New Font: 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.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

January 26, 2009 | Filed Under Featured Fonts, Fonts, Gallery, New Fonts | Leave a Comment 

Our Top Fonts of 2008

MyFonts has made a dramatic announcement of their Top 10 Fonts of 2008 with the results apparently based on sales. Looking at the samples, it’s a reminder of how unimaginative most graphic designers are in their font selections. A few of the listed fonts are interesting and original. Metroscript stands out as the most interesting and original of the lot, and there’s something to be said for the monogram font, because I know from experience how hard they are to design. As for the rest, we’ve seen it all before. Minor variations of the same old styles with a few quirky characters, yet another handwriting script just like a hundred others, grunged up circus characters. If this is the best out of hundreds of fonts from scores of foundries we might as well admit that the graphic design community is stuck on boring, repeating the same tedious font choices again and again.

In this context, here are our top three selling fonts released in 2008 — since we only released 22 new fonts, picking 10 would be silly. Take a look at them and ask yourself if they don’t stand out as more original and more interesting than at least 8 out of the 10 fonts on that list from our favorite megadistributor.


Valentin was our best selling font of 2008. We heard back from several designers who were using it in interesting projects, from theater programs to restaurant menus to caption cards for a silent mime and stage magic performance. The appeal of its classic 1920s look was predictable given the past success of our Gaheris and Ganelon fonts.


Broadley almost tied Valentin in sales, and seems to be particularly popular — not surprisingly — with architects and interior designers. I’ve already seen it in the logo of a local high-end realtor and expect to see it a lot more in the future. Its success is an inspiration and I think we’ll see more fonts based on Voysey’s designs in the future.


Orford‘s classic calligraphy look brought it in a close third, a reminder of the ongoing popularity of our Colonial Fonts, where it will eventually be included with a future package expansion. Our rougher but stylistically related Allegheny font is one of our all-time bestsellers and Orford may eventually join it as a classic.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

January 25, 2009 | Filed Under Articles | Leave a Comment 

Classic Font: Jugendstil Kunsthand


Jugendstil Kunsthand is based on a sample of late 19th century lettering in a style often associated with artists of the Jugendstil Art Nouveau movement in Germany. The characters are done in heavy outline with a rough-hand drawn look. The style is interesting because it shows the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement on Art Nouveau with many of the characters featuring alternate versions that nest together in a manner typical of Arts & Crafts lettering.

The new release of Jugendstil Kunsthand includes both the original outline version drawn directly from lettering in Munchner Jugend plus a second version with solid characters which may be more practical for some uses. This new version has been added to the updated release of our Jugendstil Fonts and Art package.

You can download and try the demo version of Jugendstil Kunsthand in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.




Rating 3.00 out of 5

January 19, 2009 | Filed Under Classic Fonts, Featured Fonts, Fonts, Gallery | Leave a Comment 

Jugendstil Collection Updated


In the late 19th century there was an artistic Renaissance in southern Germany, led by the artists and designers of the Jugendstil movement in the area around Munich. While Jugendstil artists like Arnold Bocklin are often thrown in with the French Art Nouveau artists of the same period, their art was stylistically original and focused on Germanic themes and mythology. While it overlapped with the French Art Nouveau period, its emphasis on design beyond just graphic arts made it more akin to the Art Nouveau or Arts and Crafts period in England.


The driving force of the Jugendstil movement was the magazine Munchner Jugend which made extensive use of the illustrations and designs of German Art Nouveau artists, including black and white and tinted illustrations, hand lettering and even architectural and furniture design in many ways similar to the traditions of the Arts and Crafts movement. Among the notable figures involved with the magazine were architect and designer Peter Behrens who is often associated with the later Bauhaus movement, and the painters Otto Eckman, Gustav Klimt and Arnold Boecklin.


The style of art featured in the magazine was a radical departure from traditional German decorative arts and graphic design which had remained much stodgier and formulaic than had been common in France or England for several generations. But once freed of the constraints of tradition, the Jugendstil artists became particularly wild and creative in their style and the themes they addressed in their work.


One of the things which characterized Munchner Jugend was the extensive use of original hand lettering and unique type design in their covers, titles and advertising content. Each issue is full of good ideas for font designs, and though the issues are hard to come by, we’ve developed a number of Jugendstil fonts from designs in the magazine. These include the Jugend and Campobello sets of decorative initials as well as the Phaeton and Munich title fonts.


