Schoolyard Blues JNL is based on the hand lettered title found on the sheet music for the 1938 song "I Was Late for School". A condensed sans serif with chamfered corners, it reflects the Art Deco influences of the day in some of the letter forms. This type design is available in both regular and oblique versions.

In the early 1960s, the Duro Decal Company of Chicago, Illinois added to its line of water-applied decal lettering a retail sign cabinet of die-cut, pressure sensitive vinyl letters and numbers. Four of the six sizes offered for sale were cut from white plastic with a black outline and a secondary gold inline for a tri-color effect. Sign Stickers JNL emulates as closely as possible the look of these nostalgic pieces, complete with the slight shifts in line weight due to hand-cut silk screens and the printing process. For those of you who prefer to make your own multi-colored letters, a three piece fill font set is available for the low price of a single font purchase. Combine the backfill, midfill and frontfill layers for a truly retro look!

Art Nouveau lettering on the cover of sheet music for the 1911 song "The Skeleton Rag" (by Edward Madden and Percy Wenrich) is both the lettering inspiration and namesake for Skeleton Rag JNL.

Rhineland Roman JNL was modeled from the hand lettered title of some 1939 German sheet music entitled "Ich Hab'Mir Fur Grinzing", and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The sheet music for the 1939 tune "Chico's Love Song (Ma-La-Ja Fa-La Pas-Ka Lah-Ta) [Cuban Double Talk]" may have had an odd title, but the main portion of it was hand lettered in an interesting style. Condensed letters with rounded corners complemented by sharp lines and angles give the characters an almost futuristic look, despite the fact that they were designed during the Art Deco era. This became the basis for Song Composer JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Lumberyard Stencil JNL was inspired by the image of an antique brass stencil that was probably used for marking various wood products by a lumber company. It's available in both regular and oblique versions.

The lettering for Fine Dining JNL was inspired by the opening titles for the 1940 Barbara Stanwyck-Fred MacMurray film "Remember the Night". A stylized Art Deco sans, the typeface conjures up images of elegant dining, being out on the town and all we warmly associate with the night life of the 1930s and 1940s.

Theater Tickets JNL was inspired by a photo of the marquee signage for Detroit’s Majestic Theater (built in1934), and is available in both regular and oblique versions. The theater was renovated and restored in 1987 and its marquee replicated the original one. What’s interesting is that the signage actually resembles squared pen lettering with rounded corners.

Lettering Lesson JNL is a bold serif alphabet found within the pages of the 1922 instructional booklet from the St. Louis Show Card School, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Poster Casual JNL is based on the hand lettered title on the cover of the 1929 sheet music for the song "Give Yourself a Pat on the Back"; touted at the time as being "the cheer-up song of England". Available in both regular and oblique versions, the font is perfect for applications where a less-formal look is desired in headlines or brief text.

Some vintage Beacon metal door letters used for identifying addresses on home and business buildings was spotted in an online auction from England. Those few letters were the inspiration for Home Address JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Arch Creek JNL is Jeff Levine's all-caps re-interpretation of a classic typeface of the past; Beton. Clean lines and slab serifs make this design a wonderful display face for attention-getting headlines. The beautiful watercolor print used in the font flag is by a good friend of Jeff's - Miami artist Michael George, and is used by permission.

Stencil Package JNL has its design roots in the brand name hand-lettered on the paper sleeves for the short-lived Stencil-It line of lettering guides produced in 1955 as a direct competitor to Stenso Lettering Guides. Formed by Bernie Aronson [a relative of the Libauers who owned the Stenso Lettering Company and who once worked for them] along with a financial partner (noted artist) Sidney Levyne, the company was soon put out of existence by a court action. It re-emerged in 1956 as the E-Z Letter Stencil Company and existed until the 1990s. Stencil Package JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

An unsold 1973 TV pilot for the series “Catch 22” (based on Joseph Heller’s 1961 book and the subsequent 1970 movie) had its title hand lettered in an extra bold stencil type style. Heller coined the phrase as a satire on absurd military rules and bureaucracy. Although the show’s title provided only five characters to work with, there was enough inspiration there to create the military styled Enlisted Stencil JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. According to Wikipedia: “A catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations.”

