Identify two 1930s WPA poster fonts?

glenn ira12 Aug 2008

Here are 2 typefaces from an old WPA poster.

The first two images are (obviously) variants of the same typeface. The third image is another typeface from the same poster. (These are the best scans I could do; the edges are cleaner/sharper than this.)

Does anyone know if they're relatively unique to this poster (I'm assuming they were hand lettered), or if there are any existing fonts similar to them?

THANK YOU!

dezcom12 Aug 2008#

Most of the WPA posters were handlettered as these seem to be.

ChrisL

analisa12 Aug 2008#

There's some WPA poster-inspired typefaces here. I didn't see any like the samples you provided. Those are pretty wonderful.

Analisa

haresy13 Aug 2008#

I've always loved the look of the text on those posters...

I haven't found anything like what you posted, but dafont has some fonts that might be similar in their "Retro" section. Here's an example: NPS 1935 Font

aluminum13 Aug 2008#

Obama with his (seemingly) enhanced sense of good graphic design should propose a cabinet position of 'design archiver' who would take and digitize the wonderful WPA era typefaces.

Even better, propose WPA II.

glenn ira13 Aug 2008#

Ha, aluminum! Yep, I'm all for it. Wouldn't it be nice to see good design around again?

Thanks for the suggestions, analisa and haresy, some cool stuff.

Still, if anyone runs across anything like these, please post! Such beautiful lettering.

Captured from commoncrawl.org on 21 Apr 2015. original URL