Featured Articles
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
A Special Offer on Our Font Club
As a special offer to round out the summer we’re offering a one-time discount on new and renewal memberships in our Font Club. The Font Club is a unique subscription service where you get the complete versions of each of our featured new font releases as they are released, including both the True Type and Postscript Versions for Windows and MacOS.
Since we release two new featured fonts each month, this means that a year’s membership will get you 26 fonts at a price less than a third of their normal individual cost. In addition, when you sign up you will receive a special bonus font exclusively available to Font Club members. Our bonus font for new members this season is the new Ribbon Banner font which is shown to the left. It’s a Font Club exclusive. Plus, if you sign up for two years you’ll get another bonus font halfway through your membership. With a one year membership that’s 27 fonts for less than $3 each. With a two year membership that’s 50 fonts for less than $2 each. It’s a very hard deal to beat, but we can beat it. Memberships are normally $79 for one year and $129 for two, but through September 2nd if you sign up or renew you can get $10 off your one-year membership (coupon code CLUBONE) or $20 off a 2 year membership (coupon code CLUBTWO. Just use the correct code on checkout.
Our monthly font releases include a wide variety of interesting fonts, including unique decorative titling fonts, hand-lettered fonts and elegant text fonts. If you join the font club now you’ll start out with two new fonts. Your bonus font will be our Holiday Borders font, and your first membership font will be Malvern. Soon thereafter you’ll also get our next new font. After that, every two weeks you will be surprised by a new font before we even release the demo version on our website. You’ll get lots of great fonts, plus there’s an intriguing element of mystery as you anticipate what strange font ideas we’ll come up with next.
To sign up, just go to: JOIN or try a TWO YEAR MEMBERSHIP.
Dark Shadows Project: Looking at Old English Fonts
In developing an updated font for Dark Shadows one interesting challenge is that there are only two upper case characters to use as a starting point. What is immediately apparent about them is that they fit into the category of “Old English” style fonts, a popular term for a particular style of black letter font developed for the publishing industry in the late 19th and early 20th century. In the days of metal type everyone had a black letter font and although no two were exactly the same, they all shared certain characteristics and were often remarkably similar.
While it was obviously quite difficult to identify the specific Old English font which was used for the D and the S in the original Dark Shadows titles (shown to the left), some research presented many similar fonts of the right period and general appearance, starting with our own classic font Collins Old English, which coincidentally shares the same name as the family the TV series was based around.
While Collins Old English was a good first point of reference, it differs in several particulars from the font in the original titles, particularly in having a somewhat lighter overall weight and having double spurs on the characters instead of single spurs. It also has an overall narrower look than the original titles and also flourishes on the ends of some of the swashes. Those flourishes are very typical of Old English fonts, and are an element which might be desirable to incorporate in a reimagined Dark Shadows font because they make the font look more gothic and more antique than the very plain style of the original titles.
The next step was to do some research and look at some Old English font alternatives in our extensive library of old books on type and lettering. In this my eye was drawn to two examples of metal type from the early 20th century (shown to the left of this paragraph and to the right of the next) and also to one example of a hand lettered Old English style by German-American sign painter and calligrapher Hermann Esser (the last sample).
Of these, Pendleton Old English (above and left) was probably closest stylistically to the original titles, but was much lighter in overall weight, sort of like Collins Old English, while Shaw Old English (right) and Esser Old English (below and left) were closest in weight, but not great matches in every particular of their style and features.
All three of the fonts featured some flourishes, but by this point I had determined that the best approach was to take the titles farther and make them more ornate and fanciful than the originals, so that wasn’t a problem. In overall shape, weight and features Shaw Old English seemed like the best choice for a starting point, with Esser Old English as a secondary point of reference.
One of the determining factors in this was that Shaw Old English included the same kind of ball-style caps on some of the flourishes as the original S, something which none of the other fonts had. Several questions remained, of course. Should the D have double spurs like Esser Old English or the single spurs of the original and of Shaw Old English. Should it retain the longer upper stroke of Shaw and Esser or a shorter top stroke like the original. And should the interior of the D have two vertical lines or just one like the original. In most of these decisions I leaned towards Shaw Old English, with some notable modifications. You can guess what they are until the next installment.
Scurlock Featured in New Cthulhu Movie
While looking for something good to watch on Netflix I stumbled on a movie recently released on DVD called The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu. I wasn’t expecting much from a low budget independent horror film, but watching turned out to be a series of pleasant surprises. The first and biggest surprise was that my font Scurlock was featured as the font for the main opening title sequence. They screwed around with the “A” in the word “Last” but aside from that it looked good in a rather well designed graphic title sequence. They stuck with the original version of the font with small caps instead of lowercase, but the movie may have been made before the newer version was released. It would have been nice to see Scurlock on the DVD cover as well, but we can’t have everything.
