Two pieces of vintage sheet music (“Honeymoon Hotel” and “By a Waterfall”) from Warner Brothers' 1933 musical “Footlight Parade” featured a hand-lettered bold alphabet with a touch of the 1930s Art Deco influence. These song sheets served as the basis for Pocomoke JNL. As informal and casual as the design is, its strength is in the boldness of the letter forms (which showcases the era of pen-and-ink display lettering).

a digitization of Remington Elite model typewriter machine alphabet

This type face fills one of the gaps between the world of Roman alphabets and that of linear alphabets. The first to be designed was the set of upper-case letters. The expression of these characters cannot conceal that they were originally intended only for the sculptor's use, as a type face for three-dimensional inscriptions. Their width proportions reflect a dialogue between the contemporary feeling and the legacy of classical Roman inscriptions. The type face was later complemented with a set of lower-case letters and elaborated into further designs. Its clear, concise letter forms end with small serifs which not only make the type face more refined, but above all anchor the individual letter signs visually to the horizontal of the text line. The austere construction of the majority of the letters is balanced by the more exuberant, humanizing forms of the most frequently used letters "a"; "e". (The three variants of the lower-case "e" enable to create rhythmically differentiated texts.) The letters in which a straight stroke is connected with an arch are designed in two ways. That means that the letters "n", "h","m" and the group of letters "b","d","p","q" are conceived in a different way. Thus an interesting tension is created in the structure of the text, which, however, does not endanger legibility. The economizing, slightly narrowed design of this type face predetermines its use for the setting of usual texts. In larger sizes, however, it produces a rather serious, even solemn, impression.

Of all student work produced in Joost Schmidt?s Bauhaus classes, Reinhold Rossig?s (1903?1979) alphabet designs are perhaps closest to his master?s teachings: monolinear, geometric lettering, constructed on grids using compass and ruler. Drafts by Rossig, dated 1929, also demonstrate explorations of letterform width and x-height. Almost ninety years later, Elia Preuss carefully preserves Rossig?s letters and considerations in a proper typeface, by overcoming most of the optical mistakes captured in true geometric letterforms. To carry Rossig?s design further away from Schmidt?s influence, Preuss also lent more characteristic letters found on poster designs by fellow Bauhaus student Hermann Werner Kubsch. Reross is a true Bauhaus-influenced geometric sans, equipped with different historic influences and contemporary features.

A long-set aside Art Deco typeface design begun (but not completed) may or not have been from a vintage source, but its roots go well back into Art Deco lettering. Taking the existing letters and thickening their weights, removing the counters and ending up with a completely new, solid alphabet design resulted in Deco Redux JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The font is named after the Armenian writer Theodoros Grigor Lapchinchian (Armenian Թեոդորոս Գրիգորի Լափչինճյան: March 5, 1873, Constantinople — May 24, 1928), who in 1912 published book "Type and Letter" (Armenian: Տիպ ու տառ), dedicated to 1500th anniversary of the creation of the Armenian alphabet and the 400th anniversary of Armenian printing. The letter shapes are influenced by some Armenian fonts of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Prismatiq JNL was modeled from lettering found in a French alphabet book from the turn of the last century - the type sample appearing online at an image sharing site. All of the imperfections of hand-lettering were left intact. This is a limited character set comprising A-Z, 1-0, basic punctuation, forward slash and dollar and cents signs, and is best used in large headline applications.

This font is based on the handwriting of author Franz Kafka and captures his expressive handwriting style, using the manuscript of The Trial and his diaries as the primary reference. The font presents the elegance and nervousness with which he wrote his letters and book manuscripts. To resemble naturalistic writing and remain as authentic and irregular as possible (without becoming impossible to read), a great number of extended ligatures was added. As an extra, several drawings from Kafka‘s diaries are included. A full international character set is featured.

A funny Script typeface with a simple construction for to show a dynamic texture playing with the baseline. This letters are inspired on the work of House Induestries mixing a traditional serif with a playful script, like some retrospective alphabets in the vintage ads. Enjoy it, and thanks for buy it!

