Mostra Nuova is based on a style of lettering often seen on Italian Art Deco posters and advertising of the 1930s.

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Carrosserie is made for display use, inspired by the shapes of the 30s.

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Goldenbook is based on the logotype of a literary magazine from the late 1920s called The Golden Book Magazine. It is meant to be used large and includes fonts with both old style and lining numerals in each weight.

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Designed by Rudolf Koch and released in 1927 by the Klingspor foundry in Germany, Kabel is named in honor of the laying of the first trans-Atlantic telephone cable.

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Mousse Script is based on Glenmoy, a 1932 Stephenson Blake typeface. Glenmoy a prime example of what display typography was in pre-WWII American ad art. It graced the pages of magazines, sold numerous products and services, then simply died out when the typographic trends shifted towards the more personalized, stylized and handwritten types of calligraphy.

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Black Monday is a distressed or “grunge” version of James Puckett’s Recovery typeface. The core of the Black Monday type family is a single Opentype font containing three full character sets of varying degrees of distressing treatment. Every glyph in each of the subsets is unique to provide an organically weathered look and feel.

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Want to build elegance and sophistication into a font? First, start with a narrow stance. That’s always a strong beginning. Second, look to the past for inspiration. But what if you mix in hints of deco and gently sweeping curves and arches and heavily contrasting thicks and thins? Well, that means it’s August, 1935 all over again, and SIGNS of the Times magazine by ST Publications has just released its 44th alphabet by master sign painter, Alf R. Becker.

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Marquisette is a typestyle full of deco flair, with a dominant caps vs. smallcaps character set.

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Morris Fuller Benton’s Eagle, designed for ATF in 1934, which did yeoman-like duty on many WPA posters of the time. This version, unicase as was the original, has been designed to set tight, so that it creates dense and commanding headlines.

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Charles Coiner (1898-1989) was a giant in the history of American graphic design, recognized with the first National Society of Art Directors Annual Award and an AIGA medal. As an art director at N. W. Ayer & Son Coiner commissioned work by great artists of the era including Norman Rockwell, Georgia O'Keefe, and Pablo Picasso. His work for private and government clients helped popularize modernism in the United States.

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Grafika is a completely original design, done in an “Art Deco” spirit reminiscent of the 1920s and ‘30s. I designed Grafika many years ago to be typeset for title cards, and both opening and end credits for the Merchant/Ivory feature film “Savages”. After the film, the design languished in my archives until I rediscovered it. I have digitally redrawn Grafika, completing it with all the alternates, ligatures, math, foreign accented characters and punctuation that weren’t required of the original design for film. Grafika is strongest when set in upper and lowercase—its unique caps extending below the baseline—although all caps settings are encouraged as well.

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Leslie Cabarga’s Raceway descends from three-dimensional jig-sawn plywood letters, automatically spaced and aligned on a slotted board by the connecting stroke. Even strokes and curves combine with everpresent horizontal strokes to create a brilliant Art Deco letterform.

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Inspired by retro lettering on advertising and propaganda posters from the 30s to 50s.

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Pacific Clipper has its roots in an old 1930s showcard lettering style. An extra bold version of this sign painter’s relic is shown in Carl Holmes' wonderful book on lettering.

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Vogue is extrapolated from some words in a 1930s brochure from Western Union called The Vogue of the Social Telegram.

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Inspired by retro lettering on propaganda posters from the 30s to 40s.

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Hunting for a Roman font with serious serifs and vintage shapes usually turns up some pretty typical and yawn-worthy results. Unfortunately, one Roman serif tends to look like another. And then you find yourself staring at this font, a headliner face that takes its job (and serifs) very serious. But stare too long and you'll find yourself looking at lines and curves that aren't all that familiar. What is happening? Are we still in the new millenium? Of course we are--but this font isn't. It thinks its still 1937, and SIGNS of the Times magazine by ST Publications has just released it as the 67th alphabet by master sign painter, Alf R. Becker. But vint as it is, this face has been fighting the font wars since 1999, and as of 2009, it has a companion now for those ongoing battles. Bolstered by a tall simulacra of its standard, wider self, ARB 67 finally stands ready to engage all of those empty headlines and banners and signboards that just cry out begging for a font like this.

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Blandly glowing strings of letters in chemical colors call forth endless memories of bars and restaurants, of beer and hot dogs, of casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, the acme of neon.

