New Font: Aylward

I seem to still be operating in the mode of fonts based on Victorian era advertising cuts, and Aylward fits in that tradition, based on several variants of the same style of wood type. Aylward is a bold display face with exaggerated serifs and some unusual features like the really unique design of the “A” and the spiral forms on the “S” and “G” characters. Aylward offers a trule unique and antique look but is very readable and striking without being too heavy or overly ornate.
It also includes not just a single style, but also a variant with spurs on the ascenders and curves of the characters. Because this is a display face it has no proper lowercase, so the standard font includes the spurred characters on the uppercase and the plain characters as the lowercase. As a bonus there is also a custom outline version of the font which can be bought separately or is included packaged with the main font, so it’s like getting three fonts in one.

You can download and try the demo version of Aylward in TrueType format for Mac or PC. It includes a mix of characters from the different variants of the font. You can also order the full version online for immediate download: BUY IT NOW.


March 12, 2010 | Filed Under Featured Fonts, New Fonts | Leave a Comment 

Folkard Font Manifested on Ghost Whisperer

I was scanning through the television channels tonight and stumbled on a show on CBS called Ghost Whisperer. It seemed to have something to do with Willard (sans Ben and sans Michael Jackson theme music) trying to steal a magical book away from the perky teen girl from Party of Five and the second least funny comedian to ever have be featured on The Comedy Channel now that Demetri Martin has a show.

Anyway, inbetween the starlet’s bosom heaving and Willard’s desperate attempts to conjure the ghost of Ben out of the shadows in a dark alley using the force of excessive thespianism, they featured a good shot of the mystical book in question and lo and behold, on the title page it features a lovely example of our Folkard font limning the title The Book of Changes which I thought was a Chinese fortune telling system, but turns out to be a book whose pages magically write and unwrite themselves at inconvenient times, causing Willard to explode, which is still better than being smeared with peanut butter and covered with rats.

The show is basically whipped brain squeezings, but it was nice to see Folkard on TV in an appropriate context.

March 6, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment 

The World of Eric Sloane

This is an update of an article we originally published in 2005. Additional links have been added, especially at the end of the article.

My grandfather made tools. So did my great-grandfather and his father and all his fathers before him back to a distant ancestral blacksmith working under a tree in medieval Scotland. This and my training as a historian and my current profession as a type designer, gives me an inevitable affection and reverence for legendary American artist Eric Sloane and all of the aspects of his work.

Eric Sloane was one of the most interesting artistic figures of the 20th century, even though in many ways his work harkened back to an earlier era. He was like the Howard Pyle of his generation, displaying a multitude of literary and artistic talents which came together in brilliant and unique works which stand alone as embodiments of the art and craft of design. Sloane was a remarkable landscape and skyscape painter — one of his sky murals graces the walls of the main hall at the Smithsonian Air and Space museum — but he is best known for his books on various aspects of history, craft and American tradition — books featuring not only his evocative illustrations, but his unique hand-lettered titles and insightful distillations of history and practical philosophy from the perspective of a craftsman.
Read more

March 4, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

Classic Font: Stuttgart Gothic

Stuttgart Gothic is a super-bold gothic calligraphy font which we first released in 1998. It is based on samples of German poster lettering from the early 20th century, which were in turn based on historical samples from 16th century manuscripts. It’s a very strong font, with lots of ornamental features. For this new release we’ve added some new special characters and useful refinements. Stuttgart is featured in our Gothic Fonts package along with many other fonts from the gothic tradition.

You can try the demo version of Stuttgart Gothic for free, or order the full version online for immediate download.


February 21, 2010 | Filed Under Classic Fonts, Featured Fonts | Leave a Comment 

Font Literacy at the National Gallery of Art

Over the holidays I got to travel with my family to visit my parents in Washington DC. While there, as always, we took time out to visit the National Gallery of Art. We saw some great exhibits. The kids liked the exhibition of Spanish Armor, but I found the strange and melancholy art of The Darker Side of Light to be the most interesting.

Of course, while we were there we spent some time in the gallery’s fantastic gift shops which are loaded with art prints, cards, art-based knick knacks, reproductions and lots of books on art and artists. Inevitably some of those books and products featured our fonts, like Swords: An Artist’s Devotion which used our Kelmscott font for the cover title and a number of our fonts, including Windlassfor interior titles as well. It was also interesting to see our Carmilla font used as the title font for a colletion of art cards of Great Nudes.

