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: Orlock
Orlock is a unique font designed by Michael Scarpitti, who decided to branch out from his usual fixation on Roman Fonts for a brief spell in 1999 to design a font based on the unusual gothic lettering found on the original 1922 poster for the classic silent horror film Nosferatu.
Nosferatu was visually inventive and the posters embodied the design character of 1920s Germany, drawing on the Jugendstil tradition, constructivism and the Bauhaus movement. You can see a sample of the font in a slightly revised version of the original poster to the right, along with samples of the original lettering. It’s primitive and powerful and takes its name from the Dracula-like main character in the movie. It also features two versions of many of the characters.
You can try the demo version of Orlock for free, or order the full font online.
Walter Crane Wallpaper
As a special bonus to increase awareness of our great packages of Walter Crane art, we’ve put together a special collection of digital wallpaper, based on Walter Crane designs, for use on iPhones and computers.
Our Walter Crane packages include digital versions of his illustrated books Queen Summer, Pan Pipes, The Baby’s Aesop and The Baby’s Opera. That’s a lot of rich material to draw on, and to give a feel for it we’ve put together this special collection of images you can download for free.
The collection includes 6 custom images sized exactly right to fit the screen of a 15 inch laptop, but also easily adapted to similar popular sizes, though not wider movie-style screens. They should work on any Mac or Windows computer. It also includes 6 vertically oriented images scaled to fit the screen of an iPhone, specifically to work as background wallpaper on the new iPhone 4 which allows wallpaper to be displayed in many more places than the older versions. They will still work on older iPhones, but you’ll get more out of them on the new iPhone 4.
You can download these wallpaper images together in a zip file right here.
Fantasy Fonts and Art Package
Our classic Fantasy Fonts & Art collection is a great resource for artists, designers, roleplayers and world builders who want to create visual aids for any kind of fantasy world or project. The collection includes 30 original fonts and over 100 images by outstanding artists, all collected together for download or on CD at a very reasonable price.
The fonts in this collection include a variety of historical calligraphy fonts from the Roman era through the middle ages and into the early modern era. All sorts of different styles of formal and informal hand lettering are represented. The selection is perfect for making decorative visual aids, posters, newsletters, official documents, antique-looking manuscripts and even grimoire p ages. The collection also includes a selection of ancient language fonts and a number of fantasy language fonts from the world of Ysgarth. And finally, there are several fantasy art fonts with decorative images of fantasy creatures and characters.
In addition to the fonts the package also includes a large selection of fantasy art by classic artists like Howard Pyle, N. C. Wyeth, Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham. Both color and black and white art is included and they cover a wide range of fantasy subjects, from fairytale creatures to legendary heroes to knights, kings, queens, gods, giants, dragons, monsters and all the elements of a fantasy world. All images are high-resolution and suitable for printing.
Our Fantasy Fonts & Art collection is compatible for both MacOS and Windows and is an extraordinary value at just $59. You can order the CD from our toll-free number at 1-800-797-8973 or order online from our Online store.
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. Back in those days we did the titles using rub-on lettering from Letraset. Although I used it a lot, there were always some things about Bolt Bold which I was dissatisfied with. I actually wished it were a little bolder and I never much liked the lowercase character set or the peculiar dissonance between the rounded exterior corners and square interior corners.
You can see an example of Bolt Bold as I used in one of the Ysgarth roleplaying game books in 1982 to the left. I recently had a need for a similar font for a poster project. I wanted to do it right and certainly didn’t have any 1980s era rub-on lettering available, so I decided to reimagine Bolt Bold as I would create it from scratch with 30 years of additional font design experience. The new font I developed is called BigBlok and you can see it sampled above and to the right. It has the same general look as Bolt Bold, but the weighting is more aesthetically pleasing, it’s a bit bolder and the corners are more consistent. Instead of a lowercase character set it features centered smallcaps. It’s also a fixed-width or monospaced font.
You can download and try the demo version of BigBlok in TrueType format for Mac or PC. It includes a mix of characters from the different variants of the font. You can also order the full version online for immediate download: BUY IT NOW.
The Grammar of Ornament
The Grammar of Ornament is an extraordinary compendium of design resources created by Victorian designer and illustrator Owen Jones as a visual history of art and design from various cultures from ancient times to the early modern era. With over 100 pages and thousands of images it is an unequaled resource for any graphic designer. It’s also a great introduction to Jones’ historical design works which we plan to release more of in the future.
The Grammar of Ornament includes lots of examples of classical architectural and tile design from Egypt, Greece, Rome and Persia. It also includes a remarkable selection of Middle Eastern designs from Moorish, Arab and Turkish sources. In addition there numerous examples of medieval and renaissance artistic, fabric and craft designs. Because the intent of the original book was to provide source material for designers, many of the images are ready made for creating borders, backgrounds and fill patterns.
Our digital, CD version of The Grammar of Ornament includes every page and every illustration in high resolution and large size suitable for designing for print or for the web. The images have been cleaned and restored from the 1854 source, with improved color and clarity, while preserving the character of the original drawings. They are easy to access and ready to use in your design projects. The package is over 200mb in size, so we strongly recommend ordering on CD. As an introductory special we’re offering the whole collection for only $99.
