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
New Font: Death Ray
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When we did a font (and a feature article) recently based on a design by Alexander Rodchenko, the result was a very cool font, but while it was based on Rodchenko lettering, it is not the style most associated with his work. The tall thin look of the Rodchenko font is less typical of his work than the heavier, bolder constructed characters which ultimately became the standard model on which much of later Soviet-era poster lettering was based.
Then, in a bit of synchronicity we were called on to design a graphic for “Stop Cyber Spying Week”, the week of online protests against the CISPA bill which was being considered by Congress. It’s a terrible piece of legislation which lets the government search your email and files without due process of law, so it seemed appropriate to base the design on the ominous look of Rodchenko’s “Death Ray” poster. Since the poster was originally in Russian and the redesign needed to be in English all the fonts had to be replaced, so for accuracy that meant making a new font for the main title to match the original lettering with a more complete English character set. From there it was logical to expand it to a full font. The resulting font has a classic Russian poster look but a complete set of characters in English, including both an outline style as is featured in the original poster and a solid version for other uses. It does not include a set of cyrillic characters, but does have some special and alternate characters and punctuation. It may make the font even more appealing to know that $5 out of every copy of Death Ray sold will go to help underwrite efforts to fight CISPA when it goes up for consideration in the Senate. So you can get a cool font and also help protect internet privacy. You can try the DEMO version of Death Ray for free. The demo has only one version of each character, in alternating positions so you can get a feel for how the font works. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. |
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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 design. His unique and dramatic style defined Russian popular art of the early Revolutionary period. There is a special link between Rodchenko’s photographic work and his graphic designs. In his photographs he emphasized strong contrasts of light and shadow and used unusual angles and geometric shapes, producing images which you can see directly reflected in his graphic designs. Rodchenko had a unique eye for shapes and wrote of his photographic vision, “One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again.”
After studying art in Moscow and producing a body of paintings in the constructivist style, Rodchenko became part of the Productivist movement, which advocated the incorporation of art into everyday life. He applied ideas from photography and constructivism to his graphic designs for posters, books, and films. Rodchenko also combined photography and graphic arts to produce photomontages , many of them as illustrations for works by poet and playwright Vladimir Myakovsky who he worked with closely in the 1920s. He also worked on the design of the magazine LEF and on journals promoting other artists of the Constructivist movement. His designs eliminated unnecessary detail, emphasized dynamic diagonal composition, and were concerned with the placement and movement of objects in space. His later career overlapped with the emergence of Soviet Realism and increased government regimentation of the artistic community and as his work became more abstract and expressionist he was ostracized from official artistic circles, left to work primarily as a manager and organizer of photography exhibitions for the government. Rodchenko has has a lasting influence in poster and book design. His style was widely imitated in the West in the 1930s and even today artists like Shepard Fairey produce designs which clearly derive from Rodchenko’s work. We have produced several Constructivist style fonts in the past, and our latest is the new Rodchenko font based on his lettering from an advertisement for the Gum department store. We’ve also collected together a selection of Rodchenko poster and book cover designs which are included with the font if you purchase it, or which you can view here with the gallery tool. You can try the DEMO version of Rodchenko for free. The demo has only one version of each character, in alternating positions so you can get a feel for how the font works. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24, with the Rodchenko image gallery included, and download it right away. |
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Walter Crane: The Baby’s Own Aesop
We’ve been collecting illustrated books by Arts and Crafts era designer Walter Crane for several years and we’re now reaching the point where we can start to release some of our Crane material in useful packages for contemporary designers who want to incorporate his unique aesthetic into their work.
Our first Crane release is a package based on The Baby’s Own Aesop, Crane’s hand lettered and fully illustrated edition of Aesop’s Fables originally published in 1887. Each page takes one tale from Aesop and presents it with illustrations, initials, borders, embellishments and decorative lettering. Our presentation of the book follows the model of our release of Howard Pyle’s Lady of Shalott. It includes a complete 60-page print-quality PDF facsimile of the book, plus high-resolution graphics of every page and illustration including the end-papers and covers. In addition there are emblems, borders, decorative elements and other resources which we have taken from the book and cleaned up and made ready to use for other purposes. All of this comes with a license allowing you to incorporate the material in your own designs and creations. The package is only $39 and you can order online and download the package immediately — but be warned, it’s a very large download.
We’re going to be following this package with other Crane packages, including a similar treatment of The Baby’s Bouquet and The Baby’s Opera which were companion pieces to The Baby’s Own Aesop. We also have a collection of fonts based on Crane lettering in development, like our recently released Crane Gothic font.
To see a sample of what is in this collection, try out the abbreviated PDF sampler which has lower resolution versions of selected images from the set. To purchase the whole package just order it online.
Folkard Appearing in The Woman in Black
My daughters persuaded me to join them for a trip to see Daniel Radcliffe in the new version of The Woman in Black and although I certainly enjoyed seeing a new film which was very much in the Hammer Films tradition, a pleasant bonus surprise was discovering that our Folkard font makes an uncredited appearance in the film.
The movie is a classic ghost story set in the early 20th century, with a complex plot and a substantial supernatural element, stylishly directed and well acted. One nice directorial touch is the use of a bit of foreshadowing, and one example of that comes in about the third scene in the film when Daniel Radcliffe is riding on a train to the coastal village where the main events of the story take place. He’s reading a newspaper and an advertisement for a spiritualist catches his eye, reading something like “Contact the Departed” (hard to get the exact wording and they don’t let me rewind movies in the theatre).
Of course, the font in the advertisement is Folkard, which presents an interesting anachronism, because the font did not exist at the time the movie is set and the original lettering it is based on would not even be executed by Charles Folkard until several years after the movie takes place. Perhaps the font was revealed to the advertiser by spirits who had seen the future.
Crane Screen Backdrops Package
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We’ve put together a special little package of backdrop screens for you to use on your computer based on designs by Walter Crane. They were customized for a MacBook with a 13.3 inch screen but will work great on just about any display. There are 10 images included, all from our recently released Walter Crane Decorations Mini-Package.
The images are great neoclassical scenes in the tradition of Greek painting depicting various mythological themes and stories, presented in ivory on a black background which ends up surprisingly easy on the eyes. Best of all the package of 10 backgrounds is a free item and you can download it by clicking right here.
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 much the kind of font which we might include in a new release of our Steampunk collection. It has some interesting features, including some alternative characters and a meticulously designed custom small-caps character set.
You can try the DEMO version of Langdon for free. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. |
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
