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
Featured Font: Schoolhand
Schoolhand was originally commissioned by the Education Department at a major Christian university, which will remain nameless. It was developed to their specifications in order to teach cursive handwriting to children, sharing some characteristics with the popular D’Nealian style, but a bit more decorative and elaborate. It’s an interesting and useful font, with characters specially designed with interlocking elements as a guide for proper lettering. Sadly, perhaps lacking a good Christian sense of responsibility, the university neglected to pay the balance of their bill for the custom design of the font, and so on their breach of contract rights to the font reverted to us. We released it quietly some years ago, in the theory that there are plenty of people who would like to teach their children cursive handwriting, but have never really promoted it, so this is its public debut.
You can try the DEMO version of Schoolhand for free, or ORDER the full version online.
2010: A Year in Fonts
In 2010 we released 18 new fonts, a tad short of our ideal goal of 24, but a pretty respectable output considering the work involved. 7 were new and original designs. 6 were adaptations of vintage hand lettering. 5 were based on antique type. So far the best seller of the lot has been Ormandine, followed closely by Big Blok and Borealis. I’m personally disappointed that my favorites like Antrobus and Montgisard have not sold better, but their day will come. For more details click on any of the font images below (in order of release).
As a special bonus we’ve also made a collection of all 18 of the fonts released in 2010 available as a special purchase at only $79 for the full set – less than $5 per font. You can order it from our Online Store.
Custom Font Design
If you visit this site, the first thing you see is a great many fonts. That makes sense since we’re primarily in the font business, despite dabbling in antique art and other design resources. Seeing all these fonts, it may be a mystery where they come from. Clearly some are based on identifiable sources like historic calligraphy, vintage typefaces and unique hand lettering. Others are entirely original and the work of one of several designers who work with us. Many of these fonts we’ve just designed or developed because we thought they would be interesting or because they fill a specific gap in our collection of fonts. But some were developed for specific projects on commission for clients who contact us looking for custom designed fonts.
Some of these custom designed fonts you have seen here on the site and others you may have seen elsewhere and not even realized that we designed them. In some cases you may have seen a font we designed and you will never know it because we aren’t even allowed to talk about having designed it, having signed a non-disclosure agreement with the company we designed it for. More typically we can boast about our work, but you still may not see the font for sale here because the company we designed it for wanted exclusive rights to the design. In some cases when we design a custom font we get to keep the rights and also sell it to our customers here, sometimes after a certain amount of time has passed by agreement with the client.
When we design a custom font for a client we are often working from material or drawings which they have provided us. This includes projects like making a font which matches a company logo or a custom font as we did for putting serial numbers on the sides of airplane parts, or like Engravers Gothic (top right) which was developed for carving on rings, or like Schoolhand (bottom right) which was designed for a major university as an aid for teaching handwriting, or a font based on samples of hand lettering we did for a cigar company, or (as shown to the right) the font we did based on the runes for the RuneQuest RPG.
Sometimes the client will want a font which is a variation of a font we already have which they may be using in an existing project. For example, we worked with Disney earlier this year to develop custom Russian and Eastern European versions of several of our fonts for video games to be released in that part of the world. At the time it was a big secret, but since the projects are complete and the products have been released and already mentioned in passing on the site, if you happen to need a Russian language version of any of the Tinkerbell fairies games you’ll see our custom versions of Folkard and Brandywine featured in the games. This was a truly original design project in many ways because so much work was involved deriving new cyrillic characters while preserving the style of the original fonts.
Sometimes the client will want an entirely original design or something developed from little more than an idea. This is often a collaborative process as was the case with one of our most famous custom designs, the Beynkales. When the movie “The Corpse Bride” was first released, the main title was a hand-drawn variation of our Tuscarora font. Then when the movie was going to be released on DVD they needed the ability to redo the title in multiple languages, but they only had the letters of the original English words to work with. So they came to us and we worked from the original titles and the Tuscarora font to develop a complete font in the style of the original titles and thus Beynkales was born.