What was most striking among the products on sale at the National Gallery stores was the lack of font literacy on the part of the publishers and designers. You would think that when publishing a book or other product based on the work of an artist like William Morris or Alphons Mucha the authors or the designers of the book or product would know enough about the artist whose work they are presenting to be aware that those artists were also notable for their font design or original hand lettering. Yet my eye was caught again and again by examples of products whose designers seemed fundamentally ignorant of the availability of appropriate fonts to compliment the art which they were presenting. A couple of examples stand out. One was a very nice wall calendar from the Brooklyn Museum of Art based on William Morris Arts & Crafts Designs which could have used a William Morris font like our Kelmscott or True Golden, but instead opted for a pretty but unrelated generic art nouveau font. Similarly, a collection of William Morris Giftwrap opted for a plain text font when a Morris font would have been much more appropriate.

Along the same lines, but perhaps somewhat less of a failing were the collections of postcards based on the work of various artists which use their signatures for a title. That’s reasonable in some cases, but it seems like a failing when the artist is Alphons Mucha who did so many lovely hand lettered posters and whose work has been made into some very popular fonts including the eight included in our extensive Mucha collection. That package would have looked much better with Slava or Moravian on the cover.

I may be hypersensitive to this issue, but it just seems logical to me to use the most appropriate fonts possible when presenting the work of an artist, and if that artist was a calligrapher or did remarkable and unique lettering or even designed type, then what excuse does an author or designer who is presenting his work have for not being aware of that and using appropriate fonts? It seems like a disservice to the artist’s legacy and to the public to overlook that aspect of his art. It’s probably too much to expect, but it also seems like a failing on the part of the museum store. Shouldn’t their buyer, who probably got a nice degree in Art History from a respectable college, also be aware of this issue, and when faced with a choice between products pick the one packaged with appropriate fonts rather than with some random alternative?

There seems to be a lack of basic font litreracy here. Are the art and design schools not teaching anything about the history of typography or the work of these artists beyond the most obvious? Morris was the biggest figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. He wrote and painted and designed furniture and fabric and books and typefaces. No one of those things presents a full picture of his talent, so if you’ve studied Morris at all  you ought to know about all of them and use that knowledge. I suppose the average consumer won’t know the difference, but they have the excuse of not having an education or working in the merchandising of art. And when the occasional knowledgeable person does see your work they may notice the flaw and then get grumpy and produce an article like this, for whatever that’s worth.

February 17, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment 

Mister Slaughter by Robert McCammon

After a career as one of the preeminent horror writers of the 1990s and a break which lasted for several years, Robert McCammon has come back with a vengeance, completely reinventing his career, with an impressive series of historical mysteries set in the American colonies in the early 18th century. The stories center on the adventures of legal clerk and freelance investigator Matthew Corbett which began in Speaks the Nightbird, an extraordinary novel which McCammon had not intended to make into a series, but he liked the setting and the characters so much that after making a few chronological revisions he followed it with The Queen of Bedlam and now with a third installment in Mister Slaughter.

Mister Slaughter. Continues the story of Corbett’s work for the Herald Agency based out of New York City, working in partnership with the gruff but formidable Hudson Greathouse. This book picks up directly where The Queen of Bedlam ends, with Corbett and Greathouse taking a commission to retrieve notorious mass murderer Tyranthus Slaughter from a madhouse in Pennsylvania and bring him to New York for transport to England to face justice. Of course, the task of retrieving and delivering the abhorrent Slaughter doesn’t work out as expected, and the story developes into a grueling pursuit through frontier settlements, indian villages and the centers of colonial civilization, uncovering a shadowy criminal network of which Slaughter is just a part.

The story of Mister Slaughter is engaging and moves along quickly, but what really makes the book stand out is McCammon’s attention to developing interesting and complex characters, including his exploration of the nuances of the historical environment which plays a very large role in making the novels in this series as interesting and unique as they are. Corbett gets a lot of development, with his flaws and his virtues placed in striking contrast. He’s heroic and capable yet flawed and troubled at the same time. The book is very much a journey towards a new level of maturity for Corbett as a character. Slaughter also makes an unexpected kind of villain who turns out to be both more and less than you expect him to be by the time the book is done. There’s room in the book for a couple of interesting subplots, some curious secondary characters and a bit of a surprise ending which clearly sets up the next book in the series.

