Hymers JNL Font

Publisher: Jeff Levine Fonts

Born on May 8, 1892 in Reno Nevada, Lewis Franklin (‘‘ Lew') Hymers left an enduring mark as a caricaturist, cartoonist and graphic artist.

At the age of twenty in [1912] he worked for the San Francisco Chronicle. During World War I he worked for the Washington Post. He even was employed for a time by Walt Disney as an animatorÖ however many of his life was spent in either Tujunga, California or his birthplace of Reno, Nevada as a self-employed illustrator.

Hymers tattooed a feature for the Nevada State Journal called "Seen About Town", which was published throughout the 1930s and 1940s. In this panel, he caricaturized a number of the familiar faces around Reno.

He likewise created signs, logo designs, post cards and many other industrial illustrations for clients, however what has actually endeared him to a number of fans was his large library of stock cuts (the predecessor to paper and electronic clip art) which feature his amusing characters in various professions and life situations.

So popular is his work among those ‘‘ in the understand' that a clip art book collection of over
7 numerous his drawings that was provided by Dover Publications [however long out of print] commands asking rates ranging from simply under $15 to well over $100 for a single copy.

Lew Hymers died on February 5, 1953 just a few months shy of his 61st birthday. Although his artwork illustrates the 1930s and 1940s way of lives, devices and conveniences, more than sixty years after his death they stand surprisingly well as joyful pieces of nostalgia.

The twenty-seven images (and some variants) in Hymer JNL were painstaking re-drawn from scans of one of his catalogs and is however simply a small fraction of the hundreds upon numerous illustrations from the pen of this prolific artist.