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
Font Over-Exposure: Too Much of a Good Thing
Have you ever noticed that there are some fonts that get used over and over and over again until you start to wonder why anyone would use that font you just saw on 3 software boxes, 4 book covers and 2 movie titles in the last week on yet another product or ad? I’m not talking about relatively generic text fonts which get used again and again and don’t really register as being repetitive. That’s not really a problem. The problem is with very unusual title or display fonts with a specialized look which you can’t help remembering when you see them.
These are usually fonts which appeal to a particular audience or fit a particular theme. A designer sees them and says “hey, this font is just what I need”. He ought to be hearing an echo, because a dozen other designers are saying the same thing at the same moment. The phenomenon even feeds on itself, because a designer may have seen the font in question on some similar product in the past and forgotten about it, but the look lodged in the back of his mind somewhere, so when he is put to work on something with a related theme that look and that font match his expectations even if only subconsciously and pop right to the front of his brain when it’s time to pick a font for his project. 
Morpheus is the classic example of an overused font. It and the many similar or clone fonts which are out there appear everywhere. I was in a bookstore today and saw Morpheus or an equivalent font on the covers of more than a dozen books, several DVDs, two calendars, a poster and a couple of CDs. It was hard to turn around without seeing it. It has a combination of unique peculiar looking elements which seem to create an impression of mysticism and magic, hence everyone latches onto it for any supernatural or magical design from fantasy novels to horror movies.
One of our fonts is similarly overexposed. Abaddon has become the favorite of the heavy metal rock, gothic and horror markets. If you go into a Hot Topic store in the mall Abaddon assails your eyes from every angle, with its most prominent exposure as the logo font for the band Godsmack. While this is gratifying to us as designers and font publishers, just as I’m sure the success of Morpheus is pleasing to its designer, the level of overexposure of these fonts is also frustrating.
Once a font reaches the level of overexposure you begin to see other, better and more appropriate fonts being passed over because designers have an unconscious impetus towards the look which has become established for the genre they work in, or they are just lazy and say “hey, this is a horror movie, let’s just use the font that was used on The Craft” or “Our goth-metal band’s CD cover should use that cool font on my Godsmack T-Shirt”. That’s not a terribly creative process when there are so many other great fonts which could be used instead of the obvious choices. Good fonts get neglected and fonts of questionable quality get entrenched and become tediously overused. 
As a designer you ought to be conscious not just of fitting in with an established genre but also of the value of creating a unique original look for your product. It doesn’t take that much effort to go out and find a font which produces the same kind of impression as an overused font, but which has its own personality. We font designers are working all the time to produce new fonts which meet the same needs as other popular fonts but have their own unique look. Take advantage of our efforts and put these alternative fonts to work. In many cases newer fonts designed to fill the same niche as popular fonts are really better designs.
Morpheus has a number of technical flaws and aesthetic inconsistencies which may be fixed in an alternative font like our Orpheus. Even Abaddon has shortcomings. It’s one of our early designs and rather crude, with small caps instead of lower case characters and other shortcomings. Someone out there took advantage of this to produce a clone font with a rather nice lower case character set, and we’ve even made several similar fonts which are more interesting in several ways like Gehenna and Gehenna Extreme. By looking a little further afield you can come up with intriguing alternatives to the obvious font choices and the result is that you may get a better made, more attractive font, plus people will be less likely to pigeonhole or make assumptions about your product because of the association with the products which made an overexposed font famous.
Using Abaddon for your band logo says “we’re a Godsmack clone”. Using Gehenna says “we’re sort of like Godsmack, but cool and original too”. There are an awful lot of fonts out there – something for every taste and whim. When designing a logo or the cover for a product try not to be seduced by obvious choices and overexposed fonts. Do a bit more work and explore your options. You’re likely to find an even better font which you can make your own. Then when your design or your product becomes a huge hit, you can start the process of overxposing that new font and see everyone else using it in imitation of you, trying to grab onto a little of your success.
Captain Kidd Font Featured in NBC’s Grimm
Tonight, while I was watching NBC’s new show Grimm with the kids, I was pleasantly surprised by the appearance of our Captain Kidd font at the opening of the first commercial break, spelling out the word “Grimm” in the middle of the screen. It’s the first time the name of the show appears on screen during the broadcast, but it’s a pretty brief appearance. The sad part is that it’s also the last time the font appears in the show.
