Victoria Medvedeva

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.

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.

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.