Munchner Jugend was also extensively and lavishly illustrated for the most part in black and white with some full-page two or three color prints as well. Artists includes some of those already mentioned, but art nouveau artists from all over Europe including a number of those associated with the English Art Nouveau movement and The Studio magazine. The magazine was famous for its decorative borders and humorous vignettes.


Our Jugendstil collection was recently updated, with the addition of both new fonts and art. The original package was released quite a while ago and since that time we have released other fonts based on Jugendstil designs, but the package was never updated with the new fonts. Now the package has been brought up to date with the addition of the Wolfram, Kunsthand and Zauberer fonts, which represent very different aspects of the design movement. Wolfram is a heavy-weight display font, Kunsthand is a classic example of artist’s lettering and Zauberer is an Art Nouveau twist on classic German gothic lettering. These are in addition to a great selection of art and decorative elements from the magazine, plus the four fonts which were originally in the package, Jugend, Munich, Phaeton and Campobello.


The Scriptorium’s Jugendstil Collection represents a range of material from Munchner Jugend including both unique original fonts and a nice selection of the best art from its heyday in the late 1890s. It is available from our ONLINE STORE for just $59.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

January 16, 2009 | Filed Under Collections, Featured Fonts | Leave a Comment 

Understanding Font and Image Licenses

I’ve noticed recently that a lot of people seem not to entirely understand the idea of purchasing fonts or images with a license, and I suspect they find the idea intimidating. It’s not surprising, since it’s a bit different from purchasing a toaster or a book, and not something most people do every day.

To help clear up this confusion we’ve rewritten our EULA (end user license agreement) to include not only the legalistic text of the license itself, but also colored sections which clarify and explain in some detail typical acceptable and unacceptable uses under the license to answer user questions in advance.

The basic idea of a license ought to be easy to understand. While we retain copyright and ownership of our fonts and images, when you buy them we give you a license which includes permission to use those images and fonts within certain parameters defined in the license. Some users get confused because of a superficial similarity with renting something and conclude that this means that there are additional secondary fees, but our licenses are based on a one-time payment and as long as you remain within the terms of the license there are no additional charges. So you pay for the license and as long as you have it you can use the item you bought in the ways it allows.

For example, with a font you CAN:

    Create text and titles in a publication.
    Design logos or business stationery.
    Use in posters or merchandise packaging.
    Make on-screen titles in movie, video or game production.
    Design graphics for publication, online viewing or display in a program interface

But you CANNOT:

    Embed a font in a computer or console game or other software.
    Resell or redistribut the font to secondary users.
    Use the font in the creation of a secondary form of reproduction like rubber stamps, letter stickers or transfer media.

And with an image you CAN:

    Use for illustrations in a publication or media presentation.
    Use for designing logos or business stationery.
    Inclusion as part of an original work of art like a collage.
    Use for personal reference or display by the end user.

But you CANNOT:

    Resell the image in digital format.
    Use the image in publishing prints, postcards or calendars.
    Use ithe image to create a secondary form of reproduction like rubber stamps, stickers or transfer media.

The idea of all of this is to make our products useful to you, while also retaining their value to us and to other users. The license protects our rights, but also protects you by clearly defining what you can do with our products and including in those terms the vast majority of typical uses. If the license doesn’t cover the use you have in mind, we may have a special license to cover that use and you should contact us to discuss it.

So when you’re placing an order and the screen asks you to sign off on the license, I hope that the new version of the license, with the explanatory sections will help remove any ambiguity and answer any questions.

Dave

Rating 3.00 out of 5

January 16, 2009 | Filed Under Articles | 2 Comments 

Sighting: Rackham Fonts in Changeling RPG

Roleplaying game publishers often use our fonts and one of the regulars is White Wolf who like to use our fonts for games in their World of Darkness series. The newest release in that series is their new edition of their fairy roleplaying system Changeling: the Lost, and it features some very appealing graphic design which makes use of a number of our fonts.

The game is basically an updating of their Changeling: the Dreaming which was released a number of years ago. The original game emphasized human changelings in a fairy world derived heavily from romantic and early modern conceptions of Faerie. The new edition takes a different approach and gives a darker interpretation of the fairy world based more on traditional folklore and mythology. It also shifts the emphasis from changeling characters to playing actual fairy characters. Stylistically it has a lot in common with the fiction of Susanna Clarke who we’ve reviewed here several times. If you like roleplaying games with some rules, but more of an emphasis on storytelling than game mechanics, or if you’re just looking for fairy theme source material Changeling: the Lost is worth a look.

