How does one arrive at a font name? With the thousands of digital typefaces available, it's not an easy process. Bandleader JNL was modeled from the hand-lettered title on a piece of sheet music called "Largo", which means "slow tempo". Since the names "Largo" and "Tempo" were already taken, what other musical theme would fit? The lettering is in an Art Deco style, and Big Band was all the rage of the Art Deco period; therefore "Bandleader". Sometimes the road to naming a font takes on many twists and turns but the end result is always gratifying.

DeVinne Ornamental is a display typeface from the famous Parisian typefoundry Deberny & Peignot, developed around 1900. Its style has become synonymous with the Art Noveau period, which was raging internationally when DeVinne Ornamental's letters were first drawn. The typeface is named after the renowned American printer Theodore Low DeVinne (1828-1914). Optimal uses for DeVinne Ornamental include headlines in magazines and newsletters.

A unique kind of type by Michael Herold: The 14 cuts of Corner are equally distributed to the two style variants A and B. From Thin to Extra Bold, variant A comes with technical and pure forms while B appears with a soft, more personal character. In combination, the two variants add up to a highly versatile family which is very well suited for branding purposes, thanks to its diverse forms of expression. Eine besondere Schriftfamilie von Michael Herold: Die 14 Schnitte der Corner sind auf die beiden Stilvarianten A und B verteilt. Von Thin bis Extra Bold kommt die Corner im Stil A mit technischen, reinen Formen und im Stil B mit weichem, persönlicherem Charakter. Als Kombination ergibt sich eine sehr vielfältige Familie, die sich mit ihren verschiedenen Ausdrucksformen besonders fürs Branding eignet.

While helping produce a trade magazine years ago, I admired the hand-lettering of the art director -- a woman named Marydale -- and suggested she let me model a font after her penmanship. She agreed and drew out the alphabet, and I launched an old copy of Fontographer and (to shorten a long story) ended up developing my very first digital typeface. Which has since, astonishingly, become famous worldwide. So now the real Marydale gets the mixed blessing of seeing her handwriting (and name) plastered all over the planet. Full release has regular, bold, and black weights.

Novelty songs and their often crazy or extra-long titles were all the rage at the beginning of the 20th century. A piece of sheet music for the 1920 song "When Chu-Ching-San weds Paddy McCann" had the title hand lettered in an unusually bold form of Asian-inspired lettering. This has been recreated digitally as the type font named for the song - Chu Ching San JNL.

PT Quadrat Grotesk™ was designed for ParaType in 2001 by Vladimir Pavlikov. An expanded sans serif with square letterforms due to what the face was named. Based on the shapes of one of old Russian wooden types. Wooden types were used for placard display composition at large sizes. Their printouts retained wooden texture and traces of handling. These features are reflected in the shapes of Quadrat Grotesk. It is a good typeface for display and advertising typography.

Euroque is the 23rd font family from Cozyfonts Foundry, a California Foundry established in 2012 by designer and typographic illustrator Tom Nikosey Euroque began with pencil sketches, as all my fonts trace their beginnings. Influenced by European poster art of the 1920s and 1930s Euroque takes its name almost literally, European Style. These fonts are designed as a Small Caps Family, where the lower case mirrors the Upper case in design but its weights are compatible and consistent.

Latin music was all the rage in the United States from the 1930s through the 1950s and songs with a “South of the Border” or “Old Mexico” theme were plentiful. The 1940 sheet music for “Make Love with a Guitar” evoked the idea of serenading one’s lovely lady on horseback while strumming the guitar. ..at least if you went by the by the illustration under the song’s name. As the hand lettered title was rendered in an Art Deco design, it became the basis for Jazz Guitar JNL [which seemed a more befitting name], and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Need to cram a zillion words on to a single page? Nicotine is your vice. Cram it. Nicotine Jazz is a bit more musical as it trades uppercase and lowercase letters for an interesting unicase effect. Italic can be used for extra emphasis. The condensed nature of the Nicotine fonts allows for impressive use at larger, poster sizes. Another interesting tidbit? The I in Nicotine is a silhouette of a traditional filtered cigarette; that's how the font got its name.

