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.
New Font: Langdon...
Langdon is our first new font of 2012. It's based on samples of hand-rendered poster lettering from the early 1900s by J. M. Bergling. It has a strong, distinctive look with demi-serifs and an art nouveau or art deco look. It's very m[...]
New Font: Aerobrush...
I was playing around with some paint at our chicken coop and realized I had an opportunity to do some hands-on design work for a brush-style font, so I did a set of sample brush strokes on a piece of the recycled coroplast which cover[...]
Classic Font: Lachesis...
Lachesis was one of our earliest text font designs, a unique font deliberately designed to have an antique wood-cut look. It is based on samples of vintage type taken directly from letterpress type blocks found at the type museum in [...]
Featured Font: Melcheburn...
Melcheburn is a really handsome calligraphic font which we first released in 2000 and which has been revised twice since then. It has character forms which are more decorative than classic black letter fonts, with embellished capitals[...]
Featured Font: Locksley...
BUY NOW TRY DEMO We have done a number of fonts based on unique, historic movie titles. The most well known and widely circulated is our Captain Kidd font, but we have another historic movie font based on an even more f[...]
Featured Font: Potsdam...
BUY NOW TRY DEMO Potsdam was one of our earliest font releases, first produced in 1992 based on samples of 19th century decorative German type. It was one of our first fonts designed for MacIntosh computer users and fol[...]
Classic Font: True Golden...
True Golden is one of the cornerstone fonts in our William Morris collection. It is a unique rendering of Morris' Golden type, which he based on samples of early Jensen typefaces. Our rendering of the style has a special, authentic lo[...]
Classic Font: Padstow...
In the week leading up to St. Patrick's Day it's all about Celtic design, so our featured classic font has to be something with a Celtic theme. That being the case, there's no better choice than our bold and beautiful Padstow font. It[...]
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 cha[...]
Walter Crane Initials and Orname...
It has taken a lot of hours of development, but we finally have our promised Walter Crane Initials font. Or should I say FOUR fonts, because in the process of developing the font it turned out that we ended up with more [...]
Classic Font: Black Cow...
Black Cow is a unique original font designed for our Horror Fonts and Art collection several years ago. It's one of the most interesting fonts in the large selection of fonts in that package, but it hasn't had the huge level of popul[...]
Featured Font: Munich...
BUY NOW TRY DEMO Our Munich font was first released in 1998 and has been revised several times since then. This latest version includes substantial improvements in the outlines of the characters and a new set of simple upper [...]
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[...]
New Font: Scrapple...
Scrapple is a new font based on the idea of constructing characters from a limited selection of wood blocks featuring round and rectangular shapes. Scrapple has a cool, crude and industrial look. It's all uppercase, but the lowercase[...]
New Font: Drakulon...
When I was a kid I wasn't allowed to buy comic books, so when I began to earn some money of my own as a young teen, I hit that market right at the peak of the 1970s boom in alternative large-format comics which were much more salaci[...]
New Font: Rodchenko...
Alexander Rodchenko (1891–1956) was one of the premier artists of the constructivist movement in Russia. Although he was a sculptor, painter and photographer, he is most remembered for his graphic design style in book and poster desig[...]
Featured Font: Gloriana...
Gloriana was originally released in 1999 based on samples of hand lettering in an illustated childrens book from the early 1900s. It was one of several conceptually similar fonts we did during that period, including Gaiseric, Rosalin[...]
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[...]
Featured Font: Froissart...
BUY NOW TRY DEMO Our Froissart font was first released in 2000 as part of our Medieval Fonts and Art package. It is an accurate recreation of the Littera Bastarda calligraphic style which was popular in the 14th and 15t[...]
Featured Font: Vergennes...
Vergennes was originally released in 2001 and is a stylish font which combines a simple lower case character set with highly decorative calligraphic initials. It is based on samples of lettering collected in Germany in the early 1900[...]
New Font: Nostromo...
