Like many cities in the Midlands and North of England, Stoke-on-Trent has a rich history linked to making and industry. In Stoke’s case it was pottery. In the early 1900s bottle kilns could be seen covering the landscape of the six towns making up Stoke-on-Trent with hundreds of factories producing some of the best ceramics in the world. But by the 1990s most of these had gone. Torn down for development of housing or just left to rot. During the next few decades Stoke continued to change. The industry was in a decline and Stoke itself was seen as another poor midlands city with a dwindling industry. Then in 2008, Spode, one of the largest and most famousceramics factories in Stoke entered into administration. Pens cast aside, drawings left half finished, designs left in the turned-off kilns; Spode factory was abandoned. This was a real shock and the way everything was getting thrown into skips to be put on the tip was heartbreaking. Thankfully people salvaged some of the technical drawings, sketch design, old sample pieces and ceramics that people hard worked so hard on. Potbank has been in development over a number of years taking inspiration from the heritage and designs from the ceramics industry. It has a mixed Clarendon and Antiqua style structure with its main purpose to be used as a printed type.

Based on the lettering used on Alan Turing’s famous code-breaking machine at Bletchley Park, the “Bombe”, and the subsequent British answer to the German Enigma machine, the Typex. Research done at Bletchley Park on their restored and antique machines provided the inspiration. The unusual shapes for the capitals have all been retained - the square O, the monospaced characters and other eccentricities that make it unique. This reference material was then extended to the numerals (which did not exist in the original) and a full international character complement. The initial design of the bombe was produced in 1939 at the UK Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park by Alan Turing, with an important refinement devised in 1940 by Gordon Welchman. It was based on a device that had been designed in 1938 in Poland at the Biuro Szyfrów (Cipher Bureau) by cryptologist Marian Rejewski, and known as the "cryptologic bomb" (Polish: bomba kryptologiczna). The Bombe was used to break the German Enigma code on a daily basis, and was a vital part of the Allied war effort. The British “Typex" (alternatively, Type X or TypeX) machines were an adaptation of the commercial German Enigma with a number of enhancements that greatly increased its security. It was used from 1937 until the mid-1950s, when other more modern military encryption systems came into use.

Varese Outlined is the perfect font for giving content a retro, dimensional, and playful feel. Use it for headlines or short body text for an optimistic or nostalgic tone. It comes in two variations, outlined and shadow. It has standard uncolored and colored options. Please see the slides to know what each color font is named. This geometric and modular typeface was inspired by Italian posters of the 1920s and 1930s. Its design playfully explores the boundaries between unity and variety. The blocky characteristics lend it well to tightly composed text either horizontally or vertically. The lowercase is similar in form to the uppercase, yet many of the lowercase letters have interior spaces (counterforms). It comes with standard ligatures; ff, fi, fl, ffl and three alternate glyphs for number 1. The color fonts in Varese Outlined are vector-based and in the fully scalable SVG OpenType format. Color fonts are supported by Photoshop 2017, Illustrator and InDesign 2018, and QuarkXPress 2018 (and later versions). Those who do not want a color font should purchase the files simply named “Regular” and “Outlined”. These will not have any color words in the names. Varese Outlined has two siblings; Varese and Varese Soft. The designer suggests pairing Varese Outlined with his ornamental fonts FormPattern or FormPattern Color Two, Three, or Six.

Valet is deco moderne the way it was meant to be: Big, bold, classy, flashy, and clean at the seams. Its message is rich, strong, confident and reliable. Valet tells you that it’s used to thorns being part of every rose, that it can handle sharp objects just fine, and that it'd much prefer buying the tuxedo rather than renting it. This font grew out of an uncredited early 1970s all-cap film type called Expression. An appropriate deco lowercase was added, along with small caps, zippy titling caps, and Pan-European language support. With over 9250 glyphs, we bow our heads with the admission that we kind of got carried away with it.

Galaxo Dot is a sister to Galaxo Line. HGB Galaxo is a tribute to Othmar Motter (1927–2010), the Vorarlberg graphic artist and typeface designer, who designed very individual and perfectly crafted typefaces in the 1970's and later. (Motter Ombra, Motter Tectura ...) From a Motter sketch of 5 letters for a logogram, I derived a simplified letterform and developed all the necessary characters. Working on these glyphs and delving deeper into Motter's letterforms, the respect for the accuracy with which he drew his letters (in ink) grew more and more. The spiral resembles the shape of a galaxy, hence the name Galaxo. The font is suitable for retro, poster and logo design.

