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
Art Nouveau Font Collection
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Our Art Nouveau collection is one of our most impressive font packages. It brings together all of our best fonts based on Art Nouveau period designs, an area in which we’ve specialized since our earliest releases. It’s an extensive collection, with over 30 unique fonts, including text, title faces and even decorative initials. Art Nouveau may be celebrating its 100th anniversary, but the style holds up remarkably well, and Art Nouveau fonts are both artistic and functional.
Many of these fonts originated in Art Nouveau period magazines like Munchner Jugend, The Studio and Yellow Book or in period advertising, poster or sign designs. The collection includes some of the most recognizable styles of the period (Ariosto, Munich, Pantagruel) as well as unique faces based on rare hand lettering (Walhal, Beauvoir, Phaeton).
The Art Nouveau collection has recently been expanded with the addition of new fonts like Boetia, Belgravia and Jugendstil Kunsthand, plus 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.
This recently updated edition of the Art Nouveau collection is normally $99 but it is currently available at a special price of only $89. It comes with both TrueType and Postscript fonts for either the MacOS or Windows. You can order it by calling 1-800-797-8973 or just CLICK HERE to order it online and get it delivered by email or on CD.
We also offer a special Art Nouveau super-package which includes our Art Nouveau fonts collection, our Jugendstil (click for details) font and art collection and our Alphons Mucha (click for details) collections, to cover the full range of Art Nouveau type, art and design. Purchased individually these would have a total value of $187, but you can get the combination package on CD for only $139. Just CLICK HERE
To get a feel for how Art Nouveau fonts look, here’s a trial version of Norumbega for you to play around with. You may recognize this font because it has been prominently featured in the cover designs for a series of books by the author Mercedes Lackey. The full version of Norumbega is in the package, but this version has the basic character set for you to play around with. Just click on the image below to download the demo.
Rosemont Font in Upcoming Borrowers Movie
Hayao Miyazaki who brought us great animated fantasy films like Ponyo, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away the the head of Studio Ghibli in Japan and they are carrying on his tradition with films directly by his proteges. They have a deal with Disney to distribute their new films here in the United States and their latest new release is The Secret World of Arrietty, a new animated film of Mary Norton’s classic novel The Borrowers, which looks like a much more creative presentation of the novel than the live action film produced in 2003.
In the Japanese and British releases of the film they use different title fonts, but when I took the kids to the mew Muppet Movie on Thanksgiving I was pleased to discover that in the trailer for the United States release the font chosen for the main titles seems to be our Rosemont font, a good choice for a fantasy movie. The movie isn’t due out until February 17th. I hope that Rosemont will appear in the titles in the theatrical release, but regardless it’s nice to see it in use in the trailer.
Rosemont is available for purchase for just $18 in our ONLINE STORE.
Illuminated Initials from Early Manuscripts
In the mid-19th century Owen Jones undertook to catalog historic design and decoration in phenomenal detail and with exacting thoroughness in a series of beautifully illustrated books. The most famous of these is his Grammar of Ornament, which provides an overview of design and ornament from ancient times to the Renaissance. His next most notable work on historic design is his collection of Illuminated Initials from Early Manuscripts, a magnificent work on historic calligraphy and illumination which we are now making available in digital form, prepared with the same kind of care and attention to detail as our digital edition of the Grammar of Ornament.
The collection consists of all the original illustrations in the Jones book, including hundreds of initials and decorative calligraphic letters. It includes a large selection of ornate initials from different historic periods, plus several complete historic calligraphic alphabets and a selection of decorative borders and embellishments. The designs are extraordinarily detailed with brilliant colors and include examples of illumination from the early medieval period through the gothic period of the high middle ages, including outstanding Celtic, Gothic and Frankish styles.