Nostromo is based on a sample of early 1900s period advertising lettering with a particularly dramatic personality and a look which really grabs the eye. The font includes all uppercase characters, with some variants, plus the unique [...]
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[...]
New Font: Shayne...
BUY NOW TRY DEMO Custom Preview We've featured some articles on the designs of pulp novel covers from the mid-20th century, including s look at the fonts used in those designs. We've also released fonts based on those[...]
About
Scriptorium Fonts is an Austin, Texas based type foundry founded in 1992 by game designer, editor and historian Dave Nalle. It specializes in adaptations of antique fonts and fonts based on artistic hand lettering drawn from the work of famous artists and calligraphers like Alphons Mucha, William Morris, Willy Pogany, Arthur Rackham and Howard Pyle. Their catalog currently includes over 600 fonts and they have four type designers on staff: Dave Nalle, Michael Scarpitti, Peter Nevins and Kevin Andrew Murphy. Fonts include Abaddon, Hesperides, Buccaneer, Folkard, True Golden, Kelmscott, Ardenwood and Hendrix. They specialize in thematic packages of historic fonts based on specific artistic periods or design movements packaged together with licensed borders and art in the same style.
In 2003 their fonts and clip art were used as part of a radical redesign of Whole Earth magazine under the guest editorship of Viridian guru Bruce Sterling. In 2005 they raised money for disaster relief after hurricane Katrina by donating the proceeds of the sales of three New Orleans themed fonts (Guede, Ironworks and Veve) to three different Louisiana charities. Recently their fonts have been prominently featured in the Spiderwick books and film.
(Temporary version lifted straight from our Wikipedia entry)
January 29, 2008 | Filed Under
comments
One Response to “About”
Leave a Reply
More Pulp Art at Pulpcovers.com...
Last year we featured an overview article on pulp novel cover design, and since then we've continued to look for other resources on mass market book and magazine cover design from the 30s, 40s and 50s. In a recent search I stumbled on pulpc[more]
Special Font: Demosthenes...
Back in the 1970s my IBM Selectric Typewriter had a great font specifically designed for high readability when typing scripts and speeches called Orator. It has gone the way of most typewriter fonts, but we recently had a client who wanted [more]
Join Us on Facebook - Get a Grea...
A few months ago we launched a push to get as many followers on Facebook and Twitter as we could. It was pretty successful and we increased our social media reach substantially, but we can't stop there. It's an ongoing effort because social[more]
Katherine Cameron King Arthur's ...
We've released several mini-packages of art by early 20th century illustrator Katherine Cameron, including her illustrated Ballads and Tanglewood Tales. Cameron is not terribly well known, but her illustrations have a romantic quality whic[more]
May Day Sale...
May Day comes but once a year to fill our hearts with joy and cheer... In honor of May Day and the coming of summer, through the end of May 1st you can get 25% off of any order with NO minimum by using the coupon code MAYDAY on checkout.[more]
Carmilla Font at Central Market...
I stopped off for lunch at the cafe in our local Central Market (upscale grocery store owned by HEB) and was surprised to find that among the posters on their walls promoting various events at the store there was a poster for a "Day of the [more]
New Font: Cantoria Initials...
After quite a few new fonts in a row with a modern look and two based on constructivist designs by Alexander Rodchenko, it seemed like it was about time to do something more antique and historic in character.This set of initials and[more]
Walter Crane Christmas Bonus...
As a special treat for customers working on holiday card designs, we're making available a special mini-package of Christmas-themed images designed by Walter Crane at a tiny, almost minuscule price. The images are based on Walter Crane's[more]
Byam Shaw Illustrations for Lege...
Byam Shaw was one of the outstanding artist illustrators of the Victorian period in England. Stylistically he inherited many of the characteristics of the Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts artists of the earlier 19th century, putting him [more]
Dora Curtis Arthurian Art...