ClickClack is a family designed by Ethan Dunham that is made of hand-drawn typewriter letters. An actual sample of a typewriter alphabet was blown up and carefully traced into the two versions, regular and light. This family has a bouncy, informal feel and is a departure from other typewriter fonts.

Mister Hand was created in 1998 from a found object. Chank scanned it in, cleaned it up a little and voila! It's a retro version of the American Sign Language finger spelling alphabet. Uppercase is only the hand shapes, lowercase has the hand shape with the corresponding letter beside it.

Hasty Hand is a hand-lettered sans serif font whose appearance suggests that it is the work of someone who writes in haste. The font has an uppercase and lowercase alphabet, numbers, punctuation, symbols, and miscellaneous characters. Hasty Hand is ideal for use where a very casual feel is desired.

An offering by lettering artist Harvey Hopkins Dunn for the 1930 classic, American Alphabets, provided the inspiration for this graceful, engaging typeface. Use it liberally to exude elegance, or to turn on the charm. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Montage was designed by Alan Dempsey. Like the name suggests, the design was inspired by the arrangement of elements such as torn paper, cut-outs, scratch board and stencilled letters. Montage is a creative, eye-catching alphabet of casually drawn letterforms set on a background of daub-like brush strokes.

Freestyle Script is the work of designer Martin Wait. It is an informal display typeface which perfectly renders the spontaneous qualities of hand-rendered brush lettering. Its capitals can be used alone in word settings and are complemented by an extensive lower case alphabet which includes ligatures of every imaginable variety.

In their book "Lettering of Today" by W. Ben and Ed C. Hunt, an Art Deco "thick and thin" alphabet with some stylized characters (which leaned a lot toward a calligraphic style) stood out from the rest. This is now available as Stylized Deco JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

One of the lettering examples in the 1913 book “Instructions on Modern Show Writing” is a delightful calligraphic alphabet that’s perfect for everything from show cards to invitational notes to names on certificates. It has been digitally redrawn as Personal Invitation JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

French Calligraphic JNL is actually more semi-calligraphic in nature. Its name takes a descriptive liberty because of the sharp, angled pen strokes of the original hand lettered example found in the 1930s publication "100 Alphabets Publicitaires" by M. Moullet. The design is available in both regular and oblique versions.

This casually elegant script, similar to the logotype lettering found on Mason jars (hence the name), is patterned after an offering from the 1930s chapbook 60 Alphabets by The Hunt Brothers. The Opentype version of this font supports Unicode 1250 (Central European) languages, as well as Unicode 1252 (Latin) languages.

British Stencil JNL was sketched from images of a vintage stencil set made by Reese and Sons of England that was being sold on ebay. In truth, this is a semi-stencil, as some of the characters are solid; lacking the breaks in the letter shapes so typical of stencil alphabets.

This script collection is used in advertising, invitations, greeting cards, and wherever a formal hand-lettered or engraving look is desired. Original Script has an elegant connecting alphabet based on formal handwriting. The Original Script font is a safe choice for invitations to weddings and formal occasions, and personal stationery.

Another gem from the Blandford Press Pen and Brush Lettering and Practical Alphabets, this in-your-face typeface features strong geometric elements, delineated in blueprint fashion. A surefire attention-getter. Both versions of the font include the 1252 Latin and 1250 CE character sets (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Deco Paragraph Initials JNL contains an alphabet based on the typeface Monthly Adventures JNL and is set within an attractively framed border. Suitable for personalized stationery, used as paragraph drop caps or as decorative monograms, these Art Deco-flavored letters add the charm and clean look of the "Streamline Era".

Lysergic is a smoky, swirly, super-psychedelic font that exudes 1960s vibes. This font is a tribute to the work of San Francisco artist Rick Griffin, famous for his psychedelic posters, creative lettering ideas, and especially his Grateful Dead album cover art. Griffin was a master of ink stippling and that particular drawing technique proves to be a great way to embellish this style of lettering. Set your time machine to 1969 and fire up your grooviest designs with Lysergic.