As far as the fonts featured in the game, the two most prominent are Rackham and Rackham Italic fonts, which are from our Arthur Rackham Fonts and Art Collection. They are based on Rackham’s hand-lettered frontispieces and they were designed to go together and do so very well. In Changeling: the Lost they are used for section headers and for sub-heads and table heads. The same fonts were used similarly in the Spiderwick books, which may have influenced the font choices made by the designers at White Wolf. Given Rackham’s influence as a fairy illustrator it’s appropriate that fonts based on his lettering should become so strongly identified with the genre.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

January 14, 2009 | Filed Under Sightings | Leave a Comment 

New Font: Verne

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. The design brings to mind the look of Captain Nemo’s ship Nautilus in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, hence the name. The font includes both plain and decorated versions of most of the characters as well as alternate forms of selected characters to give your designs some options for variety.

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.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

January 8, 2009 | Filed Under Featured Fonts, Fonts, Gallery, New Fonts | 3 Comments 

The World of Steampunk

Steampunk is an increasingly popular literary genre which explores science fiction themes from the perspective of the Victorian era and based on technology extrapolated from the science and engineering capabilities of the 18th and 19th centuries. It has its earliest roots in the speculative writing of Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle. It emerged as a distinct modern literary movement in the 1980s with the work of writers who were influenced by Michael Moorcock, Philip K. Dick and the New Wave science fiction of the late 1960s and 1970s, which turned into the cyberpunk genre by the 1980s. Cyberpunk in turn begat steampunk which appealed to many of the same writers and attracted its own following by the end of the decade.

The first clearly identifiable steampunk novel is James P. Blaylock’s Homunculus, published in 1986 (the current edition features our Norumbega font on the cover), though some elements of the genre are foreshadowed in his novel The Digging Leviathan which was published two years earlier. The genre became more clearly defined with the publication of The Difference Engine by cyberpunk masters William Gibson and Bruce Sterling in 1991. From that point more authors were attracted to the themes they explored and the genre began to expand, attract a following and become influential. As the genre developed, common themes began to emerge, including some emphasis on the impact of science and industry on the environment, the blurry line between science and magic and the dehumanizing role of technology. Much steampunk writing has a strong element of luddism in it and an interest in alternative technologies which fell by the wayside in the modern era like airships and complex clockwork devices.

The movement has spawned a Steampunk comic book, a Steampunk Magazine, several anthologies of short fiction and a large number of novels of various levels of quality, aimed at both adults and younger readers. The imprint of steampunk can be found on other novels — especially fantasy novels — which are not strictly of the genre, like Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass and its sequels. Greg Keyes Age of Unreason series is also heavily influenced by steampunk, taking a similar style into a slightly earlier era to have fun with the science of the enlightenment. There are even a few movies which have had their style and themes shaped by the Steampunk movement like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and the animated feature Steamboy. Not surprisingly there is also a Steampunk roleplaying game based on the GURPS game system. Steampunk has become a popular and even pervasive genre with an influence which goes far beyond its literary origins. It’s gone so far that there are even steampunk conventions.

Perhaps most interesting is that Steampunk has inspired a powerful design movement. It may currently be somewhat underground and avant garde, but the Steampunk influence is becoming widespread. There is Steampunk art and clothing and graphic design. You can find a good overview of Steampunk design at the WebUrbanist blog. Outsapop Trashion has an excellent article on Steampunk themed fashion design and you can find incredible photos of some very creative clothing designs on the Steampunk Fashion Flickr group. For some reason all steampunk fashion must be accessorized with goggles. On Etsy.com you can find all manner of Steampunk themed jewelry, props and fashion accessories for sale at some very reasonable prices. You can find lots of good articles on steampunk design at Steampunk Workshop which has some coverage of Dave Veloz’ unique steampunk Mac Mini redesign. And don’t miss the most bizarre item of all, a Steampunk style computer which also brews beer. Steampunk design is all gears and levers and brass, but it has a unique look which is both antique and futuristic at the same time and is very appealing.


Now, you may wonder why I’m going on daftly about this strange and intriguing literary and design movement. Ponder the implications and if you check back in over the next couple of days the significance of all of this will become very clear.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

January 7, 2009 | Filed Under Articles | 4 Comments 


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