Now, if you’ve ever considered getting a custom font for your company or some special project, we’re here to help. The bad news is that like any custom design work it can get quite expensive. Some original font designs cost as much as $5000. The good news is that we’ve got ways to make it much more affordable — maybe not super cheap, but at least reasonable. Our highest price for custom designed fonts is when the work is almost entirely original and the font is designed for he exclusive use of the client. Prices are much more reasonable for simpler projects where we have good source material or are modifying one of our existing fonts, and we give additional discounts if we get to retain the rights and it’s a font we think we can resell and offset some of the cost that way. As is the case with many things, pricing comes down to a combination how much work we have to do to produce the font, and how much we can offset the cost in other ways. If a custom design can also add something cool to our library then you reap the benefits.
If you have an interest in having a custom font designed, use the contact form under “info” above and send us as detailed a description as you can of the project you have in mind.
Get the Newsletter – Stay Informed
We’re constantly putting new articles, new fonts, new reviews and new links to great sources on our site. Every week we send out a short email newsletter called the Scriptorium Update to let people know what’s new on the site and with information on special promotions and great discount offers which are exclusive to newsletter subscribers. We’ve recently updated the newsletter to add more graphic material and detailed content.
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Happy Holidays!
Fonts featured in this card (in order) Crane Gothic, St. Nicholas and Vambrace. The background art is by Kay Nielsen.
Blue Genie Art Bazaar in Austin
Austin is a town full of artists and craftspeople and people with too much education and too much money not to patronize their work. The result is the perfect environment for a rich selection of art and craft events all year long, but especially at Christmas. The most famous of these are the Spring and Fall Pecan Street Festivals and the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar, which draw hundreds of vendors from all over the country.. But probably more interesting are the many small events which focus mostly on select local artists whose work is unique and quirky.
For the last several years one of the most interesting of these has been the Blue Genie Art Bazaar which is held at the Monarch Event Center, a converted movie theatre in the Lincoln Village Shopping Center in North Central Austin at the intersection of Highway 290 and IH-35. It's scheduled for the whole month of December and stays open late (9pm and then midnight Christmas week). The unusual name comes from the Blue Genie Art company which is the main sponsor, a company which does large-scale art installations for advertising and signage — giant chickens, vegetables, jackalopes, dinosaurs and the like which have graced local establishments like Jerry's Artorama, Atomic Tattoo and Hyde Park Grill.
In the last few years I've fond the Blue Genie Art Bazaar to be a a far more interesting alternative to more well known holiday markets. Their vendors are juried and selected for the quality of their work and also to make sure there is a nice variety of types of work for sale. They also seem to be selected with a particular attention to the graphic arts and printed works, and an eye for the bizarre which I find particularly appealing.
The selection of vendors this year was a little different from last year, though there was a similar mix of jewelry, crafts, printed works and original art. Some of the standouts from previous years were still represented. One of the most notable was Rory Skagen and his selection of unusual toys, faux retro products, posters for ad campaigns and movies which never existed and other oddities. Another standout was Chia Hats which has expanded on their collection of furry hats with ears to add some cute original clothing designs. Also back with their soft bats and mice and other handicrafts for hids was Alicia Traveria.
Among the new vendors, or at least ones I haven't seen before, were several excellent graphic artists. My wife was particularly impressed by some of the anthropomorphic animal prints from Abi Daniel and prints by Dana Younger, especially a series of vivid prints of irises. My daughter liked the fanciful art of Nathan Jensen. I was more impressed with some of the creative printing projects, including Michael Schliefke's alternative comic book Really White Vigelante, Kristen Hagen's even more alternative comic Dead Squirrel Girl, plus I rather like Browns Arm photos of classic signage (and their website is very cool) and was impressed with the creative printing techniques of Bearded Lady Printing. There was also a small section of original drawings and paintings by legendary Austin cartoonist Sam Hurt of Eyebeam fame.
As always, the coolest things to me are the creative things which artists here in the Southwest do with skulls and skeletons in the tradition of Mexican Calavera art and Jose Guadalupe Posada. In this area two booths really stood out. One was the colorful sculptural art of Cindy Raschke with its over-the-top variants on traditional themes. The other was the prints and cards and especially the exrtra-fun paper dolls from Leila Hijazi of Illustrated Ink, who finds some very clever ways to use Calavera images and fantasy themes. I particularly liked the Calavera mermaid and tentacular siren paper dolls. She gets a special thumbs up for using my Asrafel font on her signage.
