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
New Font: Walter Crane
We’ve been working on developing a whole collection of fonts and graphics based on the works of Walter Crane. We’ve already produced the Crane Gothic font based on one example of his lettering, and a collection based on his illustrated edition of The Baby’s Aesop. Now we offer our newest addition to the collection, a new font simply titled Walter Crane and 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.
Color Harmony Guide
Before we had fancy programs like Photoshop with dozens of color palettes and millions of colors and Pantone charts and magical color wheels and all the miracles of modern technology, we still had color to be selected and applied by more primitive methods. And while we don’t think about it much today, the range of colors we could perceive was just as great, and all of our modern color selection technology descends from more primitive, hands-on technology which was surprisingly similar in some ways. For example, the color wheel which Photoshop and other graphics programs use to select colors existed long before computers did.
As we did recently with resources on bookbinding, we’ve put together a little PDF chapbook on color design and color harmony based on pre-computer graphics lessons by Pedro Lemos, but uniquely adaptable to use with computer design programs because many of the basic principles remain the same.
The focus of this resource is on the idea of color harmony — selecting colors which fit together well to produce a visibly appealing result. It includes sample color wheels and templates for selecting colors which are related to each other, as well as examples of color palettes selected based on compatibility and a section on picking and using colors from nature. It’s all very low-tech by contemporary standards, but still accessible with modern technology. If you open any of the palettes or the color wheels with Photoshop you can use the eyedropper tool to pick colors from the harmonized selections and apply them to the design you’re working on.
Download the PDF booklet and give it a try.
St. Patrick’s Day Font Special: Spiral Initials
It’s St. Patrick’s day and with all our Celtic Fonts, when it came time to dig up a classic font to present for this week the obvious choice was to look to our large catalog of Celtica. So the best choice was obviously one of several celtic fonts which aren’t yet in any of the packages, Spiral Initials. It’s an origianl design which combines a bold celtic lettering with classic celtic spiral motifs. As demonstrated in the sample, it’s ideally suited to adding color to the initials. Although Spiral Initials is not in one of our current celtic packages it’s in a forthcoming third celtic collection which is in development.
You can download and try the demo version of Spiral Initials in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.
New Font: 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.
Walter Crane: The Baby’s Own Aesop
We’ve been collecting illustrated books by Arts and Crafts era designer Walter Crane for several years and we’re now reaching the point where we can start to release some of our Crane material in useful packages for contemporary designers who want to incorporate his unique aesthetic into their work.
Our first Crane release is a package based on The Baby’s Own Aesop, Crane’s hand lettered and fully illustrated edition of Aesop’s Fables originally published in 1887. Each page takes one tale from Aesop and presents it with illustrations, initials, borders, embellishments and decorative lettering. Our presentation of the book follows the model of our release of Howard Pyle’s Lady of Shalott. It includes a complete 60-page print-quality PDF facsimile of the book, plus high-resolution graphics of every page and illustration including the end-papers and covers. In addition there are emblems, borders, decorative elements and other resources which we have taken from the book and cleaned up and made ready to use for other purposes. All of this comes with a license allowing you to incorporate the material in your own designs and creations. The package is only $39 and you can order online and download the package immediately — but be warned, it’s a very large download.
We’re going to be following this package with other Crane packages, including a similar treatment of The Baby’s Bouquet and The Baby’s Opera which were companion pieces to The Baby’s Own Aesop. We also have a collection of fonts based on Crane lettering in development, like our recently released Crane Gothic font.
To see a sample of what is in this collection, try out the abbreviated PDF sampler which has lower resolution versions of selected images from the set. To purchase the whole package just order it online.
Classic Font: Acadian
Acadian is based on a classic Victorian-era metal typeface designed by H. H. Thorp in 1883. It is one of our earliest historic typeface digitizations, taken directly from new printed samples made for us from a complete set of the metal type in 1994. The look of Acadian is unique and classically Victorian with a bit of an art nouveau influence. The characters featured curled flourishes and decorative embellishments which really make it stand out. The current version is a revision of our original release, with added characters and various improvements and corrections.
You can download and try the demo version of Acadian in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.
A Little Guide to Bookbinding
In our ongoing acquisition of antique graphic arts resources we’ve recently been looking for books by Pedro J. Lemos who was the Director of the Stanford University Fine Arts Museum. Lemos wrote extensively on graphic arts, lettering and design in the early 20th century. Lemos’ work draws on the Arts and Crafts and Art Deco movements of the period and includes books on various artistic movements and themes, book on art instruction for children and adults and sourcebooks on various aspects of design and hand crafts. We’ve made some use of his guide to historic calligraphy which is simply titled Lettering and are also drawing on some of the design ideas in his Applied Art teaching guide, which includes a full, illustrated course of instruction for children and their parents.
Applied Art includes lots of useful information and detailed guides for a variety of art and craft projects designed for students of different ages. The instructions are often quite detailed and include technical information which you wouldn’t normally expect to find outside of a formal classroom. It’s given us some good ideas for fonts and for decorative motifs, but it can also be more directly useful. Some of its sections make good monographs on different kinds of design projects. For example, there are several projects included in simple home book design and book binding. The instructions are easy to follow and detail several different methods of creating your own books. We’ve taken these illustrated lesson guides in bookbinding and put them together as an easily accessible PDF for anyone who wants to try a little home book binding. The techniques are timeless and the results can be quite impressive. If there is interest we’ll put together some more of these little guides on other subjects. The one on paper lanterns is particularly charming.
To download the PDF click on the image to the right.
Review: Anchorwick by Jeffrey Barlough
Anchorwick
In Anchorwick
It’s a good read and more satisfying than the previous entry in the series, Bertram of Butter Cross
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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.