With the release of our Arthurian Fonts and Art Collection finally looming at the end of this year, we've been putting out some mini-packages of Arthurian art by artists like Herbert Cole and Katherine Cameron. This mini-p[more]
Walter Crane's The Baby's Bouque...
We've done a lot of work with books designed and illustrated by Walter Crane. Two of the first we did were The Baby's Own Aesop and The Baby's Opera. Those two are part of a trilogy of small-format children's books which Crane designed [more]
Carmilla on Pop-Up Books...
Traditionally certain of our fonts have gotten a lot more public exposure than others have. There was a time a few months ago when I thought I'd go nuts if I saw another book or game with Windlass on the cover. But the pattern is cyclic a[more]
W. Heath Robinson Chaucer Illos...
W. Heath Robinson was one of the most popular and successful illustrators of the late 19th and early 20th century, known for his ability to draw and paint in distinctly different styles and for his unique drawings of complex fantastical mac[more]
Special Font: Art Deco Borders...
We released the Art Deco Borders font as a special Font Club bonus font in 2009 and then somehow forgot to ever release it for purchase as a single font to the general market. A terrible oversight because it's such an excellent font w[more]
Captain Kidd Font in Disney "Vil...
For a couple of years Disney has been doing special promotions of merchandise featuring the villains from their most famous animated films, targeting their marketing towards an older audience which remembers the villains from childhood and [more]
Wayland, Wayland, Shoe Me My Mar...
Some while ago we added to our library an early 20th century book called Singing Games for Children which contains a dozen sets of detailed instructions for classic singing and dancing games for children - not the ones we're familiar with t[more]
April Fools Highlights...
Every year we try to amuse with some sort of April Fools prank. This year visitors to the site were first greeted by what looked like a hacker takeover, a modest joke, but we've done some even bigger and sillier things in previous years. H[more]
Children of the Damned...
With Halloween looming, thoughts naturally turn to issues of horror and to classic horror films, particularly the creative title design and unique lettering which some of these classics feature in their titles, but even more especially in t[more]
The Fonts of 2012...
In 2012 we released 18 new fonts. 14 of these were released as new, "featured" fonts and 4 were special releases as part of packages or promotions. The featured fonts also went out to our Font Club, while s[more]
Goodfellow Font in Django Unchai...
I notice from our keyword tracking that we are getting a lot of hits from people looking for fonts from the movie Django Unchained. Not surprising give the striking retro-graphics which are common in Tarantino films. I suspect that most o[more]
E. J. Detmold Arabian Nights Ill...
E. J. Detmold was an early 20th century illustrator most known for his nature illustrations, particularly of insects, in books like Fabre's Book of Insects and The Life of the Bee. He also illustrated some fairy tale books, the most notabl[more]
Recreating the Django Font...
Since there seemed to be some real interest in seeing a fully developed font similar to the one used for the titles for the new Tarantino movie Django Unchained, I decided to take it on as a project. This kind of project always involves a l[more]
American Beauties by Harrison Fi...
This is something very different from our usual offerings, but it caught my eye at a rare book store and I just couldn't resist it. American Beauties was published in 1909 and takes its theme from the popular show rose of the same name. I[more]
Recent Comments
- Script Fonts Package
- Jurata noclegi: Ciekawy blog! Trudno w tych czasach trafić na taką stronę w internecie. Pozdrawiam.
- tanie noclegi w Juracie: Ciekawa strona, interesujący wygląd i wciągające wpisy. Pozdrawiam.
- www.obiektyspawkarpaczu.pl: I truly wanted to write a quick message to appreciate you for all the unique guidelines you are giving out at this site. My…
- Futuristic Fonts - Updated and Expanded
- Cicely Mary Barker Fairies Mini-Package
- Nancy West Johnson: What are the names of the fairies included?
- A Special Offer on Our Font Club
- Script Fonts Package
Java Rotator


Hi,
Is it possible to purchase the William Morris fabric designs and patterns without the William Morris Fonts?
Thank you,
Jan Davis