All of this is held together by McCammon’s masterful writing skills, which have evolved and adapted to his material, with undertones of James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving which give the novel an authentic period feel which should make better known and well established historical novelists jealous. Though I heartily recommend Mister Slaughter both as a work of historical fiction and as a mystery novel, I have to warn squeamish readers that there are scenes and situations which are quite graphic and disturbing on the level of the works of Richard Laymon and Clive Barker and if that sort of gore and violence bothers you, read something else. As for me, I’m looking forward to McCammon’s next novel of adventure and mystery in Matthew Corbett’s world.

And for the record, the book features excellent cover art with the title done in our Allegheny font.

February 16, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

New Font: Andrano

Once again I have fallen under the influence of my fashion conscious teenage daughter, who tells me that I absolutely must produce more “shabby chic” fonts like the trendy scrapbookers and hip fashion label designers use. On showing her examples this turns out to mean more circus style fonts with wide ascenders and decoration. We did this dance once before the the Cascade font and she wasn’t entirely satisfied. It was too Art Deco and not crude enough looking.

So, against my natural inclination to tweak everything to perfection I found some sample letters from a 19th century poster and developed a full alphabet from them without pushing too hard for perfect lines and symmetry. The result is the new Andrano font with a name picked because there’s something sort of Italian looking about the font. It features wide and ornate characters with jewel-like internal embellishments and a subtle built-in shadow to give the illusion of depth. The upper case characters are somewhat skewed and misaligned versions of the standard character set. So far my teenaged adviser is fairly pleased with it and she claims that because of her influence it will be a sure bestseller, so here it is.

You can download and try the demo version of Antrobus in TrueType format for Mac or PC. You can also order the full version online for immediate download: BUY IT NOW.

February 10, 2010 | Filed Under Featured Fonts, New Fonts | 1 Comment 

Charles Folkard’s Ring of the Nibelungs

We’ve been working on a collection of art and fonts based on the designs of classic illustrator Charles Folkard — best known for illustrating Pinnochio — for a very long time. It’s been a slow process becaust good examples of Folkard’s art and lettering are relatively hard to find. Although he was a contemporary of Arthur Rackham, he wasn’t nearly as well known, nor did he develop the kind of intense fanbase which Rackham still enjoys today. Nonetheless, Folkard was an excellent artist and arguably much more creative as a calligrapher and page designer than Rackham was.

Of course, our Folkard collection has already produced one of our most successful fonts. The Folkard font has appeared everywhere, in movies and on book titles and product packaging. We’re also working on several other Folkard fonts, including one based on his lettering from The Jackdaw of Rheims.

We’re also adding new art to the collection as we find it and are getting close to the point where we ought to be able to release the package commercially sometime this year. Much of the art is mythological and on Germanic and Scandinavian themes. You can see samples and download large-size versions of four illustrations here. They are from the Folkard illustrated edition of Ring of the Nibelungs, which is perhaps less ambitious than Rackham’s illustrated edition of the Wagner opera, but has some good examples of Folkard’s vivid color and clearly drawn characters.

Look for the Folkard font and art package to premiere sometime this Summer.

February 10, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

MapMaker Collection


Making functional and attractive maps is a very specialized skill, prized by game designers, roleplayers and artists. To make exceptional maps, you need to have the right tools. Our MapMaker font and art package provide the fonts, textures and emblems which make drawing floorplans and developing stylish world and regional maps a breeze. Our map resources are based on the designs of classic cartographers like Abraham Ortelius and Johan Hondius give your maps a unique antique look which will inspire the imagination.

The core of the collection is the extraordinary collection of more than fifteen original fonts specially created for cartographic design. They include fonts for mapping terrain, fonts of complete building plans, fonts for designing buildings and a selection of cartographic lettering fonts.

Basilica is a font of architectural elements fordesigning floorplans of churches, castles, houses and other buildings. It includes a variety of wall thicknesses, windows, doors, stairs and other essential pieces which you can easily assemble in any graphics or desktop publishing program to create impressive, easy to understand layouts for anything from a hut to a palace to a house by house map of a city.

The characters in Ortelius can be combined to make traditional geographical maps in an antique style. They include segments of coastline and rivers which can be combined in thousands of different patterns, plus city, town and fortification emblems, terrain symbols, compass symbols and everything else you need for a high-quality map of your world or key parts of it.

Our Landscape fonts are a pair of fonts containing landscape symbols, images and textures ideal for adding details to your maps and plans, such as trees, rocks, terrain features and other important elements of the environment. It’s excellent for architectural plans and building layouts.


