Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a fan of this mysterious sharp sans-serif font that I often saw on ticket stubs, newspaper ads and magazine covers from the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

It was so cool and unique, with the sharp points on A & V, and skinny crossbars on Z & e.

When I became a professional graphic designer, and began to recognize fonts, I could still never ID this quirky old one. It wasn’t Futura, it wasn’t quite Gill Sans, and it wasn’t Kabel…

…and whatever it was, why wasn’t it available digitally, like the rest of these fonts?

I kept images of the mystery font in my folders of font ideas, but had nowhere near enough samples to re-create a full alphabet.

Then a few years ago, I was over at my friend Brian’s house. He had brought out a bunch of old L.A. Times newspapers he’d kept from the 1969 moon landing, which was then celebrating its 50th anniversary:

As a big fan of the space program, Brian had not only saved a bunch of Times front pages chronicling the progress, he even drove to Florida with his girlfriend to watch the Apollo 11 rocket launch at Cape Canaveral!

They happened to speak to an L.A. Times reporter covering the launch, and were quoted on the front page the next day as “Mr. and Mrs. Barnwell”… much to the confusion of his mother back in Los Angeles.

As a font nerd, the first thing I saw on the papers was this gorgeous headline font, with its swooping art-deco curves, and sharp angles on the corners and ends.

When I looked closer, I realized… the subhead was in that mystery font!

Brian let me borrow his precious papers, and I carefully unfolded and scanned them to collect as many letters as I could find from the subhead font, the tall headlines and tiny photo captions.

Finally I learned that the mystery font was named “Metro”, originally designed in 1929.

And of course, it had already been re-created digitally.

But what didn’t exist…yet… was a version with all the delightful grunginess and imperfection of ink on old newsprint!

Plus these two tall headline styles were — as far as I can tell — exclusive to the LA Times.

Even after scanning the papers, I was missing a lot of letters; particularly Js, Qs, Xs and Zs, and most of the punctuation and symbols needed to complete the fonts.

I abandoned the project for a while, though what I had created so far ended up working perfectly in designs for a jazz age-themed nightclub in downtown L.A.:

This year, I decided to dig in and finally complete these fonts. So I started searching the web for images of L.A. Times newspapers, when I discovered this book!

I was delighted to discover that Js, Qs, Xs and Zs abounded within, as Juries were Quizzed, Nazis Blitzkrieged, and Nixon… Nixoned.

I also found nifty alternate versions of letters a & g, and some of the numbers:

The book also revealed when the fonts were used, from their radical 1936 debut…

…to their 1980 retirement. For Times Roman of all fonts. Blech!

I suppose the look had probably become a bit dated by the late ’70s, but 45 years for a design system is an impressive run!

With all of this source material, I was able to create five weights, each with three versions of every letter and two versions of every number, which automatically cycle while you type:

Hopefully my finished Newshound fonts forever capture and preserve that wonderful look, feel — and even smell — of ink on old newsprint!