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Pulpular is a digital adaptation of type used on the cover of pulp magazines issued by Popular Publications in the 1920s and '30s, such as Dime Detective Magazine and Terror Tales. It was developed as an alternative to Futura and other similar sans serif fonts while working on a pulp magazine prop project.

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Freezer comes right from, you guessed it, a freezer!

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Birch Beer JNL comes from lettering spotted on a European business sign found in some stock footage that was used for an old black and white film about World War II.

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This typeface expands Herbert Bayer’s 1931 experimental, all-lowercase “universal modern face,” Architype Bayer-Type, by adding an uppercase and adding an architectural inline treatment.

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Mostra is based on a style of lettering often seen on Italian Art Deco posters and advertising of the 1930s. Each weight of Mostra includes three fonts. The basic font includes the most conventional letterforms. Two secondary fonts provide alternate versions of some characters. The different letterforms represent commonly-found variations in Italian Art Deco lettering. Though they are spread over three fonts, they can be used in any combination to capture a particular mood or style. There are five weights ranging from Light to the ridiculously bold Black. Mostra features a full character set (caps only) and kerning tables for display setting.

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The OpenType versions of Pacifco and Pacifco Alternate use ligature features to substitute unique glyphs when any lowercase character is keyed twice in a row, as well as for fi and fl.

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Mahalia draws inspiration from vintage hand-lettering, but adds a modern, European twist.

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Palace Script is an English copperplate script created for the Stephenson Blake foundry in 1923.

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ITC Anna may seem to evoke an earlier typographic style. Be assured, though, that Daniel Pelavin’s 1990 design is a new display typeface, his very personal interpretation of Art Deco. He originally drew it to use for his wedding announcement and later the announcement of his daughter’s birth. Her name is—that’s right—Anna.

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A font where “each word that’s set approaches becoming its own logo” is how some have described this unique typeface.

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A sign in a London storefront, ca. 1930, pitching—surprise!—Smart Frocks provided the visual cues for designing this typeface. Singularly stylish, hip and haughty and decidedly Deco, this is the smart font to use!

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Designed by Douglas C. McMurtrie. Digitally engineered by Steve Jackaman. Based on the original Ludlow drawings, circa 1928.

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Designed by J. Erbar for Ludwig & Mayer in 1936, Candida has very slight slab serifs and unusually high contrast. The lowercase is slightly condensed, with a tall x-height; the capitals are quite wide. This is a legible face that is good for text in newspapers and magazines, as well as in larger sizes for signage or billboards.

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A quirky font based on Cubist Bold, designed by John Zimmerman for Barnhard Brothers and Spindler, circa 1929. The freeware (TrueType) version has a limited character set. The Pro Set (Postscript) version has a complete character set (Adobe Standard for PC; Macintosh Standard for Mac), and extensive kerning.

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Princess was inspired by Art Nouveau forms and 1910s flavor.

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This condensed typeface features an unusual lowercase with an extremely low x-height to accentuate the tall ascenders that align with the capitals. The Letraset Type Studio reworked the original Rundfunk created by designer Adolf Behrmann for the Berthold typefoundry in 1928. An ideal choice for projecting a 1930’s mood.

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See also other font families inspired by Gans' original typefaces: Gans Tipo Adorno, Gans Lath Modern and Gans Titular Adornada.

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If it’s at all possible to "Deco-ize" an Art Deco font even more, it’s been done with Roney JNL.

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Michael Doret had been doing lettering in styles similar to Metroscript in his design work for many years, but with the advent of OpenType technology he realized that he could actually put together a script font that would finally do justice to this style, and be almost indistinguishable from hand-lettering.

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In 2007, insigne released Aviano. It’s beautifully drawn extended letterforms were a hit with designers and Aviano quickly became insigne’s most popular offering of early 2007.

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Wrap your chilly fingers around this ultra cool swingin' typeface! Cocktail Shaker is a swanky retro connecting script born out of 1950s lounge culture. Often referred to as the ‘googie’ look, Cocktail Shaker blends a casual loungy script with clean readability and a twist of modern Atomic Age charm.

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Designed by Eric Gill and released by the Monotype Corporation between 1928 and 1930, Gill Sans is based on the typeface Edward Johnston, the innovative British letterer and teacher, designed in 1916 for the signage of the London Underground.

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Whether you prefer Drip or Automatic, there is nothing quite like quality Coffee Service!

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Houschka has the humanist qualities reminiscent of Gill and Johnston but is quite unique. It is more monolinear with rounded corners giving it a softer appearance, and has a few interesting character quirks like the capitals A, G, Q, W and lower case u and w.