Cityscape is mainly a decorative font, but it can add flair to your maps and plans. Each character is the silhouette of a building and they can be combined to create a complete panorama of a city. Samarkand is a decorative building silhouette font like Cityscape, but with a middle eastern theme. It includes mosques and towers and all the elements of a medieval islamic city.

Our three floorplan fonts include Temples, Castles and Houses. Each font includes a large selection of complete building floorplans which you can access with a few key clicks. Plans include original designs and notable historic buildings, mostly medieval and renaissance designs. The floorplans of temples, churches and cathedrals are particularly impressive.

The package also includes a selection of fonts for doing the titles and labels on your maps, plus several select highly decorative cartographic calligraphy fonts. The six main title fonts were selected for readability and for their historical accuracy for the era of exploration.

Brandywine is based on the lettering of Howard Pyle and is very clear and readable in small sizes, despite having a hand-drawn look. Queensland is a bold, hand-drawn italic font ideal for titles and captions. Windlass is a bold titling font with an antique look ideal for headings and large captions. In some of the alternate character locations it includes decorative map elements with a pirate theme. Buccaneer is based on hand lettering by Howard Pyle for his Book of Pirates. Walsingham is very similar to the lettering style favored by 16th century English mapmakers. Pavane is similar to the style of continental mapmakers like Abraham Ortelius. All six fonts are versatile and are similar to typefaces and lettering styles used on historical maps of the 15th and 16th centuries. Also featured in the package are the new fonts Platthand, John Speed and Hexmap.



The LITE version of the package includes just the fonts for only $59. The PLUS version includes all the fonts, plus a large selection of color design elements and over a hundred antique maps for only $89. The current release is the new 5th edition of the package. Just ORDER ONLINE.

To get an idea of what our MapMaker fonts are like, try out the demo version of our Floorplan fonts. It combines selected floorplans from all three of our Floorplan fonts. You might also want to check out a set of sample maps or try our map design tutorial.

February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

Classic Font: Gaiseric

We first released Gaiseric back in 1998. It was developed from samples of stylized gothic calligraphy, redrawn freehand in a rough style to give an extra antique look. Stylistically it derives from fonts like our more historic Melusine font, but it has a more fanciful, artistic look. Ths makes it perfect for inclusion in our forthcoming Fairy Fonts and Art package which is scheduled for release this Spring. This updated version of Gaiseric includes a full standard upper and lower case character set plus numbers, punctuation and variant versions of many of the upper case characters.

You can try the demo version of Gaiseric for free, or order the full version online.


February 2, 2010 | Filed Under Classic Fonts, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

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  • Borealis Font

    Borealis is based on samples of advertising lettering from the 1930s with a strong Art Deco influence but a unique almost futuristic look. The characters are formed from very fine hand-drawn lines reminiscent of our Ducatus and Broadley fonts. Drawing a font like this with such regular lines and curves is extremely challenging and demands a great deal more attention than traditional fonts where broader strokes and heavier weights give some room for variation. With lines this thin and precise everything has to be perfect from the width of the lines to the balance of the curves. The end result is a stylish and distinctive font with a look that's great for logos or custom title designs. You can download and try the demo version of Borealis in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available if you want to BUY IT NOW.

  • Alexandrine Font

    I keep trying to come up with the perfect title font and while I'm not sure I'll ever accomplish it, the process produces a lot of interesting fonts. The latest of these is Alexandrine. It was inspired to some degree by our recent Madding font, and also by the character forms in Illuminata. The idea was to take the general look of Illuminata, tone it down and make it less extreme and more usable for titles and even some text uses. In doing this I borrowed some ideas from Madding, but moved away from the Art Deco look of that font towards the cleaner look of Illuminata. The result works well. It's attractive, readable and very modern. You can download and try the demo version of Alexandrine in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available if you want to BUY IT NOW.

  • Cascade Font

    In looking through our fonts for something to use on a project my teenage daughter complained that we don't have enough fonts which feature characters with decorative inside the character form. We have a lot of decorative initials, but only a few fonts where the decoration is inside the character rather than surrounding the character. The two most notable examples are the medieval font Florimel and the celtic font Padstow which only has selected decorated characters. You can download and try the demo version of Cascade in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available if you want to BUY IT NOW.