The pages of a vintage sign painter's manual yields many interesting typefaces that reflect on the design styles of years gone by. Eckhardt Display Serif JNL is a distinctive, hand-lettered serif face that has a hint of Art Noveau. Part of a series of sign painter's fonts named in honor of the late Albert Eckhardt, Jr. who owned Allied Signs in Miami, Florida, Jeff Levine continues this series of fonts in tribute to his friend and the art of sign lettering.

Two word examples (“nice” and “bud”) from the J.G. Cooley & Co.’s Specimens of Wood Type catalog for the typeface ‘Roman Triple Extra Condensed Fifty Line’ offered only seven letters to work with. Despite this lack of characters, it inspired Compressed Wood JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

This font is based on an alphabet published by Luca Pacioli in his 1509 mathematical treatise De divina proportione. In this book, Pacioli describes how to build the Roman alphabet geometrically using lines, squares and circles. Pacioli was not the first or the last man in his era to describe the building of letters mathematically. Felice Feliciano did this before Pacioli, and Albrecht Dürer further developed these forms years after. According to Pacioli, the thick strokes should be 1/9th of the height, and the thin strokes should have 1/2 the weight of the thick strokes. I felt that this beautiful alphabet needed to be restored to its full geometric glory and set out to construct an accurate replica using Pacioli's instructions. Included in the font you'll find the letters that have the grid overlay and also the letters without the grid. The letters J, W, U, and Z were not included in the book, so I have created my own versions of these characters that fit into Pacioli's grid. Pacioli shows two different Os in the book, so I have included the second O as well as a second J, Q, and Z as OpenType stylistic alternates. Also included in the font are border patterns and a fleuron taken from the cover of the book.

Wardruna Arabic is a method of writing Arabic with a Runic-like alphabet devised by Devin Lester. He imagined that if some vikings had settled in the Middle East, they might have started speaking Arabic and writing it with a version of the Runic alphabet. This particular alphabet is based on Tolkien's Cirth Runes. A band of vikings went to Baghdad after raiding in Europe. The markets in Constantinople were closed as the Turks had just sacked the city. These men had heard of the great market in Baghdad and went there to sell their wares, seeing that this land was warm and fertile they decided to stay. They ended up settling the land and taking Arab wives and having children, because of thier Northern European accent their Arabic evolved into a part-Arabic dialect of Iraqi arabic. This is why today you see a few Arabs with green eyes and dark blonde or red hair. The Arabic alphabet was too fluid for them and vikings disdained the use of paper as a persons writings could be burned, so the evolved their runes to fit Arabic.

The Stuyvesant fonts include delicate incline alphabets with an engraved look.

The Stuyvesant fonts include delicate incline alphabets with an engraved look.

Mexica is a typographic tribute to Nahuatl, the tongue of the Aztecs, but also the lingua franca of ancient Mexico. ‘Mexica’ is not only the feminized, latinized form of the word ‘Mexico’, but also the name of the inhabitants of this place: the Me-xic-cah. Nahuatl, when composed in the Latin alphabet, abounds in diagonal letter shapes: XYZ are ubiquitous in its classic orthography, just as KW are in its modern one. This visual feature is further enhanced by the absence of some rounded letters such as BDG that depict inexistent sounds in this millenarian tongue. Besides, Nahuatl is language with a tendency to form very long words that give the text quite a distinct appearance, unlike English, for instance, with its abundance of short words. Mexica was designed to look well in all these contexts, and to perform as well as a contemporary, daring, stylish serif type family, with several weights for text and display composition. Further, its terminals and general structure —devoid almost completely of straight lines—are inspired by the angled architecture and ornamentation of the ancient city of Mexico- Tenochtitlan. Mexica received an Award of Excellence at the Type Directors Club of New York annual competition.