I suspect that as often happens, although the original production company had the good taste to pick Captain Kidd as the title font for the show, the network or someone higher up the chain of command decided to make a change before it finally made it on the air. Instead of Captain Kidd the website and promotional screens feature a more modern looking font. It’s not bad looking, but sure doesn’t have as much character as Captain Kidd does.
As for the show itself, it’s not bad. It’s darker and more original than ABC’s Once Upon a Time which also premiered this week. Think of it as a traditional cop show with monsters thrown in. The first episode was a bit sketchy as it had to get some backstory out, but it was still pretty enjoyable.
New Font: Serenissima
| Serenissima takes its name from a nickname for the city of Venice which means “The Serene One.” It’s a particularly inappropriate name considering what a huge and absolutely unserene effort went into the creation of this digital version of the lovely sample of 16th century lettering which it is based on. Serenissima may be the most demanding design I’ve worked on in years. The complex outlines and fine divisions between sections of the capital letters required unusual exactitude, so much that many of the character outlines had to be redrawn multiple times and then extensively tweaked and fine tuned to get them to look just right. It was an awful lot of work, but I think the results are worth it. The upper case characters are complex and unique and the lowercase is elegant and provides excellent balance for the overall look of the font.You can try the DEMO version of Serenissima 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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Renaissance Fonts and Art Collection
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The Renaissance saw the movement of literature into vernacular languages, the beginnings of printing and mass book production and the popularization of fiction and writing of all sorts aimed at a wider, commercial audience. In accord with the humanist philosophy of the Renaissance there was a demand for more practical, accessible forms of lettering and a trend away from the artificiality of gothic and medieval styles. As with so many things, Renaissance scribes and artists found inspiration by throwing out the past millenium of history and going farther back, looking to the lettering styles of Rome for inspiration.
Rediscovered Roman lettering styles were adapted to fit the practical needs of Italian businessmen and record keepers and ultimately improved on to meet the sophisticated needs of Renaissance writers like Dante, Machiavelli and Boccacio. This produced the lettering styles which we traditionally associate with the Renaissance. They needed writing which was easy to reproduce in larger volume than ever before, but readable to a broad audience. Letter forms had to be attractive, but simpler and less exacting, requiring fewer strokes, permitting a flowing hand, and abandonning elaborate decoration and dramatic variations in weight and thickness. The lettering styles of the Renaissance had a huge influence on early type designers and established design principles and basic letter forms which live on in modern type designs.
Our Renaissance font collection includes 10 unique fonts based on designs from the Renaissance. These include three variations of humanistic cursive (Palmieri, Castiglione and Hanes), plus two more unusual examples of quirky italian cursives (Fiorenza and the new Alleghieri), a unique Roman style hand-lettered font (Rudolfo and Rudolfo Swash), a fully-developed example of Trajan-style Roman lettering, the basis for most formal Renaissance lettering (Hadrianus), plus a classic flouished cursive (Trinculo) and a set of floral intials from the Quattrocento (Fraticelli). There’s a little bit of everything from the period, from early period cursive like Palmieri to more practical late Renaissance lettering like Fiorenza.
The package also includes a selection of frames, borders, initials and emblems designed by Evelyn Paul based on Renaissance period book decorations. These include illuminations and decorations in both color and black and white, as well as a few selected full-page decorative plates. In combination with the varied selection of fonts they provide just what you need to give any document a full-fledged Renaissance look.
The Renaissance Fonts & Art package is a great deal with all of the fonts and art for only $79. 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 Renaissance fonts are like, try out the demo version of our latest one, Alleghieri. It doesn’t have all of the punctuation and variant characters, but should give you a good feel for the font.
Alleghieri was developed from several different examples of late Renaissance lettering. While it is based on a style which is clearly intended for quick, easy writing, we’ve preserved many of the unusual character forms and elaborations to give it a lot of personality. The result is stylish and unique, with a real feel of the Renaissance, but great readability as well. The full version includes a large selection of variant character forms and special characters.
Click here to download the working trial version of Alleghieri 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
Special Arthur Rackham Mini Package
We’ve been doing an awful lot with Walter Crane recently, but sort of neglecting one of his great contemporaries who has been a mainstay of our collection in the past, Arthur Rackham. Rackham was arguably the greatest illustrator of his era and certainly one of the highest paid. He is also certainly the best remembered and most widely imitated today. Popular current artists like Brian Froud and Charles Vess owe him a great deal and acknowledge his role in laying the groundwork for the modern tradition of fantasy and folklore illustration.
