Art Deco Font Collection
Our new Art Deco font collection includes a remarkable selectiion of fonts from the design movements of the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on the kinds of fonts which were generally associated with the decorative arts movement which developed out of the Arts and Crafts movement. More...Wild West Fonts
Our Wild West font collection features 14 fonts based on designs from the classic days of the American West (1870-1890). They are typical of the type and lettering styles used in signs, circulars, posters and newspapers during that era. The selection includes both decorative, display and text fonts. All the fonts are historically accurate and they are not available from any other source. While they are basically fonts of the Victorian era, they represent a subset of the typefaces popular in that period particularly slanted to the environmnet of the wild west, frontier newspapers and wild west shows.More...Pre-Raphaelite Collection
The art of the Pre-Raphaelites recreated classical and legendary themes, fascination with architectural elements and realistic drapery, and the use of models who fit a particular style and appearance, usually with thick, curly hair and voluptuous figures. Our Pre-Raphaelite collection features select images from the most prominent artists of the movement in high-resolution suitable for use in print.More...The Baby’s Opera Collection
Or latest collection based on one of Walter Crane's childrens book is our comprehensive presentation of The Baby’s Opera, Crane's compilation of childrens songs (including music and lyrics) with detailed illustrations, hand lettering and clever decorations on every page. Many of the designs and motifs can easily be extracted for use in your own designs. More...Text Fonts Collection
You've got to have text fonts, so wny not make them interesting and unique rather than the same old boring set that come with every computer. Our Text Fonts Collection has more variety and more style than you'll find anywhere else. More...Howard Pyle Fonts and Art
Howard Pyle was one of the most renowned illustrators of the 19th century. His work was widely published in adventure novels, magazines and romances. He was the founder of the Brandywine school and artists colony in Chadd's Ford Pennsylvania, where he taught artists like N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover and Thornton Oakley their craft. Our Pyle collection includes a large selection of Pyle's art and designs plus original fonts based on his hand lettering. More...Medieval Fonts and Art
In the Middle Ages the demand for written documents required new and better forms of writing, styles which were readable, consistent, efficient to produce, and sometimes decorative as well. This package features a selection of fonts and art based on designs from the Middle Ages, emphasizing the years from 1100 to 1400. The 25 fonts include versions of the major popular lettering styles of this period and the art includes beautiful borders, frames and other decorative elements based on medieval designs. DETAILSThe Lady of Shalott
Howard Pyle’s illustrated edition of Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott is probably the single greatest expression of book design in the American arts and crafts movement of the late 19th century. This early Pyle work combines his vivid illustrative style with exceptional decoration and lettering into a modern illuminated masterpiece. Our Lady of Shalott CD package has every page from the book in high resolution format, including the decorated verses, the full-page illustrations and the embellished titles and flyleaves. It also includes extracted and instantly usable versions of the initials, illustrations background patterns, borders and frames from the book. DETAILSArt Nouveau Collection
This collection brings together all of our best fonts based on Art Nouveau period designs into an extensive collection, with over 30 unique fonts, including text, title faces and even decorative initials. This includes new fonts created just for this package plus classics in the Art Nouveau tradition. It also features a bonus collection of frames and borders based on designs from magazines and books of the period. Altogether it makes the ultimate resource for Art Nouveau style design. DETAILS2009 Sampler
About once a year we release a special sampler package with a collection of selected fonts and art from our most recent and forthcoming packages, including some unique items not available anywhere else, all brought together as an overview of what we've been up to at the Scriptorium during the past year at a special, extremely low price. This latest sampler has four complete new fonts, 15 demo fonts and a special selection of art and graphics which includes a special set of illustrations of Celtic mythology by Katherine Cameron. DETAILSViking Fonts and Art
This collection presents calligraphy and art based on the traditions of historic Germanic cultures. It draws on the broad scope of early Germanic design, from the pre-Christian era through the early middle ages, including not just Scandinavia, but other elements of Germanic culture from the Franks to the Saxons to the Normans and beyond. The main component is a collection of historic fonts which is complemented by a unique set of historic borders and motifs, plus art based on Viking myth and legend. DETAILS.Gothic Fonts
A collection of our best fonts based on gothic type and late medieval calligraphy. It covers the range from the historical styles in which gothic printing had its inspiration to the ornate heights of complex gothic fonts from 19th century Germany. This includes fonts in the style sometimes called 'Old English', as well as what calligraphers sometimes call 'Black Letter'. If you like your fonts dark, angular and complex, this is your dream collection. DETAILS
Classic Font: Valdemar
Halloween is coming up in a month and it seemed appropriate to make our featured classic font for this week fit with that theme, and with its enormous popularity Valdemar seems like the perfect choice.
Valdemar started as a set of embellished uppercase characters with bits of clockwork and odd design motifs worked into the character forms to give them a unique, archaic look. Eventually we developed two companion fonts, one a version with a lowercase character set and the other a set of alternative uppercase characters. The set also includes small-caps and foreign language characters.
Valdemar has been very popular for book designs, movies and merchandising. It was selected as the official title font for merchandised products for the Harry Potter movies, but the similarity between the name Valdemar and the character Lord Voldemort is coincidental. The name Valdemar actually comes from a story by Edgar Allan Poe and the font was released before the movies came out.
You can download and try the demo version of Valdemar. The full Valdemar family set is available from our ordering site.
Sighting: Platthand in Dr. Parnassus
It probably doesn’t mean that it will play a role in the film itself, but it was interesting to spot our Platthand font being used in the title graphic on the website for former Monty Python Terry Gilliam’s new film The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.
Dr. Parnassus is a fantasy film set in a circus and is the last feature film made by the late Heath Ledger. The release date hasn’t been set, but there is a kind of ‘making of’ style teaser/trailer and the folm looks pretty interesting.
New Font – Waldeck
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.
Designers: GIMP is Not the Answer
Just as I did a while ago with Desktop Publishing programs, I’ve started a search for a low-priced or freeware alternative to Photoshop with which both Mac and Windows users can do effective graphic design work without having to pay an outrageous price. By my calculation, if you bought Photoshop and kept it up to date over the course of the last three years you would have paid well over $1000 not including the additional hundreds of dollars to get essential state of the art plugins. Not every graphic designer works for a huge advertising or prepress company and that kind of expense is something most of us would have to think twice about. Photoshop is a great program, but as I discovered when I went looking for cheap programs to replace to InDesign and Quark, there are viable alternatives available at a reasonable price. Sadly, after considerable testing, I have had to conclude that despite promising qualities, GIMP (downloadable from www.gimp.org) is not one of them.
GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation System, and it was originally designed to be part of the GNU package of free, opensource software applications to go with the GNU operating system. For wider dissemination it has also been made available for Windows and for any Unix operating system, including Linux and Mac OSX. That’s a very cool, techie kind of origin which gives one the feeling that you’re using a kind of insurgent software designed to challenge “The Man” who takes the form of Adobe in the DTP world. Plus it’s free and various people have hacked modifications for it, and it comes with a lot of plugins and the potential for considerable expansion.
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New Font: BigBlok
A great many years ago when working in game publishing I had a real fascination with doing titles in a strong, super-bold font called Bolt Bold. The truth is I rather overused it. In doing some research I find it on more than a dozen different game books I wrote in the early 80s, all quite collectable and out of print today.
