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
Scriptorium’s Dave Nalle in NYT Style Section
Scriptorium lead designer Dave Nalle was quoted in an article about political fonts in the Style section of the New York Times today. The article isn’t as in-depth as his own recent article on the subject here on our site, but it has some interesting observations from other designers as well. Sadly they didn’t include a link to our site, but it’s kind of cool to see the nation’s leading newspaper even looking at a design topic like this.
The Jugend Tarot Deck
   |
   |
I recently came upon a rare and unexpected discovery in one of my favorite rare book stores, a set of tarot-style playing cards issued as a bonus insert in the 1892 edition of the classic German Art Nouveau magazine Munchner Jugend.
The card set was designed by Julius Diez and features woodcut-style images with color highlights in red, green and gold. The style is reminiscent of 16th century woodcuts like the Dance of Death illustrations featured in one of the contemporary issues of the magazine. The images are certainly somewhat grotesque and intended to be comical, though to the modern viewer they appear rather disturbing, particularly the crippled Knight and Knave cards. There are also peculiarities, including numbers printed upside down, hand-stamped printers marks and various irregularities and quirks.
The card deck is adapted to playing trick-taking games with a customized deck based on the tarot deck, a popular trend of the 1890s. Although the card set resembles traditional tarot cards in many ways, it was likely not really intended for fortune telling. The complete deck consists of 36 cards in 3 9-card suits, including numbered cards 6 through 10 and four face cards, an Ace, a King, a Knight and a Knave. Each card contains unique imagery with small scenes on each of the numbered cards and larger individual figures on the face cards. The suits are variations of the standard suits, with bells (coins or diamonds), rods or clubs (wands), leaves or blades (spades or swords) and hearts. There is no trump suit as you would have in a true tarot deck.
This is somewhat of a novelty item and will ultimately be added to our Jugendstil Collection, but for now we’re also making the cleaned up and print ready version of the card set available for purchase in digital form for just $7. It’s a curiosity with some useful graphic elements. You can get it in our ONLINE STORE and download it immediately.
New Font: Hadrianus Swash
Hadrianus has been one of our most popular text fonts for a while and it was recently featured here on the site. There has been a lot of demand to expand the features available with Hadrianus beyond the usual bold and italic versions, so this summer we developed something really special, a swashed alternate character set which combines elements of the standard Hardrianus characters with calligraphic script characteristics to produce a unique hybrid variation which pairs the Hadrianus capital letters with the special custom swashed lowercase characters for a really lovely effect. The overall look remains true to the latin, humanist origins of the font and the new characters are very finely tuned to fit the look of the original font.
You can download and try a demo version of Hadrianus Swash, in TrueType format for Mac or PC. You can also order the full version of Hadrianus Swash online for immediate download: BUY IT NOW. Alternatively you can purchase a combined set of the font with the main Hadrianus font and Hadrianus Swash in a special discounted combo: BUY THE SET.
Political Signs: the Bold and the Baffling
In the next few weeks we’re all going to see an awful lot of political signs. Every candidate has them, from the lowliest office to the highest in the land, and based on the variety of designs there’s no absolute consensus on what makes one effective.
I’ve thought about this before. I’ve even designed quite a few fonts specifically for use in political advertising. I’m also not the only person putting some thought into the topic. There were quite a few articles written about it during the 2008 election, particularly relating to some of the images and poster designs used by the Obama campaign. I was recently brought back to thinking about this subject by a call from a reporter for a major newspaper looking for some expert input on the use of fonts in political campaigns.
A lot of what it takes to market a candidate comes down to branding, and visual representations are key to that, especially in how the candidate’s name and message are converted from raw information to visual form, usually through the use of well-chosen fonts in an appealing layout.
Campaign signs are particularly tricky, because you have to walk a very fine line. The design needs to be original enough to be remembered, but it still has to fit within some familiar parameters do voters can relate to it. A sign has to convey information about the candidate and a feel for the type of candidate he or she is, but can’t bee too crowded or cluttered or it becomes overwhelming and the information gets lost in the clutter. It needs to be readable at a distance and emphasize the name which will be on the ballot in an unambiguous way. It’s also good to avoid putting anything unnecessary on the sign which can distract from its impact.
Read more
Oriental Fonts Collection
Over the years we’ve designed fonts on just about every theme, and one which we’ve come back to now and again is fonts which capture the spirit of the Far East. The orient offers rich source materials with cultures where calligraphy was valued as an art, not just a means of communication. . We’ve developed enough of these fonts now that they’re worth putting together into a special collection.
