font_designer: Dan Solo

A surprisingly modern looking condensed sans serif issued by Mackellar, Smiths & Jordan foundry in 1887. Its narrow width makes it useful for long copy headlines. Designed by the freelance type cutter Charles Beeler...

The Fredrick Ullmer Co. in London acted as agent for many typefoundries, and this was one of their offerings. Some of the letters were rather outlandish, so we fearlessly decided to improve them. The...

This is a neat lightface font from the 1880s, issued by MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan of Philadelphia. Just a hint of Victorian design on a few letters. All in all a clean, easy to...

Many fonts have carried this name. Ours goes back to just before 1900 in France. This general style had considerable popularity among job printers all over Europe. We have even seen it used for...

An old wood type we picked up in London from the Fredrick Ullmer Company. It’s not marked, and we’ve never seen it in a catalog, so we don’t know who made it. We like...

Our font (circa 1895) of this old wood type was made by Hamilton of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, but we have been told that another identical font was made earlier by W. H. Page, Greeneville,...

We saw a zigzag type like this made in the 1860s. We copied the idea, but added stars to make it patriotic. As with many highly specialized fonts, you won’t want to use this...

This font was inspired by the embossed lettering on cigar boxes. The letters, or entire words, are often surrounded by raised dots, and that was our idea here. We drew this about 1997, and...

The devil does indeed find work for idle hands. This was designed by Dan X. Solo about with no excuse whatsoever. The name comes from the fact that a circus that we regularly did...