Breesh font is a dancing handwriting, quickly trace with a pointed brush. The inspiration come from both asian calligraphy, italic and copperplate alphabets.

Linotype Aroma No.2 appears straightforward in form, completely sans serif, yet with a trace of humanistic features that gives it that extra edge.

Greenhorn is a hand-traced comic type for headlines. Funky, irregular and smiling. The first inspiration comes from the unique lettering of a classic czech cartoonist.

Spiegel Sans combines the shapes and proportions of an American-style gothic – the ultimate industrial typeface – with subtle diagonal stress and almost imperceptible traces of handwriting.

Altra is a family based on a tracing of an old clip art font. I liked the gentle calligraphic look. Consider it a sans serif with style.

Originally Mamontov has been inspired by poster (usually wooden) types of the end of 19th—the beginning of 20th centuries. The type family was named after Savva Ivanovich Mamontov (1841-1918), Russian industrialist and patron of the arts. Massive asymmetric serifs, stocky proportions, type weight... are traces of harsh imperial reality. And soft forms of ovals, exaggerated compensators, humanistic curves of serifs and horizontal strokes betray the sensitivity and artistry of Savva Ivanovich. Mamontov has 25 styles, ranging from Light to Black and from Condensed to Wide, with more than 1000 characters per font.

An online reproduction of a trade ad circa the 1950s for comedian-actor Paul Gilbert featured his name in the hand-drawn lettering that serves as the basis for Stand Up JNL. While the style of the typeface is derivative of the Latin Spur faces used popularly since the 1800s, the playful – almost awkward angles create a casual design that evokes good times. It should be noted that the extremes of such angles might appear ill-spaced unless kerning is turned on within the application where the typeface will be used.

Soerabaja is the old Dutch spelling of Surabaya, an important trading port city in East Java (Indonesia). This all caps art deco font was based on old colonial posters I found, plus a sprinkling of my imagination. It seems I have a weak spot for Art Deco fonts named after Indonesian cities - partly because the country has always interested me and partly because my wife’s family is from Indonesia. Soerabaja is quite an elegant font, so use it for your book titles, restaurant menus and whatever else you can come up with.

This font was made during testing of a neat little application, that traced hand-written letters on the fly. That application was later abandoned, and the font, named Simpel for it's obvious casual simplicity, was finished separately. This story goes up to the year 1998, and recently the font was returned from the archives. SImpel was completly remastered and some useful ligatures were added. It is nice, clean and really, quite simple. Which often comes very handy. It will work well in comic books, magazines and party flyers, for instance.

Unfortunately, Crosshair was inspired by the youthful craze that's all the rage: on-campus shootings. Put the gun down, Junior.

Paula is a non-joining rough brush script with traces of the brush's backstroke that give it that typical look. Paula is an open script with very good readability.

Adieu is an old-fashioned display font traced and modified from a group of Victorian fonts. It is very stylized, but it is very attractive to many of my clients.

ALL CAPS font with lovely traces after the brushstrokes. With contextual alternates, which makes sure that your text varies between 5 different versions of each letter - and they cycle automatically!

Take a classic sans serif typeface, run it through a filter for a "wind" effect then auto-trace the design. The result: a broken, jagged and rough type font called Erosion JNL.

ThinPen is based on an ancestor of the German DIN-Schrift. The font was traced with a plastic template on transparent paper, scanned and worked over carefully to keep the handmade, authentic touch.

NormPen is based on an ancestor of the German DIN-Schrift. The font was traced with a plastic template on transparent paper, scanned and worked over carefully to keep the handmade, authentic touch.

BoldPen is based on an ancestor of the German DIN-Schrift. The font was traced with a plastic template on transparent paper, scanned and worked over carefully to keep the handmade, authentic touch.