There was lots more to see, but I can't begin to remember it all. Cool knitwear and futuristic clothing and all sorts of interesting jewelry and knick-knacks. If you're in Austin or anywhere near Austin you should take the time to spend a few hours wandering around the show. Bring the kids and snap photos of them riding the giant Jackalope. If you're not in Austin, give some of the many links provided here to find out more about the artists. Either way you'll be on the right track for some unique Christmas gifts.
New Font: Holly Initials
It wouldn’t be the holidays without a special font designed to capture the mood of the season. As a source for something special I went to our library of rare books on type and calligraphy and found a rare book on calligraphy called Real PenWork published in the 1880s by Knowles and Maxim. We originally acquired it as a source for 19th century Spencerian script designs, but it also included some unique decorative lettering, including a set of hand-drawn initials perfect for the holidays with bold letters decorated with holly leaves and berries. That lettering became the basis of the new Holly Initials font which is ready just in time for Christmas. So now, if you want to deck the halls you can really do it in style with a great thematically appropriate font.
You can download and try the demo version of Holly Initials, in TrueType format for Mac or PC. You can also order the full version of Holly Initials online for immediate download: BUY IT NOW.
St. Nicholas Font on SNL
Sometimes our fonts show up in pretty cool locations. Last night, as a child of the 70s who has watched Saturday Night Live for about 35 years, I was excited to see the St. Nicholas font show up as the title font on a spoof commercial for the latest in a series of parodies of overhyped mass events where the featured performers and activities being promoted take a turn for the bizarre. In this case the commercial was for a hip-hop Christmas themed event called the “Crunkmas Karnival.” After seeing the commercial I’m positive I don’t want to attend the event, but maybe some folks will see it and be inspired to go looking for St. Nicholas
Eleanore Brickdale’s Carols for Christmas
Eleanore Fortescue Brickdale was a remarkable illustrator who was part of the generation of artists who came after the pre-Raphaelites and took many of their ideas and refined and commercialized them. Brickdale did a lot of illustration on religious themes and was particularly known for her cherubs, angels and images of children. Not surprisingly this meant that she worked on many holiday-related projects and one of the most impressive of those is her illustrated collection of classic Christmas carols.
Brickdale’s Carols is a brand new mini-package available just during the Christmas season. It is not yet in our complete Eleanor Brickdale package and is only available as a stand-alone item through the end of this year. It’s great source material for Christmas cards or decorations and includes large-size illustrations of traditional Christmas themes and also decorative scrolls and emblems which are easy to adapt to your designs.
Be warned that the art is beautiful, but also very traditional and very religious, so if you’re looking for something more generic or secular this probably isn’t the package for you. But if you need a quick fix of angels and cherubs and the baby Jesus, this is the package for you. It includes all of the illustrations and emblems from the book in high-resolution format, plus a large-size PDF ebook of the art. And best of all it’s just $12 for the whole thing and you can order and download it online from our store.
Classic Font: Goodfellow
Goodfellow was first released in the spring of 1993. It was based on Art Nouveau period metal type designed for titles and logos. It became a surprise hit when Tim Burton used it as the title font for his hit animated film A Nightmare Before Christmas later that year. The downside was that we had released a demo version at that time and someone with more enterprise than integrity renamed it and released it all over the free font download sites under the name “Burton’s Nightmare.” Unfortunately, the version they pirated was full of design defects which we had corrected in our released version, but that pirated version was so widely circulated that it kind of undermined the distribution of the real font. Since then it has sold well and we’ve done many revisions and improvements, including cleaning the outlines and developing custom bold and italic weights and adding special foreign language characters, but the pirate version with its name association has become so ubiquitous that the real font has always languished in its shadow.
Nonetheless, we’ve worked hard to make Goodfellow a really excellent font, and with its Christmas association we thought it made sense to release the latest revision of Goodfellow during the holiday season, so we’ve made it our featured font for this week. The new version includes the latest version of all three weights with some new added features and improvements.
You can try the demo version of Goodfellow for free, or order the full version online with the alternate characters and special symbols.
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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.