Flirtation Walk JNL was inspired by the lettering on the covers of sheet music for songs taken from the 1934 Dick Powell-Ruby Keeler movie "Flirtation Walk". The typeface features some stylized characters as well as the more familiar Art Deco character designs, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Retro Resort JNL contains twenty-six Deco-style hotels signs for recreating the flavor of the 1940s.

Press Run JNL is a reinterpretation of the classic typeface Cheltenham Condensed taken from actual screen captures of vintage newspaper headlines.

A piece of sheet music for “Broken Blossoms” circa the 1920s or early 1930s has its cover title hand lettered in a wide thick-and-thin Art Deco design. This is now available as Flower Shop JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

An image found online of a vintage storefront sign for the Kraus Photo Shop was the inspiration for Photo Developer JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. The sign featured a thick and thin Art Deco style lettering with an inline cutting through the thicker strokes. Before the advent of digital photography, and way before chain stores offered in-house processing, neighborhood photo labs were the only place for getting prints from your roll film (unless you wanted to send the film into Kodak for developing and printing). Customers of these stores could also purchase additional film, cameras and photographic accessories from the same location.

Ranch Hand JNL is a tall, condensed wood type with slab serifs. The font is somewhat bolder in weight than Nostrand JNL, but like its counterpart, fully captures the spirit and flavor of Nineteenth Century advertising, fliers and notices.

Bulk Weight JNL is a stripped down version of Inline Square JNL (based on 1930s sheet music hand lettering) with the inline removed. What is left behind is a thick, bulky, ultra bold lettering style suitable for attention-getting headlines. Bulk Weight JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

By the 1990s, the availability of font creation software opened the door to an explosion of creativity, experimentation and exploration into the world of digital typography by amateur and professional alike. The undisputed king of the freeware fonts was Ray Larabie through his Larabie Fonts website. It seemed at the time that Ray’s output was endless, and he amassed dozens upon dozens of fonts that ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime. In fact, Ray was the driving force of encouragement and a behind-the-scenes “mentor” who helped Jeff Levine Fonts get underway in January of 2006. As Larabie’s focus changed to higher-quality commercial type design with the launch of Typodermic, Inc., many of his “less than perfect” font experiments were withdrawn and shelved. Ray eventually turned those lost (and sometimes questionable) typefaces into a bundled zip archive released into the public domain through Creative Commons. One particular design “Boron” (circa 1996) featured computer-oriented lettering as if etched onto a circuit board. Running with this idea, and with Ray's approval, the electronic elements were stripped away, the characters cleaned up and modified, and the font reworked in Retro Checkbook JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Stencil-like lettering appearing on a 1930s WPA (Works Progress Administration) poster for the Pennsylvania Game Commission saying “Protect Our Birds” is the basis for Fall Fashion JNL.

During the heydey of automobile travel hundreds of motels, motor courts and tourist cabins sprung up along the roadways in order to offer weary drivers (and most often their families) rest with a night's lodging. Tourist Cabin JNL takes the inline portion from the inline font Asbury Park JNL and creates this pleasant monoline design. The original design inspiration (from which the inline portion of the letters was taken) was a 1930s WPA (Works Progress Administration) Federal art project poster with the hand-lettered words “Work with Care”

Antique Ornaments JNL collects twenty-six vintage printers' ornaments from the 1800s into one convenient digital font file.

