly refined and polished family.

Welcome to the world of Scradl - where fonts become the tool of the cutter and the artist at the same time. These letters, as if cut out of paper without preliminary drawings, are rough, angular and full of character. The main font is the canvas for your creativity. Additional variations add a stroke, shadow, or even a sticker effect, creating a harmonious visual interaction. Features: - Multilingual - Kerning - Ability to adapt letters to other languages

The initial inspiration for Technical Standard VP came from examining precisely machined labels on tools from cameras to cars, which need to be legible at all sizes. The streamlined look such processes achieve was reinterpreted and refined - the resulting font at the same time being robust and stylish, universal and unique, with its ten distinct styles offering great versatility. With 1120 glyphs in each style, it guarantees full support for all Latin languages.

Waddle is inspired by the playfulness of mid-century jazz albums, opening title sequences and movie posters. Friendly, rounded, slightly roughed, with a bouncy baseline, this unique typestyle boasts a generous number of glyphs and ligatures across all three weights. Waddle Thin is perfect for body copy and is both fun and elegant. Waddle Plump has been designed for bold headlines and titles. Waddle Regular is an ideal all-rounder. Combine the Waddle Family for maximum affect the next time you need to get a playful and positive message across to an audience of any age. Not too kiddy, not too serious ... just right.

Bucktooth is a cartoony typeface, inspired by vintage funny-animal comic books, suitable for children's entertainment, packaging or movie titles. Fancier and more upscale than your usual toon font, Bucktooth is fun with a touch of class.

My second font for 2009, Bling is a hoot. This vaguely Deco, sparkly sans is for those heads that need bling. This is the first font released in a long time without my complete feature set. It has lining and oldstyle figures, many wild ligatures, the x-height is too high to make a small caps set worth the effort. It's just for fun. Enjoy!

Harlan is from another place and time. But not just one specific place or time– with its barely-there, knife's-edge serifs, and its smooth curves and flourishes, Harlan feels both vintage and modern; both feminine and masculine. Inspired by the Baltimore bar "WC Harlan", which in turn was inspired by the old candle-lit bars of France, the tucked-away osterias of Italy, and the antique books and journals one might find in a patron's hand. It's a font you'll reach for when you're looking for something refined and elegant, but not too stylized or stuffy.

Now here's a font that is named Like Butterflies, but has got nothing to do with butterflies! What? Why? Well, I recently heard the song "Even flow" by Pearl Jam and took a trip down memory lane - back to my early twenties. I remember how the lyrics affected me, and had an impact on how my life changed the years to follow. Maybe the style of the font does not reflect the inner meaning of the song, but it does reflect a look back in time for me - and the change that took place. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy the somewhat simple, handmade style of Like Butterflies and the 4 versions that works very well together! Please notice that each letter has got 5 slightly different versions to choose from!

Sewing Patterns 3 is the latest installment in the Sewing Patterns font series and this time it's all menswear. This dingbat was inspired by men's fashions from the 1920s to the 1960s. Like it's predecessors, the numbers take a quick dive into children's styles from those eras.

Re-tooled from the QBF Collection.

Re-tooled from the QBF Collection.

Re-tooled from the QBF Collection.

Re-tooled from the QBF Collection.

Re-tooled from the QBF Collection.

Muscle came from the original sketches for Sneakers. At the time my concentration with Sneakers was to create a curvier, chunkier display. I left Muscle behind, thinking it was too masculine. Rather than discard those original sketches, I decided to make it even heavier, reduced the total number of weights, create a function small cap system that when integrated with the lowercase makes a great biform component for short display settings.

Introducing our first old english black letter Royal Grande. Quite basic anatomy not the contemporary style. With this not too complicated black letter that make this font good for general display projects. We also make it a black letter family because we rarely see this kind of option in the market. Another good news , we also offer the variable format this time for the new font enthusias community.

I designed this font because it didn't exist - it’s based on hand rendered type created for black and white line marker scamps used in the advertising industry. I use it that way and it’s saved me a LOT of hand-rendering time over the years. Of course, Scamps works as an informal marker script in its own right too. I’ll be interested to see what you do with it.

Spanish Main is a revival of an old MacKeller Smiths & Jordan font named Sloping Black. Like most foundries MacKeller Smiths & Jordan doesn't display all the letters of the fonts in their specimen books so it took a little more time to find the complete character set for this old beautiful classic font. New in this version is the addition of a Greek character set which is experimental as you normally don't see Old English style fonts include a Greek alphabet.

I have a lot of pencils, but when I need one, they seem to have grown legs and have disappeared! When I decided I wanted to create a pencil font, it took me a long time to find the right pencil for the job! Wandering Pencil is a nice, handmade font. It is a bit shaky, a bit rough, but it does have class and will look nice on your designs! Comes with diacritics and double letter ligatures for the lower case.

No, we’re not referring to the strange phenomenon of babies who are born pinkies first, and we’re not talking about downloading oven-fresh loaves of bread byte by byte! If you have any UNDERSTANDING of the name of this font then you’re in good shape, because we won’t be REINVENTING it any time soon. Created by John Roshell for the incomparable Scott McCloud to letter REINVENTING COMICS, this friendly & easy-to-read pen style later appeared on the letters pages of ELEPHANTMEN.⁠

This font is a clean, modern sans serif bold. Named after “De Rotterdam”* this huge and super cool building (read the story below). Great for headlines, Posters, Flyers but also well legible at small size in large texts. Contains All European language accents and characters. --- The Story --- *This complex is located in the Kop Van Zuid district of Rotterdam, on Wilhelminapier. I was lucky to see this building from the beginning (2009) growing up (2013) That time when I was working and living here. I was always amazed by the design and how huge it is every time I took a look at it while driving or walking on the Erasmus Bridge. When I was going to work or just hiking around the city. It has a special meaning and message for me: I started creating fonts in my free time in 2010 when I came to this city to work. I was factory worker, dishwasher etc. I grew together with this amazing construction from brick to brick, step by step. By the time its construction finished, I was able to quit my day job and become a full time freelance designer.

My font Shadowmoon was created with the PowerPoint shape moon and just like the real moon, my font has amazing curves that brightly standout. The curves take on a flowing action that visibly attracts an amazing style.

Reservation Wide is intended for headlines with its relatively snug letterspacing and extended forms. Its simplicity will accommodate smaller sizes and lower resolution displays. OpenType Stylistic Alternates for characters 'a', 'g' and 't' lend an even simpler finish. The hand-drawn curves and angled stroke endings temper the otherwise rigid proportions of the family. This painterly tendency becomes more apparent in the heavier weights keeping them from looking too imposing. The design first took shape as a custom font named Majestos for the cable channel The Food Network . It can be found in their growing online and printed presence in addition to their broadcast identity for which it was developed.

Nadirii Pro Greek Cyrillic Font is a fun display typeface with a nostalgic touch. In fact, this typeface supports over 30 languages and it can be a perfect match for all your food packaging projects. Of course, you can use it for organic handcrafted products branding. Also, it can be an ideal tool for storytellers, too! In other words, the crafty feeling of this font is pairing perfectly with illustrations, book covers and handmade social media content. In addition, Nadirii Pro Font supports extended Greek diacritics or Polytonic Greek. Therefore, this feature is perfect for writing Byzantine, Katharevousa and Greek-Orthodox texts, with a modern twist.