That aside, the film was much better than I expected. It was a combination of humor and a decent story drawing on Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Basically masks and cheap special effects, but the performances were a lot better than I would have expected, the plot was simple but made sense and the creature effects were inexpensive but not cheesy. Both the opening and closing title sequences were very well done and there was a clever animated sequence in the early part of the movie which used a comic book to lay out the backstory of Cthulhu effectively without having to resort to special effects which would have been impossible to do on a limited budget. So long as you’re not someone offended by the idea of mixing Lovecraft with humor, this is really one of the better Lovecraft-based films to come out in recent years. Well worth a watch.
And for the record this is the third H. P. Lovecraft based film to use one of our fonts for the on-screen titles.
The Dark Shadows Font Project Revisited
The Dark Shadows font project is back on track…
When I first heard that there was a new Dark Shadows movie in development I was pretty excited, especially since it was a Tim Burton project and he has used fonts I designed in some of his past films. I started tossing ideas around for a design for a special font for the movie – not at their request, but purely on spec. Then it looked like the movie was going to take forever to get into production, backed up behind other projects, so I set the project aside for a while. Well the latest on IMDB is that they’ve more or less finished casting and may start shooting soon, with an eye on a release date in May of next year.
That means the Dark Shadows font project is back on the front burner, at least for my amusement, though who knows where it might go. I’ve already done the initial research for the font, drawing on five years watching the show devoutly as a kid, and using video clips as a reference for the kinds of designs which were used for the titles of various incarnations of the show
The starting point for the project is the original title font from the first four years of the series which is visible in the first image to the right. The second image shows the title from the poster for the theatrical movie House of Dark Shadows. The third image shows the title from the 1991 primetime series which is an updated variant of the original title style. All of these title designs will to some degree inform the final design, especially the initial D and S characters from the original.
My first inclination is to follow the idea of the original titles where the initial letters are in a gothic style and the other letters are in more of a text style, possibly drawn from the style of the House of Dark Shadows movie titles. It also occurs to me that because a part of the story is set in the 1790s drawing on colonial typeface design makes a lot of sense, so it seems logical to move towards more of a woodcut look for both the initial capitals and the main text letters. I’m also thinking about borrowing some ideas from the original lettering in the titles of Burton’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow to give the font a rougher and more edgy look. And before you even ask, I do hate the titles from the last season of the original series and don’t plan to incorporate them in the design. The idea would be to pull all of these inspirations together into an original font which draws on the tradition while being original and new at the same time. It should be a font which people look at and immediately think of Dark Shadows but if anything even more of an embodiment of the gothic atmosphere of the series.
So now the project ought to move forward more quickly. Look for preliminary drawings of the font in the next installment.
The Hot Retro Design of the “Burly Q”
When I go browsing in our local vintage shops I always check out the racks of flyers and promotional cards for various local bands and businesses. Sometimes I find a graphic design treasure, and last weekend that treasure was a half-page, two-sided promo card for a movie called Behind the Burly Q which is coming out on DVD next spring.
The card, which I suspect is also the DVD cover, has the look of an aged poster from the period in the 40s and 50s when Burlesque was at its height, which makes sense as the film is a documentary history of Burlesque from its origins in Vaudeville to the reminiscences of surviving stars of the era. The design is pretty bold in its use of creative paper yellowing and texturing. It’s not perfect, but it does get the look of cheap high-acid paper which is a couple of decades old about right. The font choices are pretty good with a clear awareness of the kinds of fonts available for cheap letterpress printing 50 years or so ago.
What I think stands out most is the use of overlapping graphic elements, with photos and blocks of text arranged where they share space but still stand on their own and remain distinct enough to read or view, all in an overall design which doesn’t seem too crowded or unbalanced – especially on the front of the card, much less so on the back. Bringing all those elements together into a coherent whole and making them work together takes a special eye, and I’m a little envious of how well it’s done here, as it’s something I often have trouble with myself. I tend to be afraid to use odd angles and asymetrical placements, afraid that the final result won’t have the balance which it ought to. So I’m keeping the “Burly Q” card around for reference to remind me to be bold in my placements and not fall back on too many predictable positioning.
