Hedwig Gerasimova

The above-the-store signage for many newspaper stands, soda shops, candy stores, luncheonettes and pharmacies of the 1950s and early 1960s were what was referred to as “privilege signs” provided by one of the major cola brands.

Consisting of the brand’s emblems on the left and right, the remainder of the sign would carry the desired message of the storekeeper (such as “Candy – Soda – Newspapers”) in prismatic, embossed metal letters.

Inspired by these vintage signs, Privilege Sign JNL recreates the condensed sans serif lettering style in both regular and oblique versions. The typefaces are solid black, but adding a selected color and a prismatic effect from your favorite graphics program can reproduce the look and feel of those old businesses.

A photo of the now closed [circa-1953] Lowell Municipal Pool (at 1601 N. 28th St.) in Boise, Idaho shows the words “Municipal Pool” formed into the cement of the entrance to the above-ground swimming facility.

Both the lettering and building entrance designs harken back to the Art Deco era and the sign features stencil-like characters.

This inspired a typeface aptly named Municipal Pool JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Inspired by the hand lettered opening credits for “(The Many Loves of) Dobie Gillis” – a teen-oriented televisioncomedy that ran from 1959 to 1963 on CBS - Teenagers JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Here’s a novelty font emulating the plastic pennant streamers that were popular in the 1950s and 1960s used to decorate a store parking lot or used car lot for a sales event.

The typeface inside the individual pennants is Manufacturer JNL, which can be used for body copy associated with titles made by this font.

Parking Lot Sale JNL is available in regular (black letters on white pennants) and black (with white letters). A blank pennant for word spacing or end caps is available on the backslash key.

Whatever the medium, Girard’s love for typography was the common thread that wove his work together. We are honored that the Girard family has entrusted us to celebrate and expand upon the legacy of this design icon with this collection of fonts. The Girard Slab family gracefully synthesizes illustrative sensibilities into a practical typographic framework. Slab’s three widths and four weights ensure versatility in a modern editorial setting while its gentle curves transcend the sterility of traditional typography to add an unprecedented warmth and personality. From boutique chocolate packaging to the titling sequence for an indie vegan superhero cartoon, Girard Script deftly adds a contemporary sophistication to text and display settings. Inspired by a workhorse lettering style that helped Alexander Girard implement thousands of design elements in his overhaul of the Braniff identity system, Girard Sky pulls its weight in any contemporary application. In Girard Sansusie, each character stands alone as an illustrative element while coming together with its counterparts as a whimsical yet functional typeface.

FEATURES:

• The ligatures feature substitutes specially-drawn letter combinations that combine two, three or even four characters to create smoother transitions and simulate lettering sensibilities.
• Girard Slab’s three widths and four weights ensure versatility in a modern editorial setting while its gentle curves transcend the sterility of traditional typography to add an unprecedented warmth and personality.
• Copious alternate characters and “smart” OpenType programming allow Sansusie to escape the rigid confines of typography to come alive as if flowing from Girard’s sketchpad. This animation shows a sampling of the swash characters available in the font.

GIRARD CREDITS:

• Typeface Design: Alexander Girard, Ben Kiel, Ken Barber, Laura Meseguer
• Typeface Production: Ben Kiel
• Typeface Direction: Christian Schwartz, Andy Cruz, Ken Barber

Like all good subversives, House Industries hides in plain sight while amplifying the look, feel and style of the world’s most interesting brands, products and people. Based in Delaware, visually influencing the world.

Belinda New is an updated version of the original Belinda which I designed in 2011. Belinda New is a smooth and lining brush script font with a vintage and retro feel. It has two sets of uppercase and many alternates for lowercase letters. It is a good choice to use in logos, headlines and packages. You can also match it with a serif or sans serif fonts and use it as a secondary font in web design, magazines and branding.

Klangfarbe is a quirky ultramodern script with unique stroke tapers and droplet-like finials. This font is a true chameleon and is very much at home with a variety of looks: from a reimagining of kitschy 1950s scripts, to analog retro-tech, to steampunk, to high-fashion futuristic logos and beyond. Klangfarbe — a German language term meaning “timbre” or “sound color” — references the visual appearance of audio frequency waveforms echoed in many of the lowercase letters. A truly eye-catching choice.

Fast Rewind: A Timeless Handwritten Script Font

A handwritten brush script with a versatile, relaxed and nostalgic feel.

This illustrative brush script owes its inspiration to the 1950s art direction typical of mainstream magazines and book covers. A relaxed hand-lettered title was often paired with illustrations of handsome couples or escapist scenes, encouraging readers to settle into the latest gripping story from authors such as Ray Bradbury, Donald Westlake or Arthur Miller. 

Fast Rewind aims to repurpose this vintage look for contemporary designers with two handwritten fonts, drawn in ink and brush, and then digitally mastered to maintain those all-important human imperfections.

Included are the Regular and Alternative designs, with a complete set of uppercase and lowercase characters, along with numbers, symbols and language support. Also included are a variety of underlines and illustrations as seen in these visuals. Each style also comes with its own selection of extra glyphs to helps you achieve the perfect flow between characters and avoid tell-tale repetition.

Thanks to all the great photographers who provided images for these visuals.

The extra bold sans serif stencil lettering on movie posters and lobby cards for “Reform School Girl” (a 1957 film by American International Pictures) was the basis of Reform School JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. 

Say hello to the new workhorse for packaging and advertising design! Chonky — playful version of chunky — is a bold script font based on the former English calligraphy but with touches of the vitality that the commercial lettering of 1950s had, and it is mostly inspired in the work of the master Doyald Young and his lessons. Following the advice where he explains that boldness requires simple forms, this modern typeface wasn’t designed to imitate calligraphy but it was typographically thought, being as minimal as a script could be. The eye was put on legibility as well as on spacing and connections, which were specially cared, as it is usual in all Typesenses’ scripts. The upright axis makes the curves slower while the rounded terminals give a warm look. The ascenders, descenders and capitals are the shorter they could be, mostly in the Regular style. The Poster font, has larger ones in order to achieve more graceful forms. Both options include stylistic sets and ligatures to embellish the words. Just keep the Standard Ligatures and Contextual Alternates features always active and see how the typeface writes perfectly while having fun with OpenType alternatives (*). Additionally, Chonky has extensive Western, Central and Eastern European language support. 

Due to its classical base mixed with modern touches, this is a typeface that will live for decades instead of fading away with fashion.

(*) Take a look at the User Guide to see all the features available.