You can see some samples of individual initials of several different styles here, or click on the sample page to the right to download a PDF with reduced-size versions of all the pages from the original book. The PDF can give you a good idea of the content of the collection, but not the quality of the images in the full package, which are in high resolution and large size with vivid colors and painstaking digital clean-up and color adjustment. These are great examples of the highly detailed, full-color initials which look great, but just can’t normally be turned into fonts. With a few exceptions, as the package also includes a bonus – two original fonts based on alphabets from the collection, Alcuin and Leodegar.
The complete Illuminated Initials from Early Manuscripts collection is available for purchase online and can be downloaded or delivered on CD for just $69 from our ONLINE STORE.
Featured Font: Illuminata
| Illuminata was inspired by lettering from a poster from the Fillmore in the 1960s. It was originally released in 2001 as part of the Psychedelic Fonts package and then later further developed for the Oroborosgame project. This latest revision features additional characters and rather than having just one version of the unique, super tall and narrow character set it features a set of custom extra bold versions of the characters on the upper case and the regular lighter weight characters for the lowercase.
You can try the DEMO version of Illuminata for free. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. |
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Now International: Buccaneer and Scurlock
As part of a new project for one of our clients in the video game industry we now have available fully expanded character sets for two of our most popular fonts – Buccaneer and Scurlock.
These new versions of the font include the traditional Latin character set used for English and other standard characters for Western European languages, plus they now also include complete character sets for Eastern European languages including Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Bulgarian and Turkish and also custom versions of the fonts with newly designed Cyrillic alphabet characters so they can be used in Russian and related languages.
The two fonts are customized for the unique keyboard layouts for these languages and come in two separate font files, one for Eastern European languages and a separate font just for Russian Cyrillic. Only the Cyrillic versions are shown here because the other languages consist mostly of lots and lots of additional custom accented versions of the Latin characters.
These conversions are similar to those which we did for Brandywine and Folkard last year and those new versions have been quite popular because of the limited number of unusual and more stylized fonts available for these languages.
You can order both fonts online: BUCCANEER INTERNATIONAL or SCURLOCK INTERNATIONAL
Clara Peck Lettering in The Prince of Mercuria
I recently picked up a copy of the novel The Prince of Mercuria by Atkinson Kimball with illustrations by Clara Elsene Peck. When I saw it online I figured I had to have it to add to my collection of Peck-illustrated books, particularly because it has a particularly good set of samples of her calligraphy.
The novel is a reasonably good Graustark/Zenda type novel of the early 1900s, which I suspect was origianlly serialized in <i>Harper’s Bazaar</i> or one of the other Hearst magazines. This version is its first appearance in complete novel format and it suffers somewhat from the transition. The great calligraphy, like that featured on the entirely handlettered frontispiece to the right, suffers considerably because of the inferior quality of the paper on which the book is printed. You can see from the detail of the words “New York” (below) how the rough fibers and porosity of the cheap paper have caused the ink to break up and spread, producing a relatively poor representation of the original lettering.
Anyway, this will be one of the projects we have in the works in the next few months. The Prince of Mercuria also has some nice marginalia and borders which might end up in a font or at least be included in an eventual Peck package as graphics.
New Font: Leodegar
| Leodegar is based on samples of 7th century Frankish hand lettering. The characters draw on the minuscule calligraphic tradition, but are a bit more decorative and somewhat whimsical. They occupy an appealing position somewhere between calligraphy and decorative initials, perfect for titles which need a dark age look or for low-impact initials in an antique looking document. The name of the font comes from one of the many Merovingian Frankish kinds of the period. The upper case characters follow the original outline-style of the lettering and the lowercase is a solid style compatible with the uppercase but more suitable for text. You can try the DEMO version of Leodegar 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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Gutenberg as Done by Histeria
A few years ago Stephen Spielberg briefly produced a very funny and often surprisingly educational cartooon called Histeria. It was a spinoff of Animaniacs and applied the same sort of farcical humor to various events of history. In this clip Histeria looks at Johannes Gutenberg and the development of movable type printing.