Lettering on a menu from a Pennsylvania hotel, circa 1930, provided the inspiration for this happy-go-lucky take on the alphabet. Lowercase letters are variants of the uppercase and kerning has been applied to every possible letter combination, so feel free to double-clutch the shift key to create a truly handlettered feel with this font. Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252 and CE 1250 character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

Bitblox fonts are based on the lettering created for Glyfyx’ eponymous wooden alphabet blocks. The characters are inspired by the low-res bitmap lettering seen on early generation computer devices. The Bitblox family consists of eight pixelated fonts, including a trio of styles that stack up to create a colorful, dimensional effect. An extensive multi-styled dingbat collection is also included. The Bitblox lettering was designed by James Beall with PSY/OPS Type Foundry, for Glyfyx Inc.

26 Flowers is a digital revival and restoration of a beautiful collection of 26 individually unique ornamental letters from historical texts. Each of the 26 letters of the alphabet are contained in a square frame with a different flower in the background and an antique letter in the top right corner; hence, the name 26 Flowers. This highly ornamented typeface is perfect for leading off paragraphs or in any text dealing with the subject of flowers.

Vigorous is a clean and crisp, display font set. As their names imply, Vigorous Lower Case has a lowercase alphabet while Vigorous Small Caps has small caps in place of the lowercase alphabet. Both fonts have the same uppercase alphabet, numbers, accented characters, punctuation, symbols, and miscellaneous characters. The Vigorous fonts are ideal for headlines or titles - wherever a fresh, unique font is desirable. Vigorous Lower Case and Vigorous Small Caps are sold only as a set priced at $20.

Meninas are the new comprehensive collection of innovative craft alphabets and ornaments researched in rare cross-stitch booklets from 1850 to 1930. This alphabet and ornaments series was entirely designed by hand, without use of auto-tracing, by Iza W, from Intellecta Design. Keep your eyes wide-open, because we will launch more amazing alphabets in this collection. “Menina” means “Girl” in Portuguese. Menina Graciosa is a Graceful Girl. See too her sister fonts: Menina Formosa , Menina Carinhosa , Menina Poderosa Ornaments , Menina Espinhosa .

Meninas are the new comprehensive collection of innovative craft alphabets researched in rare cross-stitch booklets from 1850 to 1930. This alphabet series was entirely designed by hand, without use of auto-tracing, by Iza W, from Intellecta Design. Keep your eyes wide-open, because we will launch more amazing alphabets in this collection. "Menina" means "Girl" in Portuguese. Menina Formosa is a Beautiful Girl. See too her sister fonts: Menina Carinhosa, Menina Poderosa Ornaments, Menina Espinhosa, Menina Graciosa Ornaments.

Architype Universal is a collection of avant-garde typefaces deriving mainly from the work of artists/designers of the inter-war years, whose ideals underpin the design philosophies of the modernist movement in Europe. Their ‘universal’, ‘single alphabet’ theory limits the character sets. Architype Tschichold is a faithful rendering of Jan Tschichold’s 1929 experimental alphabet which was influenced by Bayer’s single-alphabet. His design was never put into production. This re-creates his original geometrically constructed design, including some phonetic characters.

Meninas are the new comprehensive collection of innovative craft alphabets researched in rare cross-stitch booklets from 1850 to 1930. This alphabet series was entirely designed by hand, without use of auto-tracing, by Iza W, from Intellecta Design. Keep your eyes wide-open, because we will launch more amazing alphabets in this collection. "Menina" means "Girl" in Portuguese. Menina Carinhosa is a Loving Girl. See too her sister fonts: Menina Formosa, Menina Poderosa Ornaments, Menina Espinhosa, Menina Graciosa Ornaments.

Meninas are the new comprehensive collection of innovative craft alphabets and ornaments researched in rare cross-stitch booklets from 1850 to 1930. This alphabet and ornaments series was entirely designed by hand, without use of auto-tracing, by Iza W, from Intellecta Design. Keep your eyes wide-open, because we will launch more amazing alphabets in this collection. “Menina” means “Girl” in Portuguese. Menina Poderosa is a Powerful Girl. See too her sister fonts: Menina Formosa , Menina Carinhosa , Menina Espinhosa , Menina Graciosa Ornaments .