  • Madding Font

    We're in an ongoing quest to make the perfect poster font — something bold and hard to ignore, but also different and with character. We had some success with Aventine, but it was too generic. So we kept working on the concept and the result is the new Madding font, a bold poster font with a bit of an art deco look. It has what it takes to get noticed and enough character to stand out from the crowd. It's available now as a single font, but will also be featured in our forthcoming Art Deco fonts package. You can download and try the demo version of Madding in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available if you want to BUY IT NOW.

  • Glastonbury Font

    Glastonbury is a font we custom designed for St. Albans School. It is named after the Glastonbury Thorn, an unusual tree planted at the front entrance of the school, which legend says grew from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea when he arrived in England. The current tree at St. Albans is a cutting from an older tree planted there many years ago which came from a cutting of the original tree in Glastonbury in England. With the thorny spurs on the font, naming it after the legendary tree seemed appropriate, plus the story of Joseph of Arimathea and his association with the holy grail fit well with my fascination with Arthurian legend. You can download and try the demo version of Glastonbury in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available if you want to BUY IT NOW.

  • Changeling Font

    Changeling is based on Fanny Railton's caption lettering from her illustrated edition of Midsummer Nights Dream. It has two complete sets of variant uppercase characters plus additional variants of a number of key characters. It's stylistically reminiscent of Howard Pyle's caption lettering in the Brandywine font with the same kind of arts and crafty hand-penned look. You can download and try the demo version of Changeling in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available if you want to BUY IT NOW.

  • Krasny Mir Font

    Working on revisions to Structura a few weeks ago brought the whole topic of Russian poster art to the surface and it seemed like a good time to do a font based on typical poster lettering from soviet-era propaganda posters. The result is Krasny Mir, a new font which combines the look of super-bold cyrillic letters with some nice special features, including a set of capital initials with star embellishments and selected alternate character forms. We were going to name the font Red Star, but discovered there was already another font with that name, so we went with Krasny Mir which is fun because both words have double meanings in Russian, which means they combine into four different possible names. You can download and try the demo version of Krasny Mir in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available if you want to BUY IT NOW.

  • Rockne Font

    Rockne is based on samples of mid-20th century wood type in a style which was clearly an influence on the poster lettering of the 1960s as demonstrated in our Butterfield, Harbinger and Pantagruel. It clearly comes out of the Art Nouveau tradition, and with wood type already obsolete at the time the font was made, it presents a chronological anomaly and seems to fit in the gap between the art nouveau period and the psychedelic art movement. You can download and try the demo version of Rockne in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.

  • Rasael Font

    We started work on the Rasael script font early last year, but because of the complexity and fine lines of the characters it took a long time to complete, with some breaks to work on easier projects. The end result is worth the wait, with an elegant combination of calligraphic and script elements which make it rather like a more refined cousin of our Pavane and Azariel fonts, which are part of the Script Fonts Package, which Rasael will eventually be added to. Like almost all of our script fonts, Rasael takes its name from the name of a minor angel. You can download and try the demo version of Rasael in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site

  • Foundry Ornaments

    It's been a dog's age since we featured an art font, so here we go. Foundry Ornament is a decorative art font based on cast metal type printers ornaments. The images have a heraldic theme, with gryphons and lions and other mythical creatures. They include images suitable for marginalia and page decoration as well as for use as repeating borders. The font is very compatible in style with our Monumental Gothic font and also fits well with some of our other ornament fonts like Medieval Tiles and Caswallon Ornament. You can download and try the demo version of Agravain in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.

  • Agravain Font

    Agravain is a very attractive speedball-style hand lettering font with elaborate and stylish character forms, expecially in the upper case which feature unique characteristics of the type of traditional calligraphy from which it derives. It has nice, clean lines and a high readability factor and would be excellent for posters, menu designs or theatrical programs. It's compatible in style and character with some of our past fonts like Valentin, Ganelon and Gaheris. You can download and try the demo version of Agravain in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.

  • Pencraft Initials

    Pencraft Initials is an early 20th century sign-letteirng initials set developed from a set of early 20th century type. The initials are decorated with a motif of stylized flowering vines which is uniquely varied in each character box. They look similar, but each one is different. It also includes regular caps and a full number and punctuation set. This is the first of several related Pencraft fonts which we are developing, including a full text font, a swashed script letter set and custom ornaments which will be released later this year. You can download and try the demo version of Pencraft Initials in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.

