AdvertiserÆs Gothic Light, from a volume of headline fonts, was designed by Robert Wiebking in 1917. Wiebking was a skilled type engraver from Chicago who created his own pantographic machine, used to cut punches drawn by other successful type designers, including Frederic Goudy.

Sign Decal JNL is an outline version of Sheldrake JNL - lettering based on original water-applied decal transfers once made by the Duro Decal Company (now Duro Art Industries) of Chicago.

Handlettering in an ad from the 1920s for a Chicago engraving company provided the inspiration for this fine, fat, flowing face, full of fun and antique charm. Both versions of this font include the complete Unicode 1252 Latin and Unicode 1250 Central European character sets.

Stencil Octoid JNL was inspired by a set of twelve inch tall stencil letters and numbers made by Duro Art Industries in Chicago. The bold type style with angled rather than rounded corners gives the font a strong feel of industry or military usage.

The hand lettered thin, variable width slab serif text appearing on the cover of a souvenir photo book for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair Exposition is the basis for Thinly Disguised JNL.

One of the original nineteenth century designs, cut at Barnhart Brothers & Spindler in Chicago about 1880, passed on to us through ATF. Unlike most Circus types, the serifs of P.T. Barnum are bracketed.

The hand-lettered name of the "Junior Showcard Printer" (a 1930s-era rubber stamp printing set manufactured by the Superior Marking Equipment Company of Chicago) served as the prototype for Junior Printer JNL.

Hypothesis is a typeface inspired in tattoo letters, chicano culture and calligraffiti. It works well with normal size text, but it works even better for large displays, short words, or even just to incorporate a few or single characters in a design. Suitable for many creative products & tattoo designs, like posters, t-shirt, street wear, logo, signage, headlines, etc.

This interesting type was introduced by the Chicago firm of Marder, Luse & Company in 1890, about the time designers were beginning to lose some of the excessive ruffles and flourishes that characterized the Victorian age. Originally a caps-only font, we have added a lowercase to match.

An antique, hand-cut metal stencil for the Chicago-Burlington rail route stating “CB&Q RR – Private Property” inspired the sans serif stencil design Midwest Railway JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Frank H. Atkinson was a popular Art Nouveau sign painter in Chicago, Illinois. He designed signs for the Cadillac Motor Car Co., Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the department store Marshall Field. Oddly enough, he even designed signs for other sign painters. In 1908 he published a book, Sign Painting, which sold well. French Plug, a bold, rounded, all-cap design in an American Art Nouveau style from that book. It has a relaxed, easy-going informality that is useful for ads and flyers. It also would have fit very nicely with many French posters of the period.

Soft Rock is a bold condensed sans serif with rounded contours that contrives to be gentle and dynamic at the same time: rather like the soft rock bands (Chicago, Air Supply, Fleetwood Mac etc) after which it is named. It's a warm, friendly font ideal for branding everything from soup to soft furnishings.

Paint Store JNL is the third in Jeff Levine's series of display fonts modeled from actual water-applied decals that were manufactured by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago (now Duro Art Industries). Duro Decals were sold in paint, hardware, variety and art supply stores, and even [in some cases] print shops.

A neat face with pronounced spur serifs which several foundries have already digitized. We like ours better though, because we have drawn a lowercase which was lacking in the original. Barnhart Bros. & Spindler of Chicago introduced this type in 1888.

Our notes say this was originated at the Barnhart Bros. & Spindler foundry in Chicago, and named Cable. Perhaps so, but we didn't find it in any of our BB&S catalogs. We made a few changes to improve the color.

Adhesive Letters JNL was drawn from sample letters and numbers once manufactured by the Tablet and Ticket Company of Chicago. Originally sold under the brand name of Willson's, these gummed letters were available in a number of styles and sizes.

This popular type was manufactured by the Crescent Type Foundry of Chicago and sold on their behalf by a half dozen other foundries. Introduced in the early 1890s, just as tastes were swinging away from the excesses of the Victorian period.

Bold, muscular, vaguely oriental, Wedge Gothic ML is the original name of this font released by Barnhart Bros. and Spindler of Chicago in 1893. The straight-forward, no-nonsense name tells us exactly what to expect: sans-serif letterforms based on wedge-shaped vertical strokes. The typeface was dropped for awhile -- it does not appear in the 1907 catalog for example -- but reappeared in 1925 as Japanette. What is the opposite of "straight-forward" anyway? According to McGrew, Wedge Gothic was originally created for the Chicago Herald newspaper. The designer is unknown. A distinctive display face, useful when a strong and unusual statement is desired. Wedge Gothic ML features: 1. Glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Western Europe, the 1254 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. Total of 335 glyphs. 2. OpenType GSUB layout features: pnum, ornm, hist & salt. 3. 66 kerning pairs. 4. Both tabular & proportional numbers. 5. Alternate bullets. The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

Sheldrake JNL is the second in a series of display fonts modeled from actual water-applied decals that were manufactured by the Duro Decal Company of Chicago (now Duro Art Industries). The font's name derives from the actual phone exchange for Duro, back in the days when a telephone listing had a name-number assignment for recognition. In this case, their number began as "SH(eldrake)-3".

Folsom JNL is one of the many stencil fonts Jeff Levine has recreated from original sources. This particular design was modeled from a kit made by the Meyercord Company of Chicago. In the original, some of the letters were solid rather than stencil forms, but Jeff gave all of the letters the traditional treatment for continuity.