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
Steampunk Fonts and Textures
| One of our most interesting recent releases is our Steampunk Fonts and Texture collection. It’s a new set of fonts, many of which are new or in no previous collection, plus more than 20 original high-resolution metallic textures. It’s everything you need to create unique graphics with a grungy, retrograde, victorian low-tech look characteristic of the Steampunk movement. If you aren’t familiar with steampunk literature and steampunk style, take a look at our recent overview article
It’s a world of gears and sprockets, brass and leather and rust and polished woods. It’s making a mark in fashion, industrial design and in graphic design, and if you want to bring the look to life in your designs this package has everything you need. The font set includes a combination of art, decorative initial and display fonts with an edgy art nouveau and victorian looks and specialized features. One of the key new fonts is the Gears font which is a brand new font created specially for this package which features more than 60 different gear silhouettes based on clockwork and old machinery ready to be combined with textures to create a great retro-mechanical look. Another key new font is the Jules Verne title font, a heavy-weight title font which combines the look of wrought iron with elements of gears and clockwork. Continuing the mechanical theme are the Clockwork and Gearhead fonts which combine period lettering with gears and clockwork to create stylish decorative initials. The Draughtwork font goes to back to the drawing board to give you initials with the look of a mechanical blueprint on graph paper. Belgravia, Boetia and Blackthorn are recent font releases which are in no other package and represent a very stylized element of the Art Nouveau movement which is perfect for this theme. Linthicum is another classic period font which fits the theme very well and also fills the need for a compatible text font. Our classic Goodfellow font is included because it fits so well and was featured on the cover of the James Blaylock’s recent steampunk short story collection The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives. Finally, the collection is rounded out to 12 fonts with the mystical and arcane looking fonts Necromantic and Mephisto which fit the the element of mysticism found in much steampunk literature. Plus Mephisto would look great on the side of a clockwork submarine or airship. If you want to download a sample font from the package, try our our Jules Verne font. In addition to the fonts the collection includes a great selection of new and original textures (shown to the graphic below the font samples to the right). There are more than 20 of them and they include samples of pure and oxidized and extremely deteriorated metals, including silver, gold, copper, bronze and iron in various states and with different sorts of finishes. Combine them with the fonts as we’ve done in the title graphic here (which uses Verne and Gears) and you get an amazing look. If you want to try a sample texture, try downloading the Heavy Rust texture. All of this is collected together at a price of oly $59, but for for a short time while the package is still a brand new release we’re discounting the price to only $49. You can order the Arts & Crafts font and art package directly for delivery on CD by phone from 1-512-656-8011, or you can purchase the package online – just – CLICK HERE TO ORDER |
           
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Classic Font: Semiramis
Semiramis was originally released in 1997. It’s an arts and crafts style font based on samples of lettering from books published by the Roycrofters in the early 1900s. It has a truly unique look, the most extreme example of the decorative, “architectural” style designs of that period. It also has a heavier weight and broader character form than other similar fonts. Most interestingly, it has lots of variant forms of the character forms. There are at least two and as many as four different versions of each character, a feature which is ideal if you want to customize the look of words or have nesting characters in the design of a logo. It’s a striking and versatile font which looks like nothing else you’ve seen.
You can try the DEMO version of Semiramis for free, but it includes only one version of each character. Or you can ORDER the full version online and download it right away.
Rudolph Koch Floral Initials
f you wonder where all of our fonts and art come from, we spend a lot of time researching rare books and other sources for the images on which many of them are based. We look for works of historic calligraphy and antique type sample books and classic illustrated works. The research is a big part of what we do and it leads to a lot of great fonts, but it also leaves us with weird leftover stuff. Sometimes we find things which just aren’t enough to make into a product and release in their own right and sometimes we just find surprising odd items we’re not sure what to do with.
ne example of this was when we were searching for examples of calligraphy by German type designer and calligrapher Rudolph Koch. In an online auction we picked up a strange little chaptbook by Koch which was not a collection of calligraphy or type samples, but instead contained a series of beautiful floral illustrations which Koch drew and had tinted. We couldn’t make them into a font and they didn’t really fit with anything else we were doing, so they languished in our library until an opportunity to use them came up when a customer contacted us looking for a set of custom-designed floral initials.
o we took the Koch flowers and combined them with the Terpsichore font and some other design elements and produced a unique set of initials. Originally it was only the handful of initials needed for that project, but eventually we added a full set of the rest of the characters. The result isn’t exactly a font, but it fills the same function as a decorative initials font. It’s just that because the images are in full color you have to insert them as art rather than as type. We think the results are quite nice and an excellent example of how fonts and art can be combined together into something even better.
e’re making the Koch Floral Initials available as part of a mini-package. It includes both the finished initials and the full set of about 20 floral illustrations in their original form for you to use in your own projects. The whole package is only $25 and you can ORDER IT ONLINE.
Futuristic Fonts
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It’s not easy to define what the future of font design will be, but we can certainly identify fonts which look like something from what we imagine the future to be. Fonts with a high-tech, mechanical look are always considered futuristic, and there are certain styles which have come to be associated with science fiction and other futuristic themes.
