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
Poll: Publishing Art Book Reprints
We’ve received a number of requests to do facsimile book reprints of some of our antique illustrated books like Pan Pipes by Walter Crane and The Lady of Shallott by Howard Pyle. The books would be printed in full-color, soft-bound and would be page for page reproductions of the entire text and illustrations of the source works. The books would be between 36 and 60 pages long and similar to the PDF versions which we have available of some of these books already, except in printed form.
Your answer will help us determine whether this is a project worth undertaking. It’s instant market research!
Dave
Percy Jackson: The Lighning ThiefFeaturing the Windlass Font
A few months ago we noted that our Windlass font was being used for the titles on the long-running series of Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan. Now the first movie based on the book series is premiering (February 12th) and the main title is very nicely done with Windlass and featuring some nice customization including a flaming trident in place of the Y. The title graphic appears in both of the currently available previews and I hope that it is also being used in the movie itself.
The movie itself looks like a lot of fun, with very impressive special effects and an excellent cast including Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Sean Bean and Kevin McKidd. The concept of the books is that the ancient Greeg gods were real and survive undercover in the modern world and that their modern offspring have inherited some of their powers. Jackson and his demigod friends have to fight various mythological foes to figure out who stole the power of Zeus’ lightning bolt. The books were written for teens, but the movie looks so good that it should appeal to a broader audience. The film is directed by Chris Columbus who has had hits and misses, but usually does a decent job with this sort of material as he did with the first two Harry Potter films.
So check out the film when it opens next month, and don’t forget to check out the recently updated and expanded Windlass font as well. It now has an expanded character set, more variant characters and a full lowercase character set.
New Font: Antrobus
Antrobus is a new font based on hand lettering in a style which draws on horror movie title lettering, urban graffiti and even art nouveau poster titles like those by Alphons Mucha. The cahracters are tall and thin and tapered towards the base, with rough outlines and softly squared corners. The look is unusual and dynamic and well suited to things like band posters and grunge album covers. Antrobus includes a full upper case character set with numbers and punctuation, plus a custom designed small caps set with some interesting character form variations.
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.
Political Fonts Package
It’s time for politics, with primaries coming up this Spring and the big mid-term elections in the fall. That means that candidates and protesters and marching activists all need posters and we have the fonts to make them look good and draw the eye. Whether you’re standing outside a milk subsidies townhall or marching for ferret liberation or making posters for your campaign for Supreme Overlord of the Universe, these are the fonts you need.
The key to designing fonts for political posters is that they be highly readable from a distance, with good, clear open spaces and relatively bold lines. Most of the time you only want to use one or two fonts on a poster, but it’s good to have some variety to choose from. You want to have access to fonts which are unique so that your posters don’t look just like all the others, but they can’t be too unique because that will make you look peculiar. Most candidates aren’t running on the Freak Power Party ticket or the Feudal Monarchist ticket, so psychedelic fonts and medieval gothic fonts are right out. What you want are fonts which tread the fine line between the ubiquitous and the unique.
The package includes 10 specially selected fonts. These include both serif and sans serif fonts, extra bold fonts, some special narrowly customized fonts as well as two italic fonts stylistically compatible with the other fonts which are included. It also includes a special new image font called Campaign which features a nice selection of political images and emblems.
Madding, Aventine and Bastion are excellent for putting the name of a candidate in large letters in the middle of a poster. All three are hard to ignore and they offer a ncie set of choices. Albatross, Walsingham and Langhorne are well suited to smaller text for information about the candidate or slogans. Alexandrine and Atkinson Egyptian are there if you want something somewhat lighter and more open and Hamilton is a unique bold and narrow font if you need to fit a longer name in smaller space.
The Political Fonts package is available for order right away with immediate online delivery, or you can get it sent on CD the old fashioned way. You can also order any of the fonts individually from the Single Fonts section of our ordering site and you can order the full package HERE. The complete package is only $49.
Demo versions of several of these fonts are available online, including Atkinson Egyptian, Aventine, Alexandrine and Madding.
On the Shelves: New Boardgames
First to catch my eye was the massive box of the fantasy boardgame Descent: Journeys in the Dark from Fantasy Flight Games. It’s another in the great tradition of quest-style games which combine elements of fantasy roleplaying with boards and cards and in this case some pretty fancy miniature figures. The production values are outstanding and part of that is their use of our Valdemar font. Interestingly, even though Valdemar comes with a wide variety of alternate characters, they stuck to the most basic letter forms, though it’s still a good choice for the main and interior titles. Descent has several supplements available, all of which also use Valdemar.
Windlass or Buccaneer fonts, passing over what is really our most piractical font, Captain Kidd. Days of Wonder’s game Pirate’s Cove breaks that trend by making excellent use of the Captain Kidd font. The game is relatively simple and suitable for younger players, but still involves some complex strategy. Days of Wonder also publishes Shadows Over Camelot which uses our fonts extensively, particularly Scurlock.
So head down to your local game store and check out these new games. If the game play lives up to the quality of the graphic design, you can’t go wrong.
