Skip to content
Home / Fonts / Parkinson / Modesto Text
Modesto Text

Modesto Text™

by Parkinson
Individual Styles from $25.00
Modesto Text Font Family was designed by Jim Parkinson and published by Parkinson. Modesto Text contains 6 styles.

More about this family
FREE 30-DAY TRIAL of Monotype Fonts to get over 150,000 fonts from more than 1,400 type foundries. Start free trial
Start free trial

About Modesto Text Font Family


The Modesto Text Family is text in name only. It’s called Text because it has a Lower Case, and also to distinguish it from the rest of the Modesto clan. Modesto is a loose-knit family based on a signpainters lettering style popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. It evolved from the lettering I used for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Baily Circus Logo. The Modesto family was not planned. It just happened, a few fonts at a time over about fifteen years. In 2014 seven new Italic fonts and two Chromatic families were added. There is a downloadable MODESTO USER MANUAL PDF in the Gallery section for this family.

Designers: Jim Parkinson

Publisher: Parkinson

Foundry: Parkinson

Original Foundry: unknown

Design Owner: Parkinson

MyFonts debut: May 18, 2005

Modesto Text™ is a trademark of Parkinson Type Design.

About Parkinson

Jim Parkinson is the founder and sole employee at Parkinson Type Design. He was born in Richmond, California, in 1941, and he’s been lettering ever since. Jim was one of the designers who worked on ITC Bodoni, along with Sumner Stone, Holly Goldsmith and Janet Prescott Fishman. He drew Parkinson Electra for Monotype and has done a number of custom fonts for magazines and newspapers. In addition to his custom font work, Jim has designed dozens of retail fonts. Some of these designs are exclusives for Adobe, Monotype, FontShop, and The Font Bureau. The rest are released through Parkinson Type Design. Jim has also specialized in typographic logos for magazines and newspapers, including Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Esquire, InStyle, Men's Journal, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Detroit Free Press, the Toronto Star and The National Post. In a rare departure from publication work, Jim designed the logo for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. In his spare time, he paints…mostly pictures that feature letterforms.

Read more

Read less