Bowfin Printworks is a (very) small type layout design service specializing in personalized stationery products, font identification and online Font Identification Reference works. (Let's face it, it's just me here. To my Bio Page).

Our products feature Custom Spice Jar Labels (now available in round labels, various sizes, and NEW OptiClear and SILVER FOIL or GOLD FOIL too), CasualCards, Baseball Scoresheets, and various types of Perpetual Calendars.

I also write poetry and share it for your leisure reading at the Bowfin Pond.

In addition, I am a hardened list-maker who enjoys nothing more than compiling tables of names and data about all sorts of things including animals, dinosaurs, fish, birds, history, type and anything else that catches my fancy. (Once I put much work in on one, it seems like it's worth sharing the effort). See the results at The Lists & Guides.

Perhaps my greatest passion, or perhaps obsession is a better word, is studying and categorizing fonts. There are well over 40,000 typefaces, which is more than the combined number of species of Birds and Fishes! How can anyone know so many fonts? I sure can't, but I have created a number of free online Font Identification Guides, as reference works to help identify some of the types of fonts people ask about most. My biggest and most popular Guide is the Script Font Identification Guide, with its accompanying Script Font Reference List, covering over 3,100 Script and Hand-drawn fonts. This follows my first project, the "Bauhaus-style" Font Identification Guide.

The newest Guide is the Serif Font Identification Guide, a powerful interactive identification tool that helps you identify a Serif font if you know the attributes of any of 12 key letters (a, b, e, g, y, E, J, K, M, R, U, and W). It shows brief samples of the fonts, including all the key letters, to make the identification even easier. You can even compare fonts you select, to help narrow the choice, and understand the differences between similar fonts. There are also full alphabet showings, and even text settings for most text styles. Over 900 families of Serif fonts have been characterized, representing a high percentage of available fonts. (Some of my great volunteers and I are still adding to the sample images, and might be able to use your help, if you have some of the fonts that are missing illustrations. Please send me an e-mail if you would like to contribute samples.)

Another newly interactive font identification reference work is the Sans Serif ID Aid/Guide, a unique identification tool that helps you identify a Sans Serif font if you know what 7 key letters (a, e, g, G, M, R and y) look like. It has now been made interactive, to make the identification even easier. Nearly 1000 families of Sans Serif fonts have been keyed with Style Codes, representing a high percentage of available fonts. This Guide is currently being expanded to include newer fonts, as Sans Serif fonts have been one of the most popular areas for new fonts.

The Font Identification Guide for Multi-line and Inline font styles, is called the Lined Fonts ID Guide.

One special list is a Typographic References List of books and catalogs in the Bowfin Printworks library. Good places to learn more about type and type design -- something we see and use every day, but rarely appreciate, in my opinion.

Where else can you get custom-printed Spice Jar Labels, using your own list of spices and in the type style you choose? You can now see two pages of sample typefaces, providing a showcase for over 150 more typefaces from the Bowfin Collection. Showings of Antique fonts have been included, and you can also order round labels and even vertical labels, if you need them that way! We have also added several new sizes and even OptiClear and SILVER FOIL or GOLD FOIL labels to the choices you can make (See Label Styles here). Now you can also choose border designs for the Medium and larger labels.

NEW - Ever wonder how to use some of the spices you have, or have heard about? See our new Spice Use List and get some ideas.

Another way you get "Just Your Type".

See nearly 200 more samples of typefaces for Spice Labels, or choose any font you see anywhere in these pages

Why would you want any more Address & Mailing Labels, when you think of all those free ones that you get in the mail every other day? Well, for one thing they don't give you thousands of type styles to choose from, and they are no good to use as mailing labels – they are too small. Besides, how often do you send mail to yourself?

Bowfin Printworks has a huge library of typefaces and five different sizes of labels. We even have CLEAR labels in three different sizes, ans now SILVER FOIL too. Now there are also border designs for the medium and larger labels, to personalize your labels even further. So let your mail look like it came just from you, and not from the last charity that sent you a bunch of freebie labels.

See a small sample of the typefaces you can choose, but remember almost any other font you see in my pages, or any other one you know about, is in my font collection, so ask for anything you like.

(They're great for taking notes on the back, too!)