MapMaker Collection
Making functional and attractive maps is a very specialized skill, prized by game designers, roleplayers and artists. To make exceptional maps, you need to have the right tools. Our MapMaker font and art package provide the fonts, textures and emblems which make drawing floorplans and developing stylish world and regional maps a breeze. Our map resources are based on the designs of classic cartographers like Abraham Ortelius and Johan Hondius give your maps a unique antique look which will inspire the imagination.
The core of the collection is the extraordinary collection of more than fifteen original fonts specially created for cartographic design. They include fonts for mapping terrain, fonts of complete building plans, fonts for designing buildings and a selection of cartographic lettering fonts.
Basilica is a font of architectural elements fordesigning floorplans of churches, castles, houses and other buildings. It includes a variety of wall thicknesses, windows, doors, stairs and other essential pieces which you can easily assemble in any graphics or desktop publishing program to create impressive, easy to understand layouts for anything from a hut to a palace to a house by house map of a city.
The characters in Ortelius can be combined to make traditional geographical maps in an antique style. They include segments of coastline and rivers which can be combined in thousands of different patterns, plus city, town and fortification emblems, terrain symbols, compass symbols and everything else you need for a high-quality map of your world or key parts of it.
Our Landscape fonts are a pair of fonts containing landscape symbols, images and textures ideal for adding details to your maps and plans, such as trees, rocks, terrain features and other important elements of the environment. It’s excellent for architectural plans and building layouts.
Cityscape is mainly a decorative font, but it can add flair to your maps and plans. Each character is the silhouette of a building and they can be combined to create a complete panorama of a city. Samarkand is a decorative building silhouette font like Cityscape, but with a middle eastern theme. It includes mosques and towers and all the elements of a medieval islamic city.
Our three floorplan fonts include Temples, Castles and Houses. Each font includes a large selection of complete building floorplans which you can access with a few key clicks. Plans include original designs and notable historic buildings, mostly medieval and renaissance designs. The floorplans of temples, churches and cathedrals are particularly impressive.
The package also includes a selection of fonts for doing the titles and labels on your maps, plus several select highly decorative cartographic calligraphy fonts. The six main title fonts were selected for readability and for their historical accuracy for the era of exploration.
Brandywine is based on the lettering of Howard Pyle and is very clear and readable in small sizes, despite having a hand-drawn look. Queensland is a bold, hand-drawn italic font ideal for titles and captions. Windlass is a bold titling font with an antique look ideal for headings and large captions. In some of the alternate character locations it includes decorative map elements with a pirate theme. Buccaneer is based on hand lettering by Howard Pyle for his Book of Pirates. Walsingham is very similar to the lettering style favored by 16th century English mapmakers. Pavane is similar to the style of continental mapmakers like Abraham Ortelius. All six fonts are versatile and are similar to typefaces and lettering styles used on historical maps of the 15th and 16th centuries. Also featured in the package are the new fonts Platthand, John Speed and Hexmap.
The LITE version of the package includes just the fonts for only $59. The PLUS version includes all the fonts, plus a large selection of color design elements and over a hundred antique maps for only $89. The current release is the new 5th edition of the package. Just ORDER ONLINE. You can also order it in a discounted combo package with the Colonial Fonts for just $129 and save $20.
To get an idea of what our MapMaker fonts are like, try out the demo version of our Floorplan fonts. It combines selected floorplans from all three of our Floorplan fonts. You might also want to check out a set of sample maps or try our map design tutorial.
Classic Font: Dromon
| Dromon has been one of our most popular and most successful display fonts. It’s a modern, super-bold headline style with some clear ancestry in German gothic type design, but a unique and contemporary look. This new release of Dromon includes additional characters and improved outlines. It’s crisper and cleaner and excellent for many uses. The RV dealer at the end of my street uses it for their logo and signs and it looks great. I think it’s particularly effective as a font to fill with images or textures because it’s so bold. This new release also includes a custom outline version of the full character set.
You can try the DEMO version of Dromon for free. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. |
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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.
