Get Victorian with me

This is a typewriter typeface?? Yes! It's listed in a 1939 Varityper catalogue as “Diacritical”— but I think a better name for it is “Varityper Ornate.” 

Want to type with it? You can. It’s a new free download from the fonts section of The Classic Typewriter Page.

Psst: Here's the whole catalogue, helpfully scanned by Brian D.

A double gothic font

 For all you goths out there ...

Now available on The Classic Typewriter Page.

Two more free Olivetti fonts

Now on The Classic Typewriter Page.

Two new proportional typewriter fonts

 

Right here.

Free typewriter font: Patrician

 

Patrician font

Olivetti logo

Typing myself a letter ... indirectly

When I opened the mailbox yesterday, I was excited to see an airmail envelope. Could this be a letter from one of my typospherian correspondents in Mexico, Germany, or many other countries?

But no—on closer look, it was retro-styled mail from a nonprofit organization.



I almost tossed it in the recycling, but decided to rip open the envelope and found a fundraising letter from FINCA, which promotes microloans and other economic solutions in developing countries. The letter was adorned with an image of a Polaroid, with a "typewritten" message on it ...



... But wait! That's my Remington Noiseless font!

It is a very odd experience to be one of thousands of recipients of a mass mailing, and then to discover my own creation within the mail, based on the typing of my first and dearest typewriter.



Remington Noiseless is a popular font, and I've run across it in unexpected places before, as I did on a recent trip to Oakland.

If you'd like to have it, please help yourself.

As for microloans, they have mixed success.

Spawned by my Noiseless

On Christmas Eve, I was driving down 40th Street in Oakland, California when I had to pull over and snap a picture of a building across the way.



That sign for the Integrative Wellness Center looked very familiar.



Yes! It was made with my own Remington Noiseless font.







As I write in my book:

     Even as a kid, I was fascinated by the typeface of my Remington Noiseless Portable Model Seven. I liked typing it, copying it by hand, and noticing its little imperfections, such as the missing right foot on its lowercase m. That disabled m has now appeared on blogs, games, books, packaging, and ad campaigns—because I turned it into a digital font and shared the soul of my typewriter with the world. I’ve now created over a dozen typewriter fonts that I give away on The Classic Typewriter Page, and I didn’t need to know anything about font design to do it.
     Here’s how. First, find a website that offers to make a font from your handwriting (there are several). The system works via a template that you print, write on, then scan and upload to the site. Of course, the template will work with typing just as well as with handwriting. You can either type directly on the printed template, or use an image editing program to work with a high-resolution scan of your typewriter’s typing and paste it into the digital template. Extra characters can be created through some image manipulation. The results won’t look just like real typing, but it’s a kick to see the soul of your typewriter manifested on a screen.

Remington Noiseless was the first of 17 fonts that I've created so far using this method.



The font has been downloaded over 110,000 times from dafont.com.

You can find it along with more typewriter fonts on The Classic Typewriter Page.

Royal Executive: typeface and font

If you ever see a typewriter with a key like this, you've got something special.

Here's an ad posted by Peter S. on Facebook. The exact phrase is "overcomes objections to the more usual faces."

Download the font here.

VisOmatic Electrite font

I hadn't made a typewriter font for a while, so with an hour to spare last night, I did.

I don't think I've seen this typeface on another typewriter. Isn't that ampersand a beauty?

Download the font here.

Also available: VisOmatic, with more regular alignment.

You can make your own font, for free, at paintfont.com.

Here's a closeup of the type. 

A new Cassandre Graphika font

Read this PDF for more information on the Cassandre Classic font.

To download Cassandre Classic along with Cassandre Graphika and Reiner Graphika, visit my website.

To learn more about the Olivetti Graphika, see my post here.

Tributes and trickery

See Alan Brignull's "typecast" here.

Underwood De Luxe Quiet Tab font

Download the font here: Underwood Quiet Tab.ttf

Read about '50s Underwoods on Alan Seaver's site and Robert Messenger's blog.
Read about designer Paul A. Braginetz on Robert Messenger's blog.
And here's the black-and-white version of this machine.

In Vogue

PS: The material used to mask off the bottom strip on the top body piece is that wonderful all-purpose invention, duct tape.

Reiner Graphika font

Free Cassandre Graphika font

PS: I used a carbon ribbon, advancing it by hand, to get the crispest possible impressions of the characters.

Visit my website to get Cassandre Classic — a new font designed by Ian Davies — and Reiner Graphika.

Typewriting on a “personal computer"? Yes!