van nelle
ゔぁん ねるるえ
ван нэллэ
I based this font on the unusual lines of letters n, r and k I see on my mum's document folder, since I was old enough to be shown.
In the war my mum was a secretary in hospitals. When she was 21 she made friends with a Hungarian doctor there who helped her deal with the many terrors she saw daily, things most people never realised existed. He helped her survive and became her mentor and protector. He made her a beautiful folder for her documents and letters, from cardboard, kraft paper, inks and obsolete x-ray supports.
He decorated the folder with traditional designs - on the front of this folder he wrote Emlék ................... My mum used the folder until she died, just recently. My parents named me in honor of this man.
This font is in memory of my mother and also of her protective angel whose name I heard too rarely to remember, and sadly my parents never managed to trace him after the war.
Alternate g=\, alternate k={, alternate m=I, alternate z=}, alternate UC ß=#
This font is a free download, but some use is prohibited without contacting me first. Please abide by the readme which is included in the download! Thanks.
The Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) was the largest agency of FDR's "New Deal", employing millions of people. Over 2,000 posters were produced by the W.P.A. to raise awareness and support the arts.
I have a lot of admiration for these posters and a style of sign painters' lettering (sometimes called “gas-pipe”) that was common in the U.S. during the 1930s-'40s. WPA Gothic gets much of its inspiration from this poster in particular. This FontStruction stays true to the sample’s simple letterforms, but the FontStruct grid does present a few limitations. For more refined typefaces in this style check out DDC Hardware, Futura Display, FF Golden Gate Gothic, Refrigerator, and MVB Solano Gothic by some of my favorite type designers, two of which (Parkinson and Van Bronkhorst) are East Bay natives.
WPA Gothic has a few alternate glyphs hanging out in the Extended Latin slots with more to come.
To get a look at the typeface outside the confines of the FontStruct sampler, here's a sample poster.
May 25, 2008: Released a variation with low-waisted "deco" caps.
2019: 10 year anniversary update!
– Loosened the spacing a tad more.
– Added a few punctuation marks, including dashes, bullets, and inverted question/exclamation marks.
– Tightened ‘f’ spacing.
– Lengthened the quotes and apostrophes. They were so wee!
– And I fixed that Å! It’s not pretty, but it’s a ring.