As you might imagine, I swoon hard over a damn fine retro font, and aren't you lucky...I've got a list of the best of the best font foundries and websites where can get your fonty fetish fix.
#1: Font Diner
These guys are at the top of my list of places to go if you need solid, well designed vintage inspired fonts that won't empty out your wallet. We're talking like, 12 font sets for a measly thirty clams ($30...if you can't dig my jive). I'm particularly fond of their
"Volcano" font by Font Diner
I've purchased, at one point or another, almost all their font sets and have never been disappointed. Full character sets, an occasional cheeky dingbat...I couldn't recommend them more! (Needless to say my college design projects oh so long ago were rife with glyphage from Fontdiner.com.)
#2: House Industries
House Industries is the granddaddy of retro-styled fonts, meticulously crafted and with a pricetag to match. You might know these folks as the ones who developed the Coop and Ratfink font sets, both of which came in limited edition packaging (for true font nerdlingers).
If you've got some corporate funding for your typography desires or are just so damn recession-proof you can shell out $300 for any badass font family that catches your eye, I suggest you stop at House and show them your patronage.
"Ed Benguiat" inspired font from House Industries
Also, here's a cool interview with the House Industries renegade staff of type designers done by the folks over at Seeds and Fruit, an art and design blog.
#3: Sudtipos
Representing our type-obsessed friends in Argentina, this Buenos Aries based company has some lovely retro fonts within their collection.
"Kewlscript" by Sudtipos
All of the fonts on their site are sold through Veer.com and when you get tired of typing sweet musings in sultry Sudtipos fonts in la lengua del amorthe, you can head on over and check out their design blog...si usted habla español. (I don't, but Babelfish does.)
#4: Prop-a-ganda
Got something you want to write in your loudest Fascist Dictator type voice? ACHTUNG!! SCHAUEN SIE NICHT WEITER! (I'm gettin' all multilingual up on yer asses! German language appears courtesy of my six years of german studies, and a little vocab help from Babelfish.) Prop-a-ganda, where fonts are, in their own words:
- "inspired by lettering on retro propaganda posters
retro advertising posters
retro packages all the world over."
"Tekov" font by PAG
Mostly all-caps, stencil-esque fonts (who has time for lowercase letters when there are infidels to smote!) and at only $20 a pop you'll find yourself scooping them up so fast you'd think you'd been brainwashed.
#5: Tack-O-Rama (a collection of retro fonts)
If I can't find what I need from the aforementioned sites, that's when I turn to Tack-O-Rama, a retro/pre-war/alternative (ska, rockabilly, punk)/etc. curated collection of fonts, clipart, and stock photography that will fulfill any and all of your vintage graphic needs.
Much of their collection is also FREE, which is a godsend, again, in this cash-strapped age we live in. But you should consider throwing them some cash or a donation where you can, because the sites creators clearly spent a lot of time scouring the web for all that good stuff that I always forget to bookmark, and which subsequently disappears into the virtual abyss. Now here it all is, sorted and together in one place.
And lastly, in a stock-image related note, I have to give a shout out to the rad folks over at CSA Images (a favorite of my poster designing peeps at Gigposters.com), who specialize in sublimely subversive graphics for even the oddest of your design projects.
A sample image from CSA's "Printstock" gallery.
They've got all kinds of images of old plastic toys, bad mod paintings, vintage clip art, patterns, all artfully composed and ready to be turned into your next Detroit Cobras poster...or whatever it is you're working on that requires tongue-in-cheek, throwback to the past, somewhat distressed artwork.
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