  • Amphitryon Font

    Amphitryon is based on a set of nameless hand lettering samples by Lewis Day. It has a bit of a classical look and a hint of romance. Stylistically Amphitryon is a fine lined artist's pen lettering font, reminiscent of some of the other artist's lettering fonts we've done like Sylphide and Sprite and it fits in the general category of Art Nouveaufonts. It features a complete character set with upper and lower case, symbols and numbers. You can download and try the demo version of Amphitryon in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site

  • Walter Crane Font

    The Walter Crane font is based on a sample of his lettering which falls into the category of fairy book lettering like our Folkard and Rackhamfonts. Interestingly, unlike most of Crane's other lettering, which is very much in an arts and crafts style, the samples on which this font is based are more traditional and calligraphic in style. You can download and try the demo version of Walter Crane in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.

  • Art Deco Stencil

    Art Deco Stencil is based on samples of Art Deco stencil lettering by Pedro Lemos. It's in the general mode of some of our other Art Deco fonts like Falmouth, Advertising Gothic and Spoonbill, but the characters are broken up into segments so they could be used to cut a stencil for painting. It's functional, but it also makes for a stylish variation on the theme. As with some of our other Art Deco fonts the upper case character set is done as block initials. You can download and try the demo version of Art Deco Stencil in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.

  • Burd Ellen Font

    Burd Ellen is a decorative hand-lettered font based on early 20th century artists lettering. It has a number of unique features characteristic of arts and crafts period lettering, including decorative flourishes which can be applied to many characters, complete alternate versions of many of the characters, and decroative dots which can be placed in five different positions relative to any character. The name comes from the classic rhyme Childe Rowland about a girl named Burd Ellen who is kidnapped by fairies. If you like the style of Burd Ellen and would like to see other fonts in a similar style you might want to check out Summerisle and Berenicia which come from the same tradition. You can download and try the demo version of Burd Ellen in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.

  • Atkinson Boomtown

    Boomtown is based on hand lettering by early 20th century sign artist Frank Atkinson. It's a classic wild west style font with super wide and bold look. It's in the tradition of some of our other "circus" style fonts like Plowright and Atkinson Eccentric -- perfect for poster and sign design. Although the source characters were hand lettered, we went through very carefully while developing the digital outlines to make sure that the characters are as regular in weight and shape as possible. The end result is very clean looking, but still has a lot of personality. You can download and try the demo version of Atkinson Boomtown in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.

  • Verne Font

    Verne is an original design developed specially for our new collection of Steampunk fonts, which lacked a heavy-weight title font which fit with the theme. It has the look of wrought iron with rough edges, with elements of gears and machinery built into the characters. The heavy weight makes it excellent for incorporating textures and metallic patterns to create interesting titles. You can download and try out the free demo version of Verne (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.

  • Goldwork Font

    Goldwork is a new font based on lettering designed for metalworking inscriptions in the 17th century. It's in the tradition of other fonts we've done based on engraved letters like Monumental Initials and Engravers Gothic. It has some quirky characteristics which are unusual for late gothic lettering, as well as some strange carryovers from earlier styles, not surprising for a style which appeared in the early modern era contemporary with the transition from hand copied manuscripts to printing, leading to changes in lettering styles which carried over into other media. Goldwork has a full character set with capitals and lowercase letters, plus numbers and punctuation. You can download and try out the free demo version of Goldwork (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.

  • Atkinson Egyptian Font

    Our latest font based on the lettering of Frank Atkinson is Atkinson Egyptian, which bears that name despite the fact that the only relationship it has to what most people call 'egyptian' type or lettering is that it originated in the same time period when discoveries in Egypt were influencing font designers. It is a plain font, but it has a pleasant appearance and nicely balanced character shapes. It's kind of a utility font -- something you need to have around even if it's not terribly exciting -- but it's full of potential and adaptable to many purposes. You can download and try out the free demo version of Atkinson Egyptian (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.

  • Crane Gothic Font

    Crane Gothic is the first font completed for our forthcoming collection of fonts and art by legendary Arts and Crafts period artist Walter Crane. It is based on samples of a style of his lettering which offers a unique take on late gothic alphabets characteristic of 16th century monumental brasses and inscriptions. It has a full character set with capitals and small caps, plus numbers and punctuation. You can download and try out the free demo version of Crane Gothic (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.