I love geometric sans serifs, their crispness and rationality. Le Havre taps into this style, but for a while, I've wanted to create a font recalling the printed Futura of the 1940s, which seems to have an elusive quality all its own. After seeing an old manual on a World War II ship, I developed a plan for "Le Havre Metal" but chose to shelve the project due to Le Havre's small x-height. That's where Steagal comes in. When Robbie de Villiers and I began the Chatype project in early 2012 (a project which led one publication to label me the Edward Johnston of Chattanooga!), we started closely studying the vernacular lettering of Chattanooga. During that time, I also visited Switzerland, where I saw how designers were using a new, handmade aesthetic with a geometric base. I was motivated to make a new face combining some of these same influences. The primary inspiration for the new design came from the hand-lettering of sign painters in the United States, circa 1930s through 1950s. My Chatype research turned up a poster from the Tennessee Valley Authority in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which exhibited a number of quirks from the unique hand and style of one of these sign artists. Completing the first draft of Steagal, however, I found that the face appeared somewhat European in character. I turned then to the work of Morris Fuller Benton for a distinctly American take and discovered a number of features that would help define Steagal as a "1930s American" vernacular typeface--features I later learned also inspired Morris Fuller Benton's Eagle. The overall development of Steagal was surprisingly difficult, knowing when to deliberately distort optical artifacts and when to keep them in place. Part of type design is correcting optical illusions, and I found myself absentmindedly adjusting the optical effects. In the end, though, I was able to draw inspiration from period signs, inscriptions, period posters, and architecture while retaining just enough of the naive sensibility. Steagal has softened edges, which simulate brush strokes and retain the feeling of the human hand. The standard version has unique quirks that are not too intrusive. Overshoots have almost been eliminated, and joins have minimal corrections. The rounded forms are mathematically perfect, geometric figures without optical corrections. As a variation to the standard, the “Rough” version stands as the "bad signpainter" version with plenty of character. Steagal Regular comes in five weights and is packed with OpenType features. Steagal includes three Art Deco Alternate sets, optically compensated rounded forms, a monospaced variant, and numerous other features. In all, there are over 200 alternate characters. To see these features in action, please see the informative .pdf brochure. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe Creative suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. Steagal also includes support for all Western European languages. Steagal is a great way to subtly draw attention to your work. Its unique quirks grab the eye with a authority that few typefaces possess. Embrace its vernacular, hand-brushed look, and see what this geometric sans serif can do for you.

The 1940s-era hand-lettered title on vintage sheet music for the song hit "Donkey Serenade" had an interpretation of the classic typeface "Broadway" used in a Mexican/Southwest motif with wavy lines cutting through the letters. Adapting Playwright JNL (itself, a hand-lettered interpretation of "Broadway") to this style, the festive design is now a digital typeface called Southwest Serenade JNL.

Rummy is powerful, precise, and packed with personality. Simple and initially unassuming, Rummy may seem a reluctant hero. But, when called upon, Rummy will lend you all of its considerable strength and versatility in order to win the day. Influenced by sports branding and 1940s film, Rummy is an underdog that won't let you down. Need more height? Try Rummy Tall!

Maxwell is a clean condensed san serif typeface inspired by similar retro fonts from the 1950's. It comes in regular and small caps versions, includes stylistic alternatives and via the glyph panel you can access scientific inferiors, fractions, oldstyle numerals, Cyrillic, Greek, Latin and other Western and Central European languages. It can be used as a headline font or paragraph text.

Isonorm was created in 1980 by the International Standards Organization (ISO). The font's design is simple, clean, and geometric, with strokes that all have rounded ends. Isonorm is a font whose forms are very legible by both the human eye and machine readers. The font is also a good choice for drafting and architectural purposes, as well as for technical charts and graphics.