The term Sanseki (Japanese for Three [Brush] Traces) is used to describe three famous Heian period calligraphers: Yaseki, Gonseki and Saseki. Not that I would ever dream of comparing my messy brush-work with theirs, but the name stuck and I kind of liked it. I used Chinese ink and a high quality brush (which I got in a sale actually) to create this font. All glyphs were hand painted in one go! Sanseki is a very detailed brush font. Upper and lower case letters mingle and there’s even an alternate for every lower case glyph. Comes with an abundance of diacritics.

French Art Deco lettering found within the pages of the 1934 publication L'Art du Tracé Rationnel de la Lettre (roughly translated to “The Rational Path Art of the Letter”) have provided a number of designs well-suited for digital revival. A hand lettered sans with varying character widths was the basis for Colmar JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. As the source of the lettering design was a French publication, the typeface is named for the city of Colmar, which (according to Wikipedia) is the third-largest commune of the Alsace region in north-eastern France.

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE! STOP THE PRESSES! We have a new Headline for our Cover Story! DAVE GIBBONS is all over the tabloids, the trades AND the quality papers today. Yes, it's the opening of the WATCHMEN movie, but we have a much BIGGER story; the REAL scoop -- and we're announcing it in 72 point type... yes, there's a new addition to the Dave Gibbons family, and our editorial staff have the baby's name and our paparazzi have the pictures! Dave's new little sprog is called... GAZETTE. Man, that kid is gonna get teased at school, Dave.

A wide and thin hand lettered Art Deco design from the vintage French lettering book "L'Art du Tracé Rationnel de la Lettre" was the inspiration for French Deco JNL; available in both regular and oblique versions.

Dolphus-Mieg Monograms is a collection of monograms from a rare cross-stitch booklet from the first year of the 20th Century. This new Monograms series was entirely designed by hand, without use of auto-tracing.

The movie poster promoting the 1962 James Cagney comedy "One, Two Three" had it's text done in free-style hand lettering. Starting with an auto-trace in order to have an isolated version of the black letters separated from the red poster background, the tracing kept the basic forms intact, but with limited accuracy. Cleaning up and digitally reshaping the letters manually to form a more correct version [closer to the original movie poster], additional figures, foreign characters, accents and punctuation were drawn from scratch. This is now available as Handwritten Note JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

This is long awaited thorough revision to Skarpa family. The revision has inculded both another look at letter shapes as well as kerning and metrics of the files. The shapes encapsulated in this font stem from old time architectural drawings hand executed at drawing board with tracing paper and rapidographs. Think of lettering stencils sliding across the tracing paper and craftily exectuted drawing descriptions. The font is based on geometric forms devoid of excessive flourishing. Would suit modern designs either in fashion, technology or laboratory setting. Would look good on door plaques in pharmacy or simple drawer plaques - especially Medium or Bold specimen.

Azalleia Ornaments is a new flourished ornaments typeface. Well elaborated and unusual design, inspired by old cross-stitch and craft books and entirely designed by hand, without use of auto-tracing and available in two different designs.

Atomica looks back to the dawn of the nuclear era when fall-out shelters were all the rage. This font contains 62 Atomic Age symbols and Civil Defense emblems.

Evergreen is Koziupa and Paul going all Zeitgeist after a few Malbec drinks. Two fonts praise nature from when the lights go out to the crack of dawn, and vice versa. That's 24/7/365 of wild leafy Kumbaya. Even butterflies and flowers were mystified so much they had to get in there. Evergreen is local, organic, and certified free trade. At some point we wrote down the name of the jungle where it originated, then lost the parchment in the hot springs a few hours later. But that's immaterial. Crank up your Deep Forest sound, prep your Earthtone and Foliage palettes, and get into the big herbal.

The name Type Warmers JNL traces its lineage to small catalog booklets issued by Indianapolis' Cobb Shinn for his line of letterpress cuts; of which a few can be found included within this typeface. Presumably type could "warm up to" these stock illustrations and work hand-in-hand to deliver the message, hence the "Type Warmers" sobriquet. Originally known for illustrating many attractive and comical postcards of the early 1900s, Shinn moved into the field of purchasing stock art and redistributing them as electrotypes or "cuts", the predecessor to today's digital clip art. A number of the cartoons he sold can be found in the Shinn Kickers JNL font.