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
Walter Crane Decorations Mini-Package
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Even when writing essays on socialism and the philosophy of art, Walter Crane was incapable of resisting an opportunity to add some decoration. In his book The Claims of Decorative Art, Crane embellished each chapter with an intricate decorative header featuring neoclassical and mythological scenes in his usual meticulous and detailed style.
We’ve taken all of the decorations from the book and collected them together into a special mini-package with 22 images. They’re perfect for incorporating into your own designs or decorating a document or web page. You can see some examples to the right and you can ORDER the package for only $15 online and download it right away. BUY PACKAGE |
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Mining Horror Comics for Font Ideas
I’m always mining the great graphic legacy of past eras for cool resources to use as the basis for fonts, and while I more typically go to antique sources, there’s a lot of great material to be found in the relatively recent past in vintage products of popular art like the covers and artistic content of pop novels and comic books.
With Halloween approaching, my attention was focused on sources for horrific fonts and so I went wandering the web looking for lettering from classic horror comics. They were a big element of the comics market when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. As a teen I was particularly taken with the large-format black and white comics like Eerie and Creepy which defied the comic code, but there was also a lot of good material in the more crudely produced color horror comics of the 50s and 60s which were more conventional but still featured creative lettering and quality art.
My big disappointment in this quest was my inability to find good examples of interior lettering on the internet, requiring me to go rummaging in the garage for actual physical printed comics (see more on this later), but I did find excellent sources from examples of cover art and lettering, including coverbrowser.com which I previously used as a source for pulp novel covers, and some nice higher quality images at samuelsdesign.com.
With a lot of great source material to consider, what I was ultimately drawn to was the original title lettering from the first five issues of Vampirella, the most provocative and sexually charged comic from the publishers of Eerie and Creepy. Vampirella‘s concept and stories don’t always bear close examination, though they are better than the terrible movie based on them which was released in the 1990s. But Vampirella did feature some excellent art, including some of the best work of Frank Frazetta, and although I’m not so fond of the title design which was used for most of its run, the original title design was powerful and striking and would make a good basis for a font.
The Vampirella lettering is an interesting example of lettering with an outline which conforms to the countours of the letters, a style particularly popular in horror comics and psychedelic era poster design. I’ve done similar fonts like Hendrix and the effect is excellent for titles where you want characters to overlap and nest with each other. It also has characters offset at different levels relative to the baseline, something which is easy to do when hand lettering, but more challenging in a font. It’s best addressed by having multiple different versions of each character in different positions and kerned and hinted to fit with other likely characters in two-letter combinations.
Work has only just started on the Vampirella font and I’m also looking at some other vintage comic fonts, but it should be finished in time to be a special feature for Halloween.
Special Font: Guilford Crude
| When we were developing the Guilford font there was a whole set of early versions of the characters which ended up being discarded as the font was developed towards a more regular and consistent design. These older and quirkier variants were not literally thrown away, and as a result we’ve been able to work from the original images to create a new companion font for Guilford based on those rougher, cruder versions of the characters called Guilford Crude. If you like Guilford, you can combine it with Guilford Crude to have two different versions of every character to make your documents truly varied and unique. You can ORDER the full version of Guilford Crude for only $24 online and download it right away. You can also ORDER a combined package with Guilford and Guilford crude together for a combined price of $35. | 
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Featured Font: Guilford
| Guilford is one of several fonts we’ve released based on the hand lettering of classic American artist Eric Sloane. It fits in with the colonial theme of many of his book designs, with an antique, rustic look. It is one of several Sloane fonts included in our Colonial Fonts Collection, along with Bridgeport and QueenslandGuilford features a special custom demo with a unique set of small caps. The font itself includes a full lowercase character set. You can try the DEMO version of Guilford for free. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. | 
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Clara Peck Project
Clara Elsene Peck was a little known but very talented book illustrator of the early 1900s. Her books are hard to find, but worth the effort because her style is unique and peculiar and includes a very appealing combination of illustration, decoration and hand lettering.
We’ve collected several books designed by Peck, but the only item we’ve released to date based on her designs is a single font called Peck Initials based on decorative initials which she did for the book Shakespeare’s Sweetheart. Now we’re working on our next Peck project, which is a collection of pen and ink illustrations and decorations from her childrens’ book Knocks Witty and Wise. The package will also include a new font based on Peck’s lettering which is yet to be named, but you can see some samples of the uniquely styled characters below.
Walter Crane on Decorative Pattern
People recognize Walter Crane as a famous book illustrator, but far fewer are aware that he was the philosophical leader of a political movement in the arts in late 19th century Britain, combining aesthetics and socialism and expressing his ideas in his writings promoting the Arts and Crafts movement.
Crane’s essays on aesthetics and politics are collected in several books, including The Claims of Decorative Art which includes several good articles on how art relates to commerce and government. I have to admit to not agreeing with many of Crane’s political beliefs, but his essays do provide interesting food for thought. In his essay “On the Structure and Evolution of Decorative Pattern” he wrote:
“The artist must keep in touch with nature and life; he must keep his eye fresh and his heart open if his work is to touch men and dwell in their memories. And it matters not whether he wield the chisel, the hammer, or the brush, or work at the forge, the carpenter’s bench, the stone-mason’s shed, on the scaffold or in the studio; if he feels his work, if he acquires the skill to make a thing of beauty, he is an artist in the true sense of the word.”
Which sums up the idea behind the Arts and Crafts movement pretty well and touches on some universal truths about art which it is difficult to argue with. If you would like to read some of Crane’s philosophy of art, going far beyond the title of this essay, click on the image to the right to access a PDF facsimile of “On the Structure and Evolution of Decorative Pattern” from The Claims of Decorative Art.
Dave
New Font: Gelderland
| Gelderland is a new font based on some very old typography, taken from samples of brass type from the early 19th century. It is characterized by its very detailed decorative capital letters, with multiple overlapping flourishes which create an effect almost like a framed decorative initial. The basic style of the upper and lowercase characters is calligraphic in the German gothic tradition, but the decorations on the capitals really set Gelderland apart from other fonts. Unlike many other decorative fonts its origins in brass rather than wooden type makes the lines of the flourishes much finer and clearly defined.
You can try the DEMO version of Gelderland for free with a limited character set. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. |
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Walter Crane’s The Golden Primer
Illustrated books teaching young children how to read were a staple of 19th century education, and Walter Crane was famous for his alphabet books as well as books like The Golden Primer which were designed to teach vocabulary to slightly older children through the use of rhymes and images.
The Golden Primer is one of Crane’s harder to find works. It has not been extensively reprinted and original editions are scarce and highly collectible. We acquired a copy several years ago and in our ongoing development of resources based on Crane’s work we have now created high-quality digital versions of all of the highly decorative illustrated plates in the book.
We’ve made this into a neat little collection with a set of 33 images ready to be used for your design projects. In addition to the 26 color illustrations the package includes Crane’s black and white decorations and the four sample alphabets included for teaching the young readers how to write in different styles.
You can get the full package from our online store at a special price of just $29 with an immediate download. Just CLICK HERE
For a preview of the package, they the PDF Version which includes lower resolution versions of all the color images, but not the black and white decorations or alphabet designs.
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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.