NATH !* Is a peculiar typeface. It’s design came by the fascination of Optical Illusions and 3D on a flat surface, like with Holborn and Powerplay. The typeface is named after a girlfriend of André Toet. *Made in the UK, 1974, London (Central School of Art & Design). (Redesigned 2013 by André Toet / Jasper Terra). Concept/Art Direction/Design: André Toet © 2017

While viewing a YouTube video of film footage in and around New York in the mid-1930s, one scene showed some people “window shopping” by the storefront office of the French Line, an international steamship service. A screen capture allowed the storefront sign to be recreated as the digital typeface Steamship JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Neo Neo is the work of British designer Timothy Donaldson, a type style straight out of a 1950s time capsule. It can be set in all caps or a mixture of capitals and lowercase. The casual, slightly condensed forms with their smooth, soft lines are reminiscent of highway diners and motel ads of the time and convey a bright, inviting mood.

Inspired by an image of a 1960s rock and roll concert poster for “The Beach Boys Summer Safari”, this typeface captures the casual, informal lettering of the main headline and makes it available digitally. Evoking sunny days of fast cars, pretty girls and riding the waves, the playfully hand lettered Summer Safari JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Bold Display Sans JNL is loosely based on one of the classic alphabets found within a Speedball Lettering Textbook of the 1940s; itself called "Bold Display". The original featured a stippled texture and inline curves placed in random patterns throughout the letters. This more simplified, all-caps version is for titling requirements where a strong, yet casual design is needed.

Evening Wear JNL, drawn from the elegant monoline lettering used as titling on the sheet music for "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", conjures up images of 1930s New York at its apex. Fine restaurants, elegant night clubs and couples decked out in their best evening apparel were of a time long past when "doing the town" meant really dressing up for the occasion.

First released by the Woellmer Foundry, Berlin, in 1910, Goethe Fraktur is a strong and legible blackletter font which has been now revived and carefully extended for modern use. To get access to all ligatures, it is recommended to activate both standard and discretionary ligatures. You will find the longs by typing option + b or by using the OT feature historical forms.

Will Ransom designed the exemplar for this series for Barnhart Brothers & Spindler in the early 1900s. The typeface was originally named "Parsons", after the advertising director of a Chicago department store (evidently a very BIG customer of BB&S). Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

Bastion is an ultra-bold text-style font derived from some turn of the century hand lettered signage. It is characteristic of the very bold lettering used in a lot of advertising and product packaging in the early 1900s, a style of lettering which was also the inspiration for the Cooper font, though we think Bastion has a much more attractive overall look.

Deco Signage JNL was inspired by the cast metal letters of a German wall sign “Kaspar Stanggasinger-Haus” in an online display of European signage photography - and is available in both regular and oblique versions. Although the original age of the sign is unknown, the tall, thin monoline font it’s based on evokes a definite 1940s Art Deco design influence.

Dollar Tree Stores imports a number of items from China, and many times these are limited-run products only available until the existing supplies run out. One such item was a sans serif stencil lettering guide with rounded ends that takes on the look of 1980s-influenced techno lettering. This is now available as Import Stencil JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Amateur Printer JNL is comprised of letters and numbers from one of the rubber stamp sign printing sets that were popular with children up until about the 1960s. The letters were printed out on paper, then scanned and converted into a font... leaving all of the rough edges and defects intact to give the look of authentic rubber stamp impressions.

This revival of Harry is based on the original design by Marty Goldstein (and C.B. Smith). Goldstein, born in Chicago in 1939, was the co-founder of the groundbreaking Creative Black Book. He graduated from the Pratt Institute in 1960. Harry, first published by VGC in 1966, was named for his father. ITF has added four new weights to the original six.

Toyprint JNL is based on scanned print samples of a toy rubber stamp set imported from Japan circa the 1930s. No kerning and a very limited character set, but fun and nostalgic nonetheless. NOTE: Large size rendering of the type will give the appearance of cut paper rather than rubber stamp impressions due to the nature of the scans for this font.

Rileno Sans is sharp with geometric forms and strong personality. It is constructed in a geometric manner and inspired by the constructivist typefaces of the 1920s with a humanistic quality. It comes in 6 weights, 6 uprights and their matching italics. Rileno Sans is equipped with opentype features like Alternate charates, Fractions, Monospace Numbers, Superscript/subscript, Arrow, Roman Numbers, Ligatures and More.