  • Waldeck Font

    Waldeck is a gothic font based on 17th century German calligraphy. It has elaborate, decorative uppercase characters and stylish but fairly simple lowercase characters, plus some unique features, including custom decorative descending flourishes for several of the characters. It's a nice change from some of our recent releases. Ultimately it will probably end up in a future expansion for our popular Gothic Fonts collection. Download and try out the free demo version of Waldeck (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.

    Stampwork Font

    We've done a lot of fonts lately based on antique type and lettering, so here's something brand new, a font designed to look like the output of a rubber stamp. It's in the tradition of our Draughtwork and Roughwork fonts, with a sort of technical look. Stampwork has two versions of the uppercase character set. One set features over and underline artifacts like those produced by the edge of a rubber stamp which is pressed down too hard. The other set is plain. There are also alternative line artifact characters to add variation. Download and try out the free demo version of Stampwork (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.

    Woburn Initials Font

    It's been quite a while since we did an initials font, so here is Woburn, a lovely set of floriate initials based on an early woodblock design which uses late gothic characters and adds nice, clean floral embellishments. As a bonus we've added a full lowercase character set in a compatible style. It also works well in combination with our classic Cymbeline font. Woburn will be added to the next release of our Decorative Initials collection. Download and try out the free demo version of Malvern (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.

    Malvern Font

    Malvern is a new Celtic-style font with upper case letters which are an attractive variant on insular minuscule lettering but with a unique lowercase character set which is stylistically compatible but not really part of the Celtic tradition. It fits well with the style of the fonts from our Celtic Fantasy collection, which it will probably eventually be added to. The uppercase characters are somewhat similar to our classic Durrow font, but with some additional flourishes. Download and try out the free demo version of Malvern (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.

    Orford Font

    Orford is based on samples of hand lettering from a 1693 manuscript collected by Lewis Day in his classic book on historical paleography, Alphabets Old and New. It is stylistically similar to our Allegheny font, but cleaner and clearer. It has characteristic clubbed ascenders on many of the lowercase letters, and alternate versions of a large selection of characters. It's an excellent example of colonial period calligraphy and works quite well as a font. It will eventually be incorporated in an updated release of our Colonial Fonts package. Download and try out the free demo version of Orford (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.

  • Tangle Font

    Tangle is a fun font drawn by hand to have the look of twining vines, reminiscent of a grape arbor in the winter. The inspiration is from my front gate which is twined with an endless tangle of mustang grape vines. It was designed on a whim, but turned out pretty well. It has a full upper and lower case character set, plus numbers and punctuation and special characters. Maybe some clever vintner will notice it and put it to use on a wine label. You can try out the free demo version of Tangle for either MacOS or Windows. It features just the upper case characters. The full version of Tangle is available on our Ordering Site.

  • Valentin Font

    Valentin is an Art Nouveau font with an eccentric, stylized look. It has the same fixed-weight characteristics as Ganelon and Gaheris, but the character forms are dramatically different. It's clean and clear and very readable, very much the kind of lettering you'd have seen on 1920s vaudeville playbills. The graphic with the letter sample to the right isn't part of the font, but seemed to fit stylistically. It's a bit of decorative marginalia from a book illustrated by Clara Peck which is just full of Arthurian theme illustrations and decorative motifs which are going to be included in our forthcoming Arthurian Fonts and Art package. You can try out the free demo version of Valentin for either MacOS or Windows. It features just the characters of the standard set. The full combined version of Valentin is available on our Ordering Site.

  • Posada Font

    José Guadalupe Posada was a Mexican printer, engraver, cartoonist and illustrator of the late 19th and early 20th century who was enormously influential on the development of Mexican Folk art styles which continue today. Posada is best known for his Calavera cartoons and illustrations which satirized his fellow Mexicans as skeletons in the tradition of Dia de los Muertos. Many of Posada's cartoons were published as single-sheet handbills and included original hand-lettered captions and titles in a style reminiscent of period newspaper headlines. We've previously collected many of Posada's Calavera lithographs in our Macabre Fonts and Art Collection and now we're releasing our first font based on Posada's lettering, somewhat unimaginatively tagged with his name. It's a rough and bold all-caps character set with alternative caps on the lower case keys, with an offset positioning which Posada used in a number of his cartoons, as demonstrated in the sample to the right. You can try out the free demo version of Posada for either MacOS or Windows. It features just the characters of the standard set. The full combined version of Posada is available on our Ordering Site.

  • More New Fonts

    To see samples of recent font releases and older demo fonts visit our Featured Fonts Page.


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