Our Rackham Fonts and Art Collection is great, but it is still far from complete considering how prolific he was. So we’re slowly incorporating more material. One unusual and extremely rare item has just been processed and is now available, a collection of color and black and white illustrations from the 1910 edition of Rackham’s illustration of Greek myths titled Greek Heroes. This is a unique and special work because Rackham worked outside of his typical illustration style and the color pieces in particular look very different from what we’re used to from Rackham – much more realistic and less stylized. The black and white pieces are more typical of his other work. Themes covered include the labors of Hercules, the tale of Jason and the Argonauts and the story of Perseus.
It’s also a relatively small set of high quality illustrations – what would be considered a minor work when compared to some of his other massive and elaborate projects like his illustrations for Wagner’s Ring Saga. But however minor it is, it’s also very rare and the illustrations are almost never seen elsewhere and they are also powerful and visually striking, with an unusual color palette of browns and reds which Rackham used relatively infrequently.
The set of 12 high resolution illustrations from Greek Heroes (4 color, 8 black and white) has already been added to our Rackham Fonts and Art Collection, so if you order that package now it will be included. Alternatively you can also purchase the mini-collection separately for just $8 and you can order it and download it directly from our ONLINE STORE.
Zothique Font in Tim Burton’s “Tragic Toys”
We’ve recently been doing much work on our Dark Shadows font project, and it’s encouraging to be reminded that there is an ongoing association of our fonts with various Tim Burton projects. This is evident most recently in the selection of our classic Zothique font as the style for Tim Burton’s name in the packaging and promotional materials for the new series of figures based on designs from some of his cartoon drawings titled “Tim Burton’s Tragic Toys for Girls ad Boys” which features odd characters like Oyster Boy, Stain Boy and The Girl with Many Eyes.
Not sure what the other font used prominently on the products is, but it’s very gratifying to see Zothique selected for Burton’s name and it looks great at the head of the poster as shown to the right. The peculiar and quirky style of the script fits Burton’s personna rather well.
Classic Font: Paleos
| We originally released Paleos back in 2002. It was inspired by kinds of titles used for B grade movies in the cavegirl/junglegirl genre. Movies so bad that they’re good in a way that appeals to cult movie fans. The concept is that the characters should look crudely hand-carved and kind of prehistoric – perfect for a poster featuring a girl in a leopard skin bikini. The upper and lower case character sets feature alternate versions of the main characters for variety, plus there are more alternate characters. Paleos is one of several fonts we’ll be featuring this month which are included in our horror fonts collection.
You can try the DEMO version of Paleos for free. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. |
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Dark Shadows Font Preliminary Rendering
With the Dark Shadows movie in the early phases of filming and some production stills (let’s hope they improve the make-up on Depp) already appearing on the web, it’s time to step up work on the Dark Shadows font. At this point I have the basic character design done for a complete set of uppercase and small caps characters plus a partial set of more elaborate initials. All of this is still in hand-drawn form, but it’s at the pont now where I can put characters together to see how they look and move on to rendering them as outlines to make them into a functional font. See the image to the right for what they look like right now. Feedback and suggestions would be most welcome.
Also of vital importance is the name of the font. It’s down to Collinsport, Collinwood and Barnabas. If you want to contribute to the naming decision, vote in the poll below.
Dark Shadows Font Name Poll
New Font: Elsene
| Elsene is a new font based on lettering by early 20th century illustrator Clara Elsene Peck, obviously taking its name from her middle name. It’s based on her lettering and initials from the book Knocks Witty and Wise. A companion set of illustrations will be available soon. With Elsene you really get several fonts in one, because it includes multiple variant character sets, a complete set of outline characters and a selection of character frames and highlights. It’s based on the artist’s lettering, so it has all the quirks and peculiarities you’d expect, plus a heavy weight which is excellent for titles. It works well in combination with our two other Peck fonts, Peck Initials and Peck Shields.