Strangely, we’ve come to associate Arts and Crafts fonts, or fonts which derive from that tradition more strongly than any others with the look of the future. Fonts like Semiramis, Sanhedrin and Alecto which are one step removed from traditional Arts and Crafts design fit right in with the futuristic theme. Some other classic fonts are also obvious picks, especially those which come from futuristic design movements like constructivism, the source for our Structura font. And of course, you can’t go wrong throwing some technological imagery in with appropriate lettering, as you see in Circuit and Gearhead. Putting all these together we get a nice melange with what we tend to imagine as the look of the future. Several of the fonts are fairly new releases or seldom seen fonts, brought in specially for this package. Alecto is a new original design, and Circuit and Gearhead have not been available for general distribution until now. You haven’t seen them before and you won’t find them in any of our other packages. The Futuristic Fonts collection is available for only $59. It comes for either Windows or MacOS computers and includes both Postscript and TrueType fonts. You can order it easily online from our ONLINE STORE To get an idea of what our futuristic fonts are like, try out the demo version of Alecto. It doesn’t have all of the punctuation and variant characters, but should give you a good feel for the font. Click here to download Alecto in an archive which will work with Windows or Mac OSX. |
New Font: San Lorenzo
For our first font of the new year we’re offering up the brand new San Lorenzo font. It’s an original hand-drawn font with a rustic decorative look which is reminiscent of the ironwork on Mission Style furniture or decorative lettering characteristic of colonial period Mexico. It is based on suggestions from budding design critic (and teenaged daughter of the designer) Caroline Nalle. It was also influenced by the desire to develop more fonts with a look characteristic of the Spanish Colonial era for a collection of fonts on that theme which is in development, a collection which will certainly include San Lorenzo.
The font features a full set of upper and lowercase characters, embellished with fanciful curled serifs and other decorative features which give it a truly striking antique appearance. It also includes a full set of characters for Spanish and other European languages. It’s the perfect font if you want to do a menu for a Mexican restaurant, but attractive enough to find many other uses as well. San Lorenzo is available in TrueType, OpenType and Postscript formats for Windows and MacOS.
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 San Lorenzo online for immediate download: BUY IT NOW.
Cochin Archaic in True Grit
After enjoying a couple of hours watching the recent remake of the classic western True Grit, I was pleasantly surprised to see what was unmistakably our Cochin Archaic font appear in the ending titles accompanied by a couple of other fonts which may have been ours as well, but were more difficult to identify. Cochin Archaic was unmistakable because it has some unusual character forms drawn from alternate characters in Nicholas Cochin’s original drawings for his text font which don’t appear in any other version of his fonts. Look at the Cochin text font on your computer (it now ships with most MacBooks) and compare it to our font and you’ll see how radical the differences are. We’ve kept the original look without homogenizing it for a modern audience – the overall effect is much more calligraphic.
Cochin Archaic is the main font used for the names of the actors and major crew members in the end credits, accompanied by a font which is very close to our Interlude font, used as initials. The job titles of the various people is done in a heavier weight text font in all caps which I can’t identify right off. Cochin Archaic is the main star, and it’s a great choice since it’s a typeface which would have been available at the time depicted in the film, as the first fonts based on Cochin’s design were made about 100 years before the time of the film.
Don’t just go see the film to see the font, but do go see the film. It’s full of excellent performances. Jeff Bridges finally manages to shed “The Dude” character from The Big Lebowski which has kind of intruded on his performances in his last few films, but the best performance is Hallee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross, the young girl whose desire for vengeance drives the action of the film.
Modern Poster Fonts
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Because the modern era of design draws on so many past traditions, it’s hard to nail down a selection of fonts and label them as essentially modern. To research our modern fonts collection we looked at nightclub posters from the 80s and 90s, popular advertising of the period, and tried to pick out fonts which fit the design styles of that period or were based on hand lettering from that period. The result is an eclectic set of 12 fonts which have the look and feel of the last decade and a half or so.
The fonts in this collection are basically poster fonts, intended for designing display advertising, posters, leaflets and flyers. They include some classic designs with a modern feel and some entirely new designs unique to the period. Dromon and Eglantine are actually based on designs of the Art Nouveau period, but ones which have resurfaced and gained a lot of popularity in recent years. Hamilton has the classic look of movie poster titles. Fortinbras has a strong commercial art look. Oblivion, Squiffy, Cosmic Dude and Ducatus Rough are all inspired by nightclub poster lettering. Ascelon has a modern look and seemed like just the text font the collection needed. Bilitis is there because we needed a brush script style and it’s our most modern looking one. It’s a strange mix, but definitely in the modern mode.
Several of the fonts are new releases, specially for this package. Ducatus Rough, Cosmic Dude, Oblivion and Ekberg were put out just to make our selection of modern fonts more complete. You haven’t seen them before and you won’t find them in any of our other packages.
For a limited time the Modern Fonts collection is available at an introductory price of only $59. It comes for either Windows or MacOS computers and includes both Postscript and TrueType fonts. You can order by phone at 1-800-797-8973 (01-512-276-7352), or to order online just CLICK HERE
To get an idea of what our Modern fonts are like, try out the demo version of our latest one, Cosmic Dude. It doesn’t have all of the punctuation and variant characters, but should give you a good feel for the font.
Cosmic Dude is based on hand-drawn poster lettering. It has a super-heavy, irregular look with variant characters which fit together remarkably well to producea a sort of interlacing effect. The full version includes a large selection of variant character forms and special characters. Click here to download the working trial version of Cosmic Dude for either WINDOWS or MacOS. Or you can purchase this font online and get it quickly by email, including all the alternate and additional characters – BUY IT NOW
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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.
