The “Trixy Toy Educator” was a 1930s-era set of letters and numbers (along with a few animal shapes) for teaching children, and was manufactured by the Durrel Company of Gardner, Massachusetts.
Die cut from thick cardboard, the 40 piece set also included a rack to display the characters, presumably for little ones to practice the correct order of the alphabet and basic numerals or to spell simple words like ‘dog’ or ‘cat’.
Whomever came up with the idea, they used the most rudimentary and unusual ‘type design’ shapes in the A-Z and 0-9, but they were just odd enough to inspire a digital type version of them.
School Age JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.
Download Now Server 1 Download Now Server 3 Download Now Server 2 Manufactory JNL and its oblique counterpart were re-drawn from examples of a now-antique typeface used within many advertisements found throughout the pages of The American Stationer magazine, circa 1879. The term ‘manufactory’ was popular during this era; the word being a more archaic form of ‘factory’. There is a bit of Western flavor to this type design, as the spurred serifs and the top and bottom strokes are heavier than the vertical and mid-point stroke weights. Download Manufactory JNL Font Family From Jeff Levine