Constructing Art Deco Emblems
Pedro Lemos was one of the outstanding artists of the California Arts and Crafts movement of the early 20th century. He was known for his woodcuts and his graphic design work and for his books on teaching art, particularly his Applied Arts handbook which was published in 1926. It is one of the most useful works on basic techniques of graphic design and arts and crafts, made more interesting because of the contemporary perspective which it provides on the transitional period between the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods in art.
We’ve produced several other small PDF booklets based on Lemos design guides, including one on bookbinding and another on Color Harmony and they were quite popular. Now we’re adding another entry to that series with something a little more advanced. It’s a handy guide to the process of creating art deco floral motifs, essentially by deconstructing and reconstructing floral images, starting with something very realistic and ending up with a very idealized result.
Art Fonts
 Art fonts (sometimes called “dingbats”) have their origins in early printers ornaments or artistic marginalia used to fill space on a page and break up large blocks of type. Traditionally these ornaments took the form of floral or geometric designs, and were inserted when the page was set, just like letter type.
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Monks™ Available for Home or Office Installation
Through an arrangement with Abbot Gregor of the Monastery of St. Ioan in Suceava Rumania we are proud to finally be able to offer direct, personal Scriptorium services. For a small fee we can now replace your current laser or inkjet printer with a genuine Monk™ (similar to the one pictured below) fully trained in Greek, Latin and Hebrew transcription and multiple calligraphic styles.
Monks™ require minimal maintenance and are available in Ukrainian, Moldavian, Serbian and Coptic varieties. You also have your choice of beard styles, lengths and colors. Just provide your Monk™ with a bowl of gruel and a flask of water and make sure he has plenty of ink available and you’ll be able to produce many pages of attractive, scriptorium-quality output before he has to be replaced.
Unlike temperamental and noisy inkjet and laser printers, Monks™ have taken vows of humility, chastity, obedience and silence. They are used to physical mortification so they are durable and respond well to discipline. Monks™ are guaranteed to perform at an output level of 3 pages per hour in text mode or 1 page per hour in full-color illumination mode.
When your Monk™ is worn out, just place him in the handy plastic recycling bag and ship him back to the monastery to be recycled. A fresh monk will be sent back by return mail for a discounted replacement fee. Monks™ carry a full warranty, but the sanity clause in the warranty will be voided if you require copies of unholy texts such as the Necronomicon, De Vermis Mysteriis or the Pnakotic Manuscript.
Don’t be stuck in the Dark Ages! Order your Monk™ today.
Old Films on Printing
| There are all sorts of peculiar things on YouTube, and recently my daughter directed me to the first in what turned out to be a treasure-trove of old educational films about printing and related retro technology. The three short films which I picked out to share here are from the 1940s and early 1950s.
The first provides an informative overview of the process of printing books with details of the process of setting hot type with a linotype machine and making copper plates from the soft metal type, a technology which was still widely used when I was a kid and which has virtually vanished today. The second is a vocational education film on the printing business which shows the various jobs in a printing company and includes a good look at compositors setting cold type, as well as more hot type setting with both linotype and monotype machines. It also shows a variety of different types of presses and explains terminology fairly well. The third film is a typesetting training film with good step by step instructions for setting cold metal type by hand. It’s quite detailed and took me back to my days apprenticing in typesetting on an old letterpress set-up at Applewood Books when they were just starting out doing old school reprints of classic works. Modern typesetting and printing have become so sterile and high-tech that I think it’s rather instructive to look back at the techniques and technology of earlier eras. Pick up an old book printed with these methods and you’ll see how different the look and feel of it is from the modern equivalent. We can’t duplicate all of that unique character, but one of the things we try to do with many of our fonts is to preserve as much of that character as we can. |
Vocational Film on Printing Business Typesetting Training Film |
Try the Scriptorium Mobile App
It seems sort of counterintuitive to view fonts and graphics on a smartphone, but if we’re doing this site right, there’s a lot more to the content than just the fonts and images you download. It ought to be a good read and a useful reference source as well. Plus smartphone apps are all the rage and I like the idea of having one for reference for myself.
So, using the system available from WidgetBox, I created a simple App based on the primary content of this site, linked to the RSS feed so that it gets updated as the site changes, and exported it as an App. They provide convenient links to various methods to get it onto peoples phones, and it comes in both iPhone and Android versions. Developing the App required the creation of three simple custom images — an icon, an entry screen and a header — and the whole job took about an hour. Right now this is just a starting points. There are a lot of shortcomings to making an App this way. Links inside the articles don’t work right and not all graphics come through the way they should. But it’s a start and down the road we’ll work on replacing it with a more substantive and full-featured alternative.
If you want to try the App out, use the link below. I’m not convinced that the web based option works. The most effective way to get it is by SMS.
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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.
