font_designer: Dan Solo

Memorial

Memorial font

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...

Hansard

Hansard font

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...

Harlem Text

Harlem Text font

This bold blackletter is rather wide, which enhances its readability. In Victorian job printing it was not unusual to find one line of blackletter in a card or handbill, just for contrast. This one...

Estienne

Estienne font

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...

Farringdon

Farringdon font

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...

Cigar Label

Cigar Label font

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...

Bareback

Bareback font

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...

Vanities

Vanities font

A Victorian type which, like so many others, was originally offered without a lowercase. As we do so often, we designed a matching lowercase for it. We also added a shaded version of the...

Vienna

Vienna font

This early 1900s type is from the German foundry of Schelter & Gieseke, and is typical of early twentieth century design. As usual, we have added all the modern necessities, such as monetary signs...

Alaska

Alaska font

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...