font_designer: Dan Solo

Here is another attempt to create a font for invitation work unlike any already out in the world. In casting about for a name, I decided to call it Valerie after Valerie Hope, a...

A reasonably accurate rendering of an old favorite font from Victorian times. Quite readable in lowercase, and very eye-catching in all-caps. We got the proof for this in London many years ago, but neglected...

A popular caps-only type of late Victorian times was called Mural, brought out by Boston Type Foundry in 1890. We always liked it, drew a lowercase for it, and then strengthened it by adding...

We know very little about this font. A printer in Lisbon had it, but said it came from England. Nicolette Gray shows it in her Nineteenth Century Ornamented Type Faces as Lord Mayor from...

This came from a shop near Munich, Germany, and was a very poor proof with no font name on it. Never did identify it. When we cleaned it up, we liked it pretty well....

This font began life as a metal type called Duerer, from the Boston Type Foundry about 1890. A wood type maker copied it, and that’s where we got it (in Guadalajara, Mexico, already! Some...

Originally, this 1870s wood type font was called Armenian. We came across a showing of alphabet at the South Street Seaport in New York, bought it and immediately drew the additional characters needed to...

Authentic rendering of the original font called Vanden Houten from the Keystone Foundry in Phaladelphia. Very popular among job printers of the early twentieth century.

Here’s a wide, very light version of the widely known font P. T. Barnum (or French Clarendon, if you prefer). We have used this to good effect as secondary lines on old fashioned stationery....

This idea of “wrong way weights” was originally called French Clarendon by the Americans, Italienne by the French, and American by the Italians. Sounds like nobody wanted to own up to it. When it...