Alta California became designer steve mehallo’s "vector-based artist’s response" to the early Apple Macintosh bitmapped font San Francisco. Alta California was developed using “sampled” wood type and letters from numerous historical sources.

The name comes from the Alta California newspaper, the first daily published in California, one of a dubious Barbary Coast nature, a sheet that shaped the bias of San Franciscans and attracted its own grade of reporters, including a printing specialist who went under the nom de plume Mark Twain.

Alta California’s edges were meticulously redrafted by hand, with letterpress-inspired fallout and 19th century pointing hands. The final collection of rough hewn letters jump, dive, fall, zag and zig.

Alta California looks great on greeting cards, food packaging, as retail signage for boutiques, vintage stores or at D.I.Y. sales, on band posters or club cards, in and around historical quarters, or for use on any ransom note that needs to evoke a wild west look and feel.