The new Oriental Fonts Collection inlcudes five original fonts. While they don’t have true oriental language characters in them, they are designed to give the look of the Far East to text written in the Latin alphabet for western readers. Cipango and Asphodel are based on advertising and packaging lettering from the early 20th century of the sort you would find on products imported from the east. Suchow is a very traditional font which creates western characters from brush strokes similar to those in Chinese calligraphy. Yoshitoshi has the look of Japanese brush strokes derived from the work of legendary illustrator Yoshi Toshi. Katisha is a fanciful, almost gothic interpretation of oriental lettering with ornate and decorative characters.
The package includes all 5 fonts together at a much lower price than if you were to buy them separately. You can get the whole set for $39 and save more than $40. Even better, you can order online and take delivery by immediate download in our ONLINE STORE..
Classic Font: Black Cow
Black Cow was originally developed back in 1998 as an addition to our Horror Fonts and Art collection. It has since been through several revisions with the addition of lots of alternate character forms. It’s a super quirky font with very odd wiggly characters with peculiar embellishments and an overall look which is somewhat creepy. The font includes a plain and a decorated version of each character plus third alternates of many of the characters as well. It’s great for doing titles for Halloween themed projects, which is why we’re featuring it this month. As for the title and where it came from, I’ll leave you to guess that for yourselves.
You can try the demo version of Black Cow for free, or order the full Black Cow set online with the complete expanded character set and the various custom weights and styles.
Halloween T-Shirt Designs
Over a period of five years, from 2002 to 2006 I contributed to the Halloween festival at my daughter’s school (St. Francis School in Austin, Texas) by designing custom t-shirts to promote the event. They weren’t the most sophisticated designs in the world, but were well suited to screen printing and hit on essential seasonal themes. They also make good use of our fonts and other design elements and might provide some inspiration for others working on Halloween design projects.
The 2002 t-shirt coincided with the release of our Ligeia and Halloweenies fonts. Ligeia is used for the lettering, while most of the design elements of the image on the shirt ended up incorporated into Halloweenies. This shirt also features Gehenna for the word “halloween” and Zothique for the date.
The 2003 t-shirt has original art, though the cat ended up in the Halloweenies font, plus it reuses Ligeia for the St. Francis logo and uses Black Cow which had just been released for the final line of text.
The 2004 t-shirt was different because it was printed in two lighter colors on a black shirt, while the others had been printed on light colored shirts with one or two colors of ink. It also branched out from being just a straight seasonal image to making a kind of lame attempt at a joke at a middle school level. The art is original, except for the one skull which is taken from our Posada art collection in the Macabre Fonts and Art collection. The fonts featured on this shirt are Malagua for the top lettering and Veronique (one of our Hammer Film title fonts) for the two lines at the bottom.
The 2005 shirt went with a kind of voodoo theme, with original art of a Guede choosing between the heads of Captain Ogu and Baron Samedi. Again it uses Ligeia for the school name, with Black Cow and Nevins Avant also featured.
In 2006 we went back to the look of the first two t-shirts, with the use of images from the Halloweenies font and with the titles in Ligeia and Gehenna again. It has a great traditional look.
Sadly, starting in 2007 the school decided to go with a blander more generic t-shirt design. I’ve always suspected that some of the more religious moms weren’t comfortable with my inclusion of themes from voodoo, paganism and witchcraft in the designs. But I’ve always seen Halloween as a fun celebration of superstition and a diversity of beliefs, so I don’t feel terribly guilty. I just need to find a new Halloween event to design t-shirts for.
Daniel Martin Diaz and the Lowbrow Tarot
I started out researching some posters I’ve collected from shows at various Austin theaters over the past few months and then I got to riffing through google and chanced into something interesting, the Lowbrow Tarot project, a showcase for 23 illustrators and designers. What particularly caught my eye was the card back designed by Daniel Martin Diaz. It is exactly the kind of retro graphic arts style design which I particularly like. Diaz’ other work is also worth a look. It’s morbid, weird and mystical and full of arcane symbolism. It’s fun stuff.
The Lowbrow Tarot is interesting in its own right as well. It’s a great idea to bring a bunch of very different artists together in a thematically unified showcase and the Tarot provides excellent subject matter for them to work with. The quality of the art is uneven. I really like some of the artists, particularly Aunia Kahn, Laurie Lipton, Heather Watts and Claudia Drake. Others, like Scott Brooks and Sas Christian, I find pretty unappealing. But there are enough artists involved that there’s bound to be something which will appeal to anyone, and it’s interesting to see how a group of very different artists interpret the timeless ideas of the Major Arcana.
This past weekend the illustrations from the Lowbrow Tarot iopened as an exhibit at La Luz de Jesus gallery in Los Angeles where it will run through the end of the month. After that it will be released as a book and eventually in actual card format sometime early next year. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, check out the exhibit. If not, the website is a somewhat inferior alternative, but worth some time to look over.
Search Articles:
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.
