Kaitlin Saunders

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.

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. 

A vintage New York neon sign for a juice stand advertising “Papaya” was the model and inspiration for Fruit Juice JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

A very expanded sans serif font in capital letters inspired by the inscription on a bank note

Old bank notes tend to have a very typical typography. Usually they carry decorative and elaborately designed markings. For one thing, they must be practically impossible to forge and for another, they should make a respectable and legitimate impression. And in the days of copper and steel engravings, that meant nothing less than creating ornate, shaded or otherwise complicated scripts. Designing the appropriate script was literally in the hands of the engraver.

That’s why I noticed this bank note from 1948. It is the first 20 mark bill in the then newly created currency ”Deutsche Mark.“ All other bank notes of the 1948 series show daintier forms of typography with an obvious tendency toward modern face. The 1949 series which followed shortly thereafter reveals the more complicated script as well. For whatever reason, only this 20 mark bill displays this extremely expanded sans serif variation of the otherwise Roman form applied. This peculiarity led me in the year 2010 to create a complete font from the single word ”Banknote.“

Back to those days in the 40’s, the initial edition of DM bank notes was carried out by a special US-American printer who was under pressure of completing on time and whose engravers not only engraved but also designed. So that’s why the bank notes resemble dollars and don’t even look like European currency. That also explains some of the uniquely designed characters when looked at in detail. Especially the almost serif type form on the letters C, G, S and Z, but also L and T owe their look to the ”American touch.“

The ingoFont Banknote 1948 comprises all characters of the Latin typeface according to ISO 8859 for all European languages including Turkish and Baltic languages.

In order to maintain the character of the original, the ”creation“ of lower case letters was waived. This factor doesn’t contribute to legibility, but this kind of type is not intended for long texts anyway; rather, it unfolds its entire attraction when used as a display font, for example on posters.

Banknote 1948 is also very suitable for distortion and other alien techniques, without too much harm being done to the characteristic forms.

With Banknote 1948 ingoFonts discloses a font like scripts which were used in advertising of the 1940’s and 50’s and were popular around the world. But even today the use of this kind of font can be expedient, especially considering how Banknote 1948, for its time of origin, impresses with amazingly modern detail.

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.