You can try the DEMO version of Elsene for free with a limited character set. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $29 online and download it right away. |
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Horror Fonts and Art for Halloween
For years here a the Scriptorium we’ve been developing fonts and collecting unique art which is perfect for Halloween and putting it together into packages which we promote through our Boneyard Fonts site. After 10 years we’ve put together a gruesomely provocative collection of fonts and art, adding new items every year around Halloween. We’re now up to almost 40 fonts, plus art from great masters of the macabre like J. G. Posada, Edmund Dulac, Willy Pogany and Harry Clarke. You’ll find everything you need for any Halloween or other horrific design project.
Recent additions to the collection include two new fonts based on title lettering from classic Hammer horror films, plus a great selection of images based on the unique Calavera illustrations by revolutionary Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada. These show skeletons engaged in a variety of typical daily activities, featuring a certain amount of political and social commentary, but also a nice dose of macabre humor. We also have several Posada fonts in development, but don’t expect them until next year.
Our collected horror images and fonts are organized into three separate package, the Diabolic Fonts and Art collection, the Macabre Fonts and Art collection and the Halloween Fonts and Art collection. They’re available individually or in a discounted combo package. All of the fonts are also available indidivually. Read on for some details on the three horror fonts and art packages.
HALLOWEEN FONTS AND ART
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The Halloween Fonts and Art package includes some of our wildest and most unusual fonts, plus all of the large selection of colorful custom Halloween graphics we’ve assembled over the years, including frames, borders, decorative tiles, buttons and emblems. It’s excellent for web, poster or flyer design.
The fonts in this package include the Halloweenies font and many of our fonts based on title lettering from popular horror movies like the new Veronique and Paleos fonts, and some great fonts for spooky text and titles like Sanguinary and Ironworks. If you want to see larger samples of the fonts just click on the small samples to the right. If you want to take a closer look at some of the images in this package you can just CLICK HERE. There are a total of 12 fonts included in the package, plus many images.
This collection is only $49 with all the fonts and art. Fonts are included in both PostScript and TrueType format for MacOS and Windows. You can also get this package in combination with the Macabre and Diabolic packages for a low combo price of only $129. To order online just go to our ONLINE STORE
MACABRE FONTS AND ART
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Our Macabre Fonts and Art package features fonts and arts with the flavor of the grave. We’re talking morbid images and skulls and skeletons galore. In this package you’ll find some of our best horrific art and some very unusual fonts. It’s great for more sophisticated design projects which need a more degenerate, gothy look.
The fonts in this package include all of our skeletal fonts like Golgotha, Skull and Bones and the classic Boneyard, plus stylish and unusual script fonts and titling fonts like the very popular Valdemar which will be featured in the marketing for the Harry Potter movies. The art in this package is particularly appealing. It has both Edmund Dulac’s illustrations for Poe’s poetry and Harry Clarke’s illustrations and decorative marginalia for Poe’s “Tales of Mystery and Imagination”. Plus this package includes our newest art feature, Jose Guadalupe Posada’s “Calavera” illustrations of skeletons doing all sorts of odd things. To see a more detailed sample of any font just click on the image of it to the right. If you want to take a look at some of the art in this package just CLICK HERE. There are a total of 12 fonts included in the package, in addition to the scores of high quality images.
This package is only $49 with all the fonts and art. Fonts are included in both PostScript and TrueType format for MacOS and Windows. You can also get this package in combination with the Halloween and Diabolic packages for a low combo price of only $129. To order online just go to our ONLINE STORE
DIABOLIC FONTS AND ART
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This collection leans towards the arcane and supernatural, with fonts based on mystical languages and containing
magical symbols, or which look just plain evil. The art fits with the theme, drawn mostly from illustrations for Faust.
Among the fun fonts in this package are Goetic and Malachim two mystical language fonts, our scariest titling fonts Dementia, Sabanak and Sepultura, plus the new Diabolus arcane initials font and our two popular Voodoo symbology fonts Veve and Guede. The images in this package include illustrations for Faust by both Willy Pogany and Harry Clarke, plus Clarke’s fantastic black and white marginalia for his edition of Faust. To see a more detailed sample of any font just click on the image of it to the right. If you want to take a closer look at some of the images in this package you can just CLICK HERE.
This new package is only $49 with all the fonts and art. Fonts are included in both PostScript and TrueType format for MacOS and Windows. You can also get this package in combination with the Macabre and Halloween packages for a low combo price of only $129. To order online just go to our ONLINE STORE
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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.
