SWMCA Brands & Holding LLC. (Stephen McBride)

I have creating fonts since I was a ten year old boy. It started in 1977 when someone from church gave me a calligraphy book and a month later I started a calligraphy business that evolved into a sign painting one. I kept it in business for 32 years. It had it's own privately owned fonts never released to the public. Even after the business turned to website creation in 2001 (permanently in 2003), I decided not to market the fonts yet in case I ever decided to get back into sign making in the future. Now that this wont be happening (the supplies and machines plus rent in a building zoned for using solvents is just way too expensive) I offer the fonts to you along with occasional new creations. Swmca does nothing but create fonts and remake it's old ones these days. The goal now is to release some of these fonts (many for free). Much of what's here is what we'd call with most other types of merchandise "new old stock" (fonts made years ago but never digitalized), but some new stuff will be offered.

For many years SWMCA was a graphics business from Edwardsville, Kansas. It was a sole-proprietorship that was never incorporated and still is. The big difference between the old and current operation. is SWMCA got out of sign painting, logo design, website creation and many other things to concentrate on what it did best. Those fabulous SWMCA fonts. When it first started SWMCA used it's own limited original fonts with those of others (or a "mimic" of 'em). After a few years SWMCA used it's own fonts for just about everything.

The year was 1977 and a font called Slim-line from my own handwriting (later renamed Basic as more weights were created) was the very first font...and my answer to the much overused Helvetica font. A popular font called Indian (later to be named "Typefont of Native American Honor) would come. A remake of this font is available right now here at Fontspace under the name Tribal. While this wasn't the first attempt to digitalize SWMCA fonts, Tribal was the first SWMCA digital font to be offered to the public and it's sister font Tribal Schoolhouse. By the downloads compared to all my other offerings as of this writing, these font must be a hit with some although it has the second least amount of characters of any font offered. Back then each sign maker had their own unique fonts and many still do. Foundries worked that way too. There was no internet to download from unless you were a government agency education institution or super duper rich. Chyron made most of the machines for putting captions on newscasts and the credits on tv shows and movies. If you were into municipal roadsigns, sick on letters, or vinyl banners and located in the United States you either bought equipment from Gerber Scientific Products or had the folks at 3M make the stuff for you and then add a small mark-up. These were your only options unless you were a government agency or multi-billion dollar corporation. Later you could make fonts with PC, but with the beginnings of that...Macromedia's Fontographer was your choice, because it was your only choice.

Eventually High-Logic had font making tools which are great now and rival many other but at the time they first came out were still in BETA stage...or in other words JUNK. Others would follow and there's would be ever worse with their first up to even third and fourth editions, as they'd actually crash your hard drive. I've had this happen more than once. I remember when my IBM Aptiva "went blue screen". Later my first Dell and Acer computers would "depart" the same way. This is why SWMCA didn't get into much digitalization earlier.

Then you had the big boys like Letraset who dominated the market at the time and ITC (International Typeface Corporation) which made many great fonts but "butchered" the Bookman font. By 1990 this font which was messed up was widely available, but the original by the now defunct Miller and Richards foundry which was popular from creation around 1910 until the early 1980's was no-where to be found on or offline. The swash version popular in the 1970's was especially missed. Then Zip-o-tone had a font called Benjamin (originally created in the 1960's as Epilogue). Once that company went out of business a "new Benjamin" came about that doesn't have nearly the flexibility of the original Benjamin (at least the newer one had always been a free font if you know where to look). I think that was a great font but should have been named something else. There is another Benjamin font that didn't make it at all. The Franklin font on the other hand has stood the test of time and is still available. It's used heavily by the "this tv" network (USA). It even gave birth to an even wackier font oddly called "Crackhouse".

This was the world SWMCA operated in. SWMCA quit using fonts from others regularly way back in the early days... with the sole exception of Highway Gothic as one writer recently called "the new <I>Helvectica</I>" (Haas must've made a killing) as it's getting replaced in some applications by Clearview. SWMCA used Highway Gothic heavily many years before most others outside of government. It wasn't until Interstate was issued by Font Bureau that this really changed.

After the lady I loved the most Donna Jean Strong died; I decided to reopen the business temporarily in her lovely memory, as a foundry only that was no longer into it's former roles as a sign painting or website creations. Donna will be greatly missed. We had planned to marry but she passed away before we could make it official. At least we were married in the eyes of God and in spirit, and that's what really counts. Except for tax stuff, when marital status is called for I usually mark widowed (which I consider myself to be). I have no more plans of marriage on this earth.

SWMCA is as of September 5, 2014 represented by the Freelancers' Union of New York City (not affiliated with the AFL-CIO yet) and is now a union operation.

SWMCA is now SWMCA Brands & Holding LLC. as it is officially now incorporated in the State of Missouri (USA) as an Limited Liability Company as of December 9, 2014. It was originally incorporated as SWMCA Catalogs. The name was changed in 2016 as we hope to eventually expand the company to provide additional service and products in addition to typography.

SORRY FOR THE LONG DELAY! WE WILL RESUME FONT PRODUCTION AGAIN BY OCTOBER IF ALL GOES RIGHT. WE'RE WORKING TO RENT EQUIPMENT WHILE OURS IS EVENTUALLY UPGRADED.

Corrections and Omissions:
Ol' West Rustik
1. Ol' Wes' Rustik is listed as "Ol' Wes' Rustik for PC". A Mac version can also be download on the same page.

2. The description should read "Of course today a bill means you owe money just as back then..." [and at the end:]
"In it's entire history SWMCA has produce very little small cap fonts and only one Western Font (until now). This font is both."

Public Notices:
SWMCA fonts may appear as being of the"Cyrillic" language in Microsoft Paint's text toolbar bar or other applications but will work fine regardless unless otherwise noted.

New fonts coming very soon Most fonts issued after July 29, 2013 will have at least 200 characters..

All trademarks, brand and names used in descriptions etc. are property of their perspective owners and do not constitute an endorsement of and/or affiliation with SWMCA unless otherwise noted.