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In 1952, Aldo Novarese and A. Butti designed Microgramma for the Nebiolo foundry. It was a popular face, but was available only in capitals. In 1962, Novarese produced a full character set, including lowercase letters, and the foundry renamed the family Eurostile.

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Jeanne Moderno is a revisionary type family.

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Le Havre is a geometric sans serif inspired by the golden era of the passenger ship, when getting to your destination was a delight in and of itself.

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Sweet Gothic is a 2009 addition to the Sweet Collection of engraved lettering styles from the 20th Century. 

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Morris Fuller Benton’s 1931 design, reworking the model of Memphis for ATF.

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A set of square capitals developing from the interest in geometric forms stimulated by the Bauhaus, Bank Gothic was designed by Morris Fuller Benton for ATF in 1930, the same year that Georg Trump designed City for Berthold.

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Hiruko is a full family of 16 different styles. Inspired by the early Swiss movements, Hiruko offers creativity and clarity within many media. Influenced by Japanese culture, Hiruko is based on the idea that less is more, however this applies in other directions when referring to the amount of work gone into producing the type family.

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One can never be too tall or too thin, the old adage goes. Sympathique is quite fashionably both.

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The Eagle series realizes the ideas behind Morris Fuller Benton’s famous titling, Eagle Bold, the symbol of American recovery, drawn in 1933 for the National Recovery Association.

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Youngblood is a non-connected formal script with tall, sweeping ascenders and two alternates. These alternate forms can be mixed and matched for a custom look, and Youngblood is stronger in weight and is better suited for display work than most script fonts.

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The inspiration for Jeeves came from Leslie Carbarga’s wonderful book LETTERHEADS, One Hundred Years of Great Design, 1850-1950. It was based on a secondary type usage for the letterhead for Sutherland in New York. The rest of the letterhead had features that were more typical of the Art Deco period, but this script added a touch of timeless elegance. And since at the time I was reading every scrap of P.G. Wodehouse I could get my hands on, the name Jeeves seemed like a perfect fit.

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A longtime font favorite of his, Michael felt that a set of lowercase characters would make Bank Gothic a more universally useful font. He set out on this ambitious task always mindful of the huge presence of its original designer, Morris Fuller Benton, hoping that whatever he did would live up to the high standards of this former giant of the font world.

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Based on Hispalis from the Spanish foundry, Nacional.

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Originally conceived as part of a unique display design created for Hershey’s Times Square flagship store, the PowerStation family is the perfect choice when looking for a font that speaks of strength, solidity and character. It comes in two “faceted” 3-D versions: “Block” where the dark side is dominant, and “Wedge” where you see more light than shadow. The family also includes both “Solid” and “Outline” versions of the font. They are all available in both normal and wide versions.

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Influenced by the 1960’s typeface, Design Fineline.

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Type designer Eric Gill’s most popular Roman typeface is Perpetua, which was released by the Monotype Corporation between 1925 and 1932. It first appeared in a limited edition of the book The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, for which the typeface was named. The italic form was originally called Felicity.

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Based on the Keystone Type Foundry design, circa 1919. The l/c ‘g’ appears as an alternate character in our font.

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MVB Solano Gothic Bold was originally designed as a display face for the City of Albany, California, located on the San Francisco Bay facing the Golden Gate Bridge and bordering the the Berkeley hills. Named for the City’s main street, the typeface needed to work on signage in proximity to older buildings, in contemporary settings, and for general print and web use. Rather than creating a neutered design to cover all bases, Mark van Bronkhorst chose to develop a simple, strong, condensed face that would offer flexibility of style by providing both retro and neutral forms.

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Neon Bugler is a font based on the third logo created by Harry Warren in early 1975 for his sixth grade class newsletter, The Broadwater Bugler, at Broadwater Academy in Exmore, Virginia, on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

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Released by the Monotype Corporation in 1931, Script Bold is based on German script-lettering styles of the early twentieth century.

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The Le Havre series is a series of geometric sans serifs inspired by the dignified era of the passenger ship, when getting to your destination was a delight in and of itself.

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An elegant face with dashing swash caps, based on an old American Type Founders typeface called Canterbury.

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Inspired by a piece of cigarette pack lettering by the great A. M. Cassandre, Nick designed the rest of the characters as an experiment. Geetype evokes the 1920s & 30s and is an unusual, eye-catching display face.

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Lorelei is an exuberant and bouncy script.

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