• Recession-Fabulous Free Typewriter Fonts

    I've got quite a few (fairly) harmless addictions. Collecting old manual typewriters, for example, will not land me a stint in some lock-down rehab. I don't think. I guess dropping a Hermes 3000 on my foot might buy a little time in the ER, although I'm sure I'd be more worried about the typewriter than the foot. At any rate, it's a harmless addiction as long as I don't need government bailout money to keep me in fresh ribbon.

    One of my other addictions is collecting computer fonts. It's true. I have thousands and can justify every last one because I'm the faculty adviser for an undergrad literary magazine. The magazine requires layout and layout requires nifty fonts now and then. I might as well share a few fabulous free font sites, because at this point it's starting to feel like hoarding.

    You know, like those people who turn their houses into a maze of newspaper stacks and olive jars. If you opened up my hard drive, I'm afraid that's what it would look like.

    Urban Fonts has a nice collection of the usual typewriter font suspects, as well as some of the more down-and-dirty broken fonts. Some of the classics are Adler, Love Letter, Metalic Avacodo (that's the spelling), Royal Pain, Traveling Typewriter (cleaner than the others), and Uncle Typewriter. There's a nice one called My Old Remington that's a good blend of the clean and dirty - much like typing with a fresh ribbon on a machine that hasn't been cleaned in, say, sixty years.

    Font Parade is a great site for some of the standards Urban Fonts carries, with a few more. Take a look at Dislexi, Fox Script, Hammer Keys (a favorite right now), Junko's Typewriter, Maszyna, and Type-Ra. Those of you who have special love for that blocky, sci-fi look some Hermes 3000s have can download Typewriter a6o2. Not my thing, really, but it might be yours.

    One of my favorite font sites right now is Misprinted Type. Some of these are typewriter fonts and some are just plain art, but you simply must stop by and take a look at the free offerings as well as the buy-only fonts. The picture above is Dirty Ego, but you should also check out Astonished, Print Error, and Horse Puke. That's right, Horse Puke.

    Just because you may or may not have a functioning manual typewriter is no reason not to have typewriter font-love. God knows you miss out on the overall aesthetic clank and zing delight of the old beauties, but you can be forgiven. The real thing can be pricey. During WWII my grandmother painted eyebrow pencil lines down the backs of her legs to mimic stockings. It's the same principle.

    By the time this recession is over, I figure jewelry maker key choppers will have "recycled" too many old typewriters. Collecting whole machines will be iffy at best. It's good to have the fonts as a backup should - God forbid - we have to typecast in eyebrow pencil.

    10 comments → Recession-Fabulous Free Typewriter Fonts

    1. You're such an enabler. I've been addicted to typefaces since my college newspaper days. My PC has only 400 fonts installed; the Mac has about 1,200. I have to practice serious restraint about which I install after my Mac became so thrashed that I had to weed out a few thousand unused fonts.

      My favorite typewriter typeface for practical use is urania_czech; all of Machines of Loving Grace's menu items were done in it.

      A few of my go-to font sites are the typewriter fonts at dafont.com, the Manfred Klein Fonteria, Nick's Fonts, Tack-O-Rama, and of course Font Diner (look under "Free Silverware").

    2. Dammit Olivander. I'm a sucker for the retro fonts, and now I'm in serious trouble. Tack-O-Rama is a blast! One can never, ever have enough fonts. Or typewriters.

      Watch out for dafont.com, though. My Avira virus catcher went off like bouquet of Roman candles.

    3. Nice. I like SF Espionage. And, how can anyone resist a font called Love Letter?

    4. Love letter is one of my favorites. Try as I might, though, I haven't yet found a broken or dirty cursive typewriter font.

      If anyone out there knows of one (or ten), let me know.

    5. Olivander, you got it right. Monda, you're an enabler. How I missed this post the first time around, I don't know. There oughta be a 12-step program for fontaholics, except none of us wants to give up her addiction.

      My own contributions:

      1) These folks have a gorgeous font set called Codex, a la DaVinci's drawings. Cheap ($15). Worth it. http://www.speakeasy.org/~ecf/codex.htm

      2) Some lovely free fonts, clean, classy:
      http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/index.html

      3) A font set that will make Celtic knots of all sorts. Incredible. You'll go nuts, blow a whole weekend playing with these. Way cool.
      http://www.clanbadge.com/knots.htm#styles

      4) This amazing site lets you check out & compare what most standard computer fonts will look like side by side. You can type anything, and see how the phrase will look in dozens of fonts at once. Handy for us layout junkies. There's a 'wtf?' button if you get lost.

      5) You probably know about this one, but this is one of the places I go for historic fonts & script fonts: http://www.arcaneoracle.com/

      6) And another source of positively lovely historic fonts & symbols, many free:
      http://www.renfaire.com/Misc/Fonts/A.html

      Oh, heaven help me...I have to check out Love Letter now...

    6. Whoops, for the link for #4: http://flippingtypical.com/about.html

    7. Now YOU'RE the enabler. Looks like I'll be downloading a few fonts today. Arcaneoracle.com is killing me outright.

      I love these, Kathi!

    8. Oh, god, I know, Monda, but what a way to go! Death by font!

    9. Nice collection of the usual typewriter font suspects, as well as some of the more down-and-dirty broken fonts it's the same as had photoshop or some software where you can add fonts, anyway I have a type machine a very old one haha thanks

    10. I also found your entries very interesting. i have already published my book and waiting for royalties! Keep up the wonderful job.

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