Classic Font: Brandywine
Brandywine is one of our favorite older fonts. It’s based on a hand lettering style used by legendary American artist Howard Pyle for a number of his books, including Pepper and Salt and The Lady of Shalott. It’s a uniquely readable style in the Arts and Crafts tradition, with open characters and variations in letter positioning which make it interesting. The font also includes a small set of frames which can be positioned around the capital letters to create decorative initials. Since it was first released in 1998 it has been enormously popular, used in video and board games and in book designs.
This version is a new and revised and much improved release which is available by itself with a standard character set, or in an expanded edition with not only a special character set for Eastern European languages, but also including a complete Cyrillic character set for Russian and related languages.
You can try the demo version of Brandywine for free, or order the standard version or the international version online.
Bare Shelves and Bleak Futures at Borders
I went into my local Borders bookstore this weekend because I heard that Pyr had just released the latest book by legendary Science Fiction author Mike Resnick. The book is called Flagship
and it is the conclusion of a five-book series of classic space opera set in Resnick’s Birthright universe. The first four books have been extraordinarily well written and a joy to read and I have been looking forward to this final volume for months. Amazon lists the release date as December 22nd and I had heard from the author that it was available in bookstores before Christmas, so I expected to be able to cruise into my local Borders and pick up a copy.
Not so. Much to my chagrin they didn’t have it on the shelves in Science Fiction or in the new releases section — which seemed to mostly be reprints. In fact, it was nowhere to be found. Nor did they have any of the previous volumes in the series, though they are still in print. When I went to ask a clerk whether they had copies on order and when they might be getting them, he didn’t just tell me they were delayed by the holiday or backordered, he explained that for reasons which were above his level someone had made the decision not to carry Flagship
Ok, so now I’m just bitching because they didn’t have my book and I’m going to have to order it from Amazon and wait two days and be mildly inconvenienced, boo hoo. But there’s more to it than that. As I wandered the stacks in dismay I noticed some changes at my local Borders. First off, there were far fewer actual books on the shelves. They’ve expanded the space for non-book products and reduced the space for actual books. Then there’s a problem with what’s actually on the shelves. Apparently there’s no room for Flagship
When one type of book comes to dominate the market every other genre and preference in literature suffers, and I’ve never before seen the kind of market dominance which has been seized by supernatural romance novels, especially those involving vampires. Some of these novels are good. My wife and daughter read them and I’ve even read a few. But most are not. I suppose it’s the Twilight effect, and like that series most of them are not terribly well written, imaginative or interesting. They’re just the same old formulas dressed up with a little magic, fangs and a cape. And it’s not just that they’re squeezing marginal or obscure works off of the shelves. Resnick’s books have been performing well at Amazon by any standard, but if you look at the list of top-sellers in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, out of the top 100 books at least 65 fall into the sub-genre of supernatural romance. That’s really an unprecedented share of the market. Like a lot of great science fiction authors, Mike Resnick used to make ends meet writing adult novels and romances. Maybe he’ll have to don a pseudonym and purple pen again if he wants to stay on the shelves.
Of course, the key to the changes at my local Borders is that these novels are profitable. They sell regardless of the quality, on the strength of the cover and the name of the author and the popularity of the genre. It leaves us nerdy middle aged guys grousing around the store muttering about the decline of literacy and ending up looking for solace in the non-fiction section or going home and thanking the internet gods for the existence of Amazon where we can buy anything we want. I’m also thankful for print-on-demand which has let small, specialty publishers keep some excellent but less commercially viable authors in print in an unfriendly market. So for now I can still get my books, even if wandering the stacks and reading the flyleaves has become obsolete.
Clearly internet shopping also plays a role in this. Publishers aren’t working quite as hard to sell second-tier writers to the bookstores when they know they can sell to the established fan base through online outlets. Some publishers like Tor and Baen have become really masterful at this, building online communities and essentially mentoring new writers in the process.
We’re also on the verge of seeing substantial market impact from electronic books which are now available from Apple and Amazon and other sources to be viewed on your Amazon Kindle or Sony Book Reader or even your iPhone. I think this is a great boon to optometry and the sale of reading glasses to younger and younger audiences, but the things actually seem to be popular. Someone has been working on this for a while and there’s already a huge back-catalog of classic literature and everything new also comes out in this format when it is released. The growth of this technology is getting a big boost from Amazon which is offering scads of new releases for free if you download the Kindle version, which helps offset the somewhat inflated cost of the readers.
With this new techology, those of us who don’t want to read about busty vampire hunters and their dark and forbidden lovers, are going to be even farther out in the cold, as books that aren’t at the top of the sales lists are going to be harder and harder to find in printed form. A printed book is so much more expensive to produce than an electronic edition that there has to be an enormous pull for financially strapped publishers to move in that direction. It won’t be long before I have to read the books I want to read in that format, but I’m going to miss holding a printed work in my hands and feeling the rough paper on my fingers and the solidity of the boards and binding. Hey, that gives me an idea. I can hollow out obsolete printed books and turn them into holders for Kindles. You’ll still have the feel of your real book and women who like vampire romances will think you’re all antique and literary in a dark and sexy way. We can hope, anyway.
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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.