Arioso was a part of the 1990 program Type before Gutenberg, which included the work of twelve contemporary font designers and represented styles from across the ages. The calligraphic style of Arioso stems from an early form of Old Face developed in the 14th and 15th centureis in Italy. It is a mixture of Roman capitals and Carolingian lower case.

An extremely low midline marks this offering, based on an “elegant” alphabet found in Samuel Welo’s chapbook, Lettering: Modern and Foreign, published in 1930 by Frederick J. Drake and Company. Definitely different, and Deco at its most debonair. All versions of this font include the Unicode 1250 Central European character set in addition to the standard Unicode 1252 Latin set.

This font has a great retro-yet-modern feel that is slightly reminiscent of the dawning of the digital awareness age of the 1980s that gave a slight nod to the mid-20th century neon craze. It can be ideal for retro-themed events & promotions, health & cosmetic lines, or wherever you may need a sleek, minimalistic rounded style of lettering.

Fenimore SRF is a variation of Jeff Levine's Theater District JNL with added highlights, created especially by Jeff for Stella Roberts fonts. This Art Deco-influenced typeface typifies the streamlined style of 1930s era-influenced modernism and streamline. The net profits from my font sales help defer medical expenses for my siblings, who both suffer with Cystic Fibrosis and diabetes. Thank you.

An offering from Barnhart Brothers & Spindler’s Catalog No. 9 from 1907, with the rather prosaic name of "Lining Gothic No. 71", inspired this non-nonsense and surprisingly ageless face. As versatile as it is simple, this typeface is a stylish choice for heads and subheads. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

PiS Konzert is a bulky quirky all caps headline sans, inspired by letters found on a hand drawn polish poster from the 1960s. Its slightly shaky mid-century style makes it perfect for concert posters, movie intros or any other applications that need to evoke that bold, loud and still a little classy feeling of staggering inebriatedly through a murky jazz club.

Jazz font is the work of British designer Alan Meeks and brilliantly captures the sophisticated elegance of the 1920s and 30s. The bold roman style is enhanced with an interior design almost like a piano keyboard or the lit windows of a skyscraper. Jazz font is a good choice for any headline or display which should have a refined, Art Deco look.

This lively calligraphic font was designed by Friedrich K. Sallwey and appeared with Linotype in 1974. Present is distinguished by the buoyant rhythm of its characters, with their flowing forms and stroke contrasts. This contrast lends the font a faint Asian character, which is perhaps what has made the font so popular in international advertisements, an accomplishment usually reserved for text fonts.

A charming headline font, bold yet feminine, based on Lilith, designed by Lucien Bernhard for Bauersche Gießerei in 1930. Some of the fussier elements of the original have been removed in order to create an elegant exercise in typographic chiaroscuro. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

BRIGNELL SQUARE is a ten font family designed by Ian Brignell. Modern and crisp, this strong-shouldered sans serif offers tonal neutrality. Like Helvetica, Brignell Square is a classic "do anything" font. Spatial balance defines these letter shapes. Creatively, this typeface was born in 1990 out of Ian’s frustration with ubiquitous, barely readable highway signage. Use everywhere. Extended Latin set.

A charming series of 26 holiday “type warmers” based on the works of Carl S. Junge for the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler type foundry in the 1920s. Single-color cuts are in the uppercase positions, while 13 of the cuts suitable for two-color usage occupy the lowercase in adjacent pairs; e.g., a and b, c and d, and so on.

Eckhardt Trilinear JNL was inspired by [and modeled from] a pen-drawn alphabet found in a 1960 edition of the Speedball® lettering textbook. As with many other "sign painter-oriented" typefaces by Jeff Levine, it is named in honor of Jeff's good friend -- the late Albert Eckhardt, Jr. Al ran Allied Signs in Miami, Florida from 1959 until his passing.

While Student Council JNL was not influenced by any school activities, the design is based on a lithographed cardboard sign (circa 1930s) for Spizz Sparkling Water, a bottled seltzer from the Dr. Pepper Bottling Company of Lexington, Kentucky. A squared letterform with angled semi-serifs, this Art Deco typeface grabs attention. Student Council JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.