I love novelty fonts. One of the first fonts I designed was RedLetter (originally named Stalingrad), a font made up of hammers and sickles, the symbols of Communism. It occurred to me one day that the straight shapes of the hammers and the curves of the sickles could be used to make all the letters of the alphabet. If you wander through shareware fonts, you may occasionally see it since I released an early version in an attempt to publicize my work. (It is one of the few typefaces I released as shareware or demoware.) Since then I have made a great many novelty fonts, in part because they are fun to do, and in part because they are easy to do.
A playbill announcing a new opera, a "Novelty Opera" seems to be an entertaining way to display a sampling of novelty fonts. So without further ado:
What a monstrosity! I have not seen anything so ugly since the last time I say an announcement set in Algerian (which happens far too frequently. And people thought Apple contributed to bad taste in the 1980s with the San Francisco font--long ago removed from their system software.)
Novelty fonts are like spice: they must be used in very small doses. A meal of pepper will make one sick, but a sprinkle here and there can improve food. A similar principle holds for novelty fonts.
The fonts shown on the show bill above are, in order of appearance: Screwged, KnewFontJagged, RedLetter, ShadyCharacter, Teethee, KolkFrizzy, BumberShoot, WurstCactus, PencilFat, PhrackCack, Hammered, NailsNStaples, WrenchedLetters, TOCinRings, SafetyPinned, NeedALilly, Tinkerer, ShirlyUJest, PutMyFootDown, and ForTheBirds. KnewFontJagged, KolkFrizzy, WurstCactus, and PhrackCack are examples of fonts produced with a font distortion program, discussed on another page.
(I should not have to say that the above poster is completely fictitious and was invented only as a way of displaying typefaces. But I better say it anyway--the above poster is fiction. Any similarity to real titles or persons is coincidental.)
You may think that the above exhausts my supply of novelty fonts, but you are wrong. As I said at the beginning, I love novelty fonts. Click here to see more!!