Rueben Haigh

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.

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.

Hasler Circus packs amusement park, Old West, folk art, and tattoo shop all into one colorful font. Characteristic of reverse-contrast faces, Hasler Circus swaps the weight of its stems and serifs creating an unexpected yet charming rhythm. The font also features an added bonus: split stroke endings to crank up the flavor. Inject a dose of novelty into toy packaging, candy wrappers, cook books, vintage signs, or festival marketing. Drawn in the 1950s for Photo-Lettering, Inc. by influential British designer and typographer Charles Hasler, Circus was digitized by Erik van Blokland in 2011, with a helping hand from Ken Barber.

HASLER CIRCUS CREDITS:

Typeface Design: Charles Hasler

Typeface Digitization: Erik van Blokland, Ken Barber

Typeface Production: Ben Kiel

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.

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.

The free form hand lettering from the titles and credits of the 1964 French film comedy “Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez” [“The Policeman from Saint-Tropez”] was the basis for Off Duty JNL – which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Atwin is a modern remake of Gemini, hence the name (Atwin = “A twin” = Gemini, the twin of the zodiac). It is inspired by the angular and unusual forms of the numbers on bank cheques (so-called MICR).

Large blobs of weight are thrown around the glyphs often in unfamiliar patterns. It makes for an angular but also blobby design that disrupts and breaks away from tradition.

You should use Atwin to add flair and confidence to sci-fi, futurist, outré, or just plain unusual materials. Good in displays sizes.

Latin-based scripts are well supported with a generous supply of punctuation and diacritics.

Kerned to perfection. Tight.

Acid Green has quite a psychedelic flair, but its origins are from long before the sixties psychedelia.

Its roots date back to 1914, from an unnamed alphabet by J.M. Bergling, the amazing jewelry engraver and 'letterform inventor'—as he considered himself—whose books of art alphabets and lettering influenced countless artists, including, not surprisingly, those involved with the genesis of Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements.

Perfect for multiple display uses, including retro designs and trippy letterings, Acid Green has an extensive character set, with multilingual support covering 208 languages. There are yet some handy stylistic alternatives for some extra grooviness.

Acid Green is somewhat retro looking, for sure, but it can sound perfectly contemporary too. Tune in and enjoy a creative trip!

[Pizza illustration on the first graphic by our neighbor @pedrocorrea84]

The free form hand lettered titles for the 1961 film “The Children's Hour” inspired the digital typeface Late Hours JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

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.

This typeface pays homage to numerous Victorian and Art Nouveau predecessors, while straying somewhat beyond their usual conventions. All lowercase letters ascend in unison, whereas capitals descend below the baseline. A rigid set of uniform strokes keeps the chaos reigned in, while various calculated inconsistencies affect a vaguely hand-drawn quality to this quirky, downright decadent font.

Comes packaged with the standard complement of alpha-numeric glyphs, punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, and Western European diacritics.

Kaleidoscope is a groovy retro font with roots in the Art Nouveau movement and the psychedelic sixties. Works great for trippy band or festival posters, logos, invitations, and anything that needs a flowing funky vibe.