Annabelle Scaddan

The vintage sheet music for “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” yielded another bit of Art Deco-era lettering perfect for developing into a digital font.

This time it wasn’t the song title, but rather the name of the show it was from serving as the type inspiration…the Cotton Club’s 1931 revue “Rhythm-Mania”.

Harlem’s Cotton Club was an “exclusive, whites only” club; both famous for its talent and shows, yet infamous for hiring black acts but not allowing black patronage.

On the sheet music, the show title was hand lettered in a bold, slightly stylized fashion which became the basis for Rhythmic Revue JNL; available in both regular and oblique versions.

The antique sheet music for the 1915 song “A Girl in Your Arms is Worth Two in Your Dreams” had its title hand lettered in a Roman typeface that reflected ever so slightly the Art Nouveau influences of the time.

This design is now available as Romance Roman JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

A 1930s WPA (Works Progress Administration) poster promoting national parks depicts Native Americans overlooking the land with the tag line “his hunting ground of yesterday”.

The hand lettering of that text is reminiscent of Futura Black and similar Art Deco stencil-influenced type designs, but is rendered in an oblique lower case with no capitals.

Re-drawn as Sandwich Shop JNL, the typeface is now available in both regular (vertical) and oblique versions.

Spur Wide JNL was modeled from an example of hand lettering from the antique French alphabet book L’Art du Tracé Rationnel de la Lettre.

Heavy Roman style letters with spurs (often referred to as Latin) were most popular with sign painters and show card writers in the early part of the 20th century.

Spur Wide JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Syndication JNL was derived from Outline Sans JNL. By removing the outer letters, a thinner character set remained. This typeface is available in both regular and oblique versions.