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: Windlass Enhanced
Since it’s original release in 1996 Windlass has been one of our most successful fonts. It has appeared in many publications, from merchandising for Disney’s Pirates of the Carribean to the labels of tins of Biscotti. It has been particularly popular for use in products with a pirate or nautical association, which makes sense because it is kind of what it was designed for.
Windlass was one of the original fonts included in our Mapmaker Fonts and Art collection, and from its first updating it has incldued a set of nautical icons as bonus characters, including silhouettes of sailing ships, pirate flags and compass roses, plus lots of alternate character forms with extended swashes. The oriignal version of Windlass was unusual because it included a set of custom small-caps instead of a lowercase character set. This was part of its unique look, but over the years some have lamented the lack of lowercase characters, so with this new release of Windlass we’ve added a second version of the font called Windlass Lowercase, which as the name suggests has a full set of stylistically compatible lowercase characters. Like the uppercase and the small caps they are rough-cut with an antique poster look.
You can download and try the demo version of Windlass in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font with the new lowercase is available from our ordering site.
It’s Trendy, but is it Art?
Of the various legacies of the Barack Obama presidency, the one which seized the cultural imagination first and may last the longest is the enormously popular poster image created by artist Shepard Fairey. The high-contrast, vertically split image has gone viral on the internet and assumed a place in the visual lexicon of American pop art alongside Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe triptych (from which Fairey kind of stole the design idea) and the Eugene McCarthy dove poster.
Fairey got into a certain amount of trouble for infringing the copyright of an AP photograph he used as a source, but his payback is that everyone on the internet has since pirated his design concept for icons of themselves, their girlfriend or their dog to use on the web as a subtle dig at Obama or a statement of support and conformity.
Making your own Obama poster icon has been made much easier by the folks at Paste Magazine who have provided a handy little Flash tool which will let you take any photo, turn it into an icon in the style of the Fairey poster, tweak it and customize it and add a new slogan to the bottom and make it your own. You can use the tool to parody Obama, iconify anyone or anything else, or convey some more obscure message.
One of my personal favorites is the icon of “TOTUS,” Obama’s teleprompter, but I have to admit to doing a few of my own, including an image of Aleister Crowley titled “Beast” and a couple of myself. It’s kind of seductive in a narcissistic way.
Getting good results from the tool requires a certain amount of practice and it helps a lot to have the right photograph to work from. Some faces just don’t work well at all. My face and to an even greater extent Aleister Crowley’s face have the problem that there are too many light and dark areas and too many variations in shade and angle. Other faces have too little differentiation and just come out kind of one color. It helps to have a high contrast photo and to reduce it to black and white before working with it. Plus you need a knack for pithy one-word tags for your icons.
The idea is kind of fun to play with, but in the 6 months since the election it has really already been done to death. You’re not about to see the icon to the left on my Facebook page. It may be the mark of truly successful pop art that in such a short period it has gone beyond a fad and evolved into a cliche. The fact that Fairey’s design concept can be emulated so effectively by a simple Flash tool raises the question which has plagued pop art since the era of Warhol; it’s trendy and it’s popular, but is it really art?
Scriptorium T-Shirt Sale
You’ve got to wear something, right? It certainly wouldn’t do to go out naked. So why not be fashionable in a stylish Scriptorium t-shirt, made all that much more appealing by an extra low price in our special pre-summer t-shirt sale.
Pick from six of our most popular designs, including three new designs based on illustrations by legendary Arts and Crafts illustrator Walter Crane and get your t-shirt for just $12.99 for a limited time. Click on any of these images to see that design on a shirt.
The designs include one of our very first t-shirts, the 9-panel design from Howard Pyle’s illustrated edition of Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott, with 9 beautiful illustrations plus a selection from the text of the poem in a decorative frame around the illustrations.
The poetic theme continues with our Horns of Elfland shirt design which includes a beautiful illustration of an elfin knight with the complete text of Tennyson’s poem, plus my personal favorite, the Queen Mab shirt, with the complete text of the Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet decorated with an illustration from Charles’ Folkard’s illustrated edition of Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare.
From our Walter Crane collection we have three T-shirts. On the left below is the Barnyard shirt. In the middle is the Trumpeter shirt. On the right is the Wind and Sun shirt. All three are based on illustrations in The Baby’s Own Aesop and feature a full-color illustration, decoration and hand-lettered text from a full page of the book.
New Font: Amphitryon
The ancient Greek legend of Amphitryon is little known today but is one of the most often dramatized subjects on the stage, as tragedies and comedies from Sophocles to Moliere to Cole Porter, in about 30 different plays and musicals. A set of nameless hand lettering samples by Lewis Day in our archives seemed particularly appropriate for a playbill or poster, with a bit of a classical look and a hint of romance, light and airy like Dryden’s song from his version of Amphitryon:
AIR Iris I love, and hourly I die,
But not for a lip, nor a languishing eye:
She’s fickle and false, and there we agree,
For I am as false and as fickle as she.
We neither believe what either can say;
And, neither believing, we neither betray.
‘Tis civil to swear, and say things of course;
We mean not the taking for better or worse.
When present, we love; when absent, agree:
I think not of Iris, nor Iris of me.
The legend of love no couple can find,
So easy to part, or so equally join’d.
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.
Discount Packages on Ebay
Our offerings of selected packages through ebay have had a lot of value as a method of advertising our larger product line and bringing people to the website. As a result we’ve rotated in an entirely new selection of discounted items in our ebay store which have never been there before, including our first Walter Crane package, Howard Pyle’s Lady of Shalott and our Psychedelic Fonts package. The benefit of this for you and for some of those who discover us on eBay get some of our best packages at substantial discounts. Plus the competition of bidding for a good product is kind of fun. To see what we currently have up for auction on Ebay take a look at: EBAY AUCTIONS
Classic Font: Boswell
We’ve brought back a lot of classic fonts for a second look, but few of them are as interesting as Boswell, our classic regency-period text font based on extensive samples of type from the first edition of Boswell’s Corsica, a very rare book which we happen to have in our library and from which we developed an accurate typeface which includes not only a full multi-lingual character set, custom bold and italic, but also a large and varied set of alternate characters in various degrees of decay and distress. If you want to reproduce the look of antique typesetting, the Boswell font will exceed all of your expectations.
Boswell was first released in 1994. Since then it has been revised and expanded several times with new characters and refinements added. It is currently also one of the featured fonts in our Colonial package in addition to being available as a solo font set.
You can download and try the demo version of Boswell in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.
Found Art: McMercy Family Band Poster
So, I was in Amy’s Ice Cream during SXSW in Austin and my eye was caught by a poster which stood out in the crowd of yoga class, aromatherapy massage and peace rally posters on the wall. The poster was bright orange and xeroxed, but what really drew me to it was the bizarre combination of Cthulhian, tentacular maelstrom imagery and the retro look and feel of a 1960s era psychedelic poster, with some neat custom lettering. I have no idea who the McMercy Family Band are, and I’m planning to check out the barbeque at Lambert’s as soon as I get a chance, but I have to give them credit for promoting their show with a striking bit of poster art.
A few emails got me in touch with the creator of the poster, a local artist and entrepreneur named Adam Kobetich. Not all of his work is as much to my taste as the poster is, but he does have some interesting ventures like his line of ornate and somewhat gothy latex jewelry. I have to think they go over big in the Austin club scene. He also has a site for his pictorial and comic art, plus he’s in a folk-bluegrass band called The Electric Mountain Rotten Apple Gang whose logo he designed, with a result which looks a little too much like Pumpkinhead
He’s kind of a renaissance man, so check out his work if you get a chance.
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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.