 (By the way, I'd like to see your local printer make "business cards" that look like the one above, with multiple type styles, curved text AND multiple colors and drop shadows on the clip art. I'll bet none of his "Selection of Styles" is like it at all!)

Have a look at my current Featured Faces. There are at least two samples for each of my type style categories. Every letter of each typeface is shown set in a series of words (not just a one-line alphabet sample) so you can see how it really looks. Each Featured Face also includes the name of the artist who designed it, and the supplier of the type. (I like giving credit where it's due.) See the new Trading Card format for type samples that I'm trying out too.

You can also see many pages with even more examples of each of the five style categories: Formal, Artistic, Casual, Elegant and Strange. (I like showing off my collection whenever I can, and continuing to add new examples here gives me a chance to show a small sample of my total collection. There's still a good chance you'll see something you like here, in one or more of the styles. You can always ask to see more.)

Free Font ID Service - If you ever see a typeface anywhere that you'd like to know the name of, just send me something that shows it, or the URL of a web site that uses it, and I'll try to identify it for you and tell you where you can buy the typeface. (It's one of my hobbies; I call it "font-spotting".)
e-mail me your font ID question

Note: Most fonts seen on my site are available from MyFonts.com, which has one of the largest and easiest collections to search.

Just tell me what format your print shop needs input files, and I can e-mail them after first showing you the drafts on a custom web page I will set up for you to see the work as soon as it's done. Or, if you prefer, I can arrange the printing through my relationships with national print and label wholesalers (see Other Products, below). This is the way I coordinate the design process with you, so you can see what you're getting and have me make changes, often within minutes, rather than days.

Even though Custom Spice Labels, CasualCards and Graphics Design Services are my specialty, my motto could be "If it needs type, I can do it!" So I can do regular business cards, wedding invitations & programs, greeting card imprinting, album pages, labels, letterhead, envelopes, posters and handbills, restaurant menus and fresh sheet inserts, even Recipe Cards printed in Just Your Type (and only YOU know what that is!). I have affiliations with several national print wholesalers and label suppliers who can provide a wide range of stock choices and the latest in print technology to produce your printed products and labels exactly to my designs.

Of course, this wouldn't be my web site if it was just ordinary, so my Product List is also an ever-changing typeface sampler mixed in with a barrage of CasualCard slogans that you can improve by sending me your ideas (for slogans OR products).

Now, we have Baseball scoresheets so you can go out and record your own pieces of baseball history.

For those of you with your own web sites, I have WebWords. Use the Bowfin Printworks type collection to spiff up your site with WebWords distinctive typeface graphics (.gif ) captions, labels, titles and initials added to your own web designs. Just tell me the type style you want and what you want each graphic to say. (Price: $1 (US) for each .gif file.)

I've also developed several perpetual calendar ideas that will let you use your favorite art, photos, or magazine pages and my custom mounting mat designs (you make them) and printed calendar inserts and quickly change your pictures and the dates by sliding them in place without taking apart the back of the picture, as you usually have to do in order to change the images behind the glass. It even uses standard size frames, so you can use one you have, or buy one anywhere to suit your tastes. (You'll love it! ) There's even a new smaller size calendar design for you to use on a desk or shelf.

I am also working on an online Perpetual Calendar that you can use to show you any month from 1600 through 2199. Of course it will also be a typeface sampler.

Bowfin Printworks gives you the kind of printed quality you can't do yourself at home on your desktop printer, as we use professional page layout software, licensed typeface designs, and quality paper stock. I use commercial printers (for CasualCards), and wholesale print and label suppliers for other Graphics Design products.

And when you order something from me, just forget the phrase "please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery", because you'll never hear it from me. I'll do my best to get your order to you in less than a week. That's my commitment.

bowfinboy@gmail.com

No information about you will be sold or given to anyone else, for any reason, period. Your name, address, and/or e-mail will be retained only for the purpose of customer follow-up.

 Please come back often, as I continually add features, new type samples and Spice Label fonts. This site will always be a work in progress.

(Date of this version: 4 May 2014)

Thanks for visiting! Come again.

© Michael Yanega, Bowfin Printworks, 2014 - All material is the copyrighted property of Michael Yanega and Bowfin Printworks, except for typeface names and Distributor/Foundry names, which are the property of their respective owners. TypeRight is the property of TypeRight.Org. Font Editing Software is from FontLab Ltd.