To see extensive page samples from The Grammar of Ornament, just click here: SAMPLES To order the package just click here: ORDER
The Design World of Ross MacDonald
As sometimes happens, my teenage daughter the design maven, pointed my attention to a very interesting website, in this case showcasing the work of printer and designer Ross MacDonald (not to be confused with the pulp novelist who authored the Lew Archer series). His specialty is producing antique looking original printed works using old technology and clever tricks. He’s designed special books for movies like the Bible featured in the recent movie Book of Eli and has also produced custom letterpress work for posters and book cover designs, and is the creator of a series of peculiar vintage-style cartoons which I had seen before in various magazines but never really looked into more deeply.
MacDonald documents much of his work very thoroughly, with images, videos and explanatory articles on his website. His latest article is on a really fascinating hand-designed book called Wapurgisnacht created for an upcoming horror movie project, though he won’t reveal which one. The details on the construction of the book and the aging techniques are really fascinating, particularly his use of material from other antique books scanned and reconfigured to fit his needs.
Also fascinating is some of the work coming out of his Brightwork Press, which is a collection of old printing presses and an amazing assortment of antique letterpress type located in a workshop behind his house. A good example of this work is his article on a letterpress print project he did to create a title page for an article in LA Magazine, which also includes an excellent and detailed video of his presswork. The article on the letterpress printing he did for the Bible in Book of Eli is also interesting. And don’t forget to check out some of the peculiar vintage-style illustrations and cartoons he’s done for publications like The New York Times.
My one complaint — aside from not knowing what secret horror movie he’s designing the Walpurgisnacht book for — is that I wish there was more on MacDonald’s website. I suspect he’s done many other interesting projects, but only a few from the last year or so are documented. I have high hopes that if we keep an eye on his webpage we’ll get to see a lot more in the future.
A slightly different version of this article appeared previously on Blogcritics Magazine.
Classic Font: Albemarle
Since it was first released in 2001, Albemarle has become one of our most popular fonts. Its unique calligraphic features make it stand out from other text fonts, but it remains readable even at small sizes. Best of all, it comes with a great selection of decorative swashes and embellishments including both ornate flourished ascenders for many characters and unique end swashes for the ends of lines.
We’ve recently done some minor updates to Albemarle and gathered all of the fonts together into a combined set. We’ve also generated a custom demo version for users to try for free.
You can try the demo version of Albemarle for free, or order the full set with all of the swashes and the basic character set online for immediate download.
Valdemar Font Featured in Dragon Age
While browsing the shelves at my local bookstore I came across a series of novels based in the world of a game I had never heard of called Dragon Age. They caught my eye because the titles were done in our popular Valdemar font. On further investigation I discovered a lot more about the game and related products, all of which feature Valdemar as the logo font and for some of the titles.
Interestingly, their use of the Valdemar Font is somewhat creative. They used the basic character set and then took elements off of the alternate characters and applied them to different characters than they originated on to create their own alternate versions of the D and G characters. The look is still very much that of the standard Valdemar, but with a bit of a twist.
Arthur Rackham Fonts and Art
Arthur Rackham may be the single best-known book illustrator of the late 19th and early 20th century. In the early 1900s Rackham was in constant demand to illustrate childrens books and fantastic novels in his detailed and meticulous style. Rackham’s most famous illustrations are probably his plates for Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and his various illustrations for classic English fairytales. Rackham’s style is striking and unique, and his use of color and shading compensate brilliantly for the limitations of color printing of the period. He has been imitated by many later artists and was the primary influence on many contemporary illustrators, particularly Brian Froud.
We have updated and expanded this package a number of times and the latest edition of our Rackham collection features a large selection of images, focusing on celtic, fairy tale, mythological and fantastic themes, a variety of borders and decorative emblems, plus a collection of fonts based on Rackham’s calligraphy and decorative ornaments. All of the fonts are in TrueType and Postscript format for the Macintosh and Wndows compatible computers.
The package features art from books like Undine, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ring of the Nibelungs, Goblin Market, English Fairy Tales and several other books. Recent additions to the collection include unique Rackham Celtic art, as well as a selection of Rackham borders and illustrations in black and white. The art selection is varied, including not only the great fairy illustrations for which Rackham is best known, but also more unusual, darker mythological pieces such as his illustrations for Wagner’s Ring Saga and Mallory’s Morte d’Arthur.
Rackham also designed his own frontispieces and book bindings, as well as filling many of his books with whimsical marginal decorations. We’ve taken Rackhams title lettering and his marginalia and put them together into an excellent collection of fonts which are included in the package. The fonts are in Postscript and TrueType format and in versions for both the MacOS and Windows. The fonts include our Rackham Italic and Rackham text fonts, plus Sangrael, Florissant, Silhouettes, Fairies, Rackham Holiday Ornament and Goblins which are all based on Rackham’s marginal decorations.
Since we first released our Rackham Font & Art package we’ve been continually acquiring more sources for Rackham’s art and doing additional development work with fonts based on his lettering and marginalia. As a result the package keeps getting bigger and better. Whenever we do an update we contact those with older versions of the CD make the new version avaialable to them at a special upgrade price. We’re currently on our 5th version of the CD and it keeps growing and improving.
Our new edition of the Rackham package includes over 100 illustrations and graphics, plus 8 fonts based on Rackham’s calligraphy and a selection of black and white borders, headers and footers. The complete collection including all the new fonts and art is only $69. To order visit our online ordering page — ONLINE ORDERING
If you want to try out one of our Rackham fonts, try out the demo of our goblins font which features Rackham’s marginal illustrations of goblins as characters.
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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.