A condensed, light face spurred serif alphabet was shown on an antique catalog page from Spon & Chamberlain Publishers as “French”. The catalog likely sold tools and dies to stonecutters for making inscriptions in marble, granite and so forth. This elegant design is available digitally as Nouveau Thin JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

The title on the 1925 sheet music for “By the Light of the Stars” was hand lettered in an eccentric Art Nouveau type style with varying character shapes and line widths. This is now available as Erratic Nouveau JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Handmade Dropshadow JNL was modeled from lettering found on a vintage silk screened metal sign used for point-of-sale marketing. Before the advent of computers and modern techniques, silk screens were hand cut using material called frisket and knife tools, and the lettering reflected the human inconsistencies of cutting these lettering into the template surface for transfer.

Cellophane Tape JNL is a stripped-down and slightly modified version of Eckhardt Trilinear JNL with open-ended letters. While the name Cellophane Tape JNL is nostalgic (tape is no longer made from cellophane), its still a fun, novelty font for many applications.

Tourist Spot JNL is the same lettering style as Old Tijuana JNL, but with the squiggly inside lines stripped away. The original design was modeled from the hand lettered title on the cover of the 1939 sheet music for "Class Will Tell" and is available in both regular and oblique versions. Casual and playful in nature, the font can be used by itself or combined with Old Tijuana JNL for any project that promotes festive occasions.

The cover of the 1938 sheet music for "Treasure Island March" had its title hand lettered in a rough-hewn Western style with overtones of Art Deco influence. All of the characters were "cleaned up" for the digital font, but still retain the basic designs with their irregular, eccentric look. The result is Western Deco JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The hand lettered titles and credits from the 1958 war film “The Young Lions” command your attention with a bold block slab serif type style. This design has been digitally recreated as No Entry JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The Federal Music Project was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's WPA (Works Progress Administration), putting many people back to work in the Depression years of the 1930s. A hand-lettered poster advertising an "American Music Festival" featuring the Bridgeport Symphony Orchestra offered up the extra bold Art Deco inspiration which became Music Festival JNL

At first glance, Typewriter Sans JNL seems to look like the pantograph lettering of an engraved sign or the rounded-end lettering from an architect's templates. It might also be mistaken for plastic pin-back lettering used on some bulletin boards. In actuality, the design is based on examples of an electric typewriter ball element with a sans font named "Dual Gothic", suggested for use "in credit reports and other financial applications".

Stencil Punch JNL is modeled from lettering examples made by a Diagraph stencil cutting machine. Diagraph was the first company to make the stencil punch machines used in industry and by the military. Thanks to Neal Haynes for his kindness and assistance in providing me with sample cuts direct from the company's machine testing department.

Antique X Condensed is a condensed slab serif font found with the pages of a Rob Roy Kelly book of wood type designs. It was introduced around 1840 by Wells and Webb, and the example served as the model for General Merchandise JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The August 11, 1929 issue of “The Film Daily” carried an ad for Tiffany-Stahl Productions’ presentation of a special film release featuring a wrestling match between “Strangler” Lewis and Gus Sonnenburg. The hand lettering for the ad was rendered in an Art Deco sans serif style, and is now available digitally as Film Event JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

The April 8, 1932 issue of The Film Daily ran an ad for a film entitled "The Sin of Lena Rivers". Hand lettered in a block style of chamfered characters, it is reminiscent of the 1920s, but still carries a touch of Art Deco influences with the thinner and extended horizontal strokes of the E, F and H. This retro sans serif design is now available digitally as Evil Ways JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Shelf Numbers JNL recreates the small plastic pricing tags that were used on grocery, drug, variety and liquor stores shelves for many years. The number keys have alternates in the shift position with a cent sign alongside the numbers. Also included are various phrases such as "for", "each", "lb." in the A-L/a-l keystrokes, and there is an additional set of numbers in the M-V/m-v keystrokes with a decimal point to the right of each numeral for dollar amounts.

A bold, condensed slab serif face A July 9, 1935 trade paper ad for Paramount Pictures’ 1st quarter film releases sported hand lettering with chamfered slab serifs. This condensed type design is now available as Preferred Shares JNL in both regular and oblique versions.