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.
Wayland, Wayland, Shoe Me My Mare!
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 today, but antique games with themes from myth and fairytales. Each game is nicely illustrated with a full-color plate and also marginalia showing the subject of the game.
Just to provide an example of the content of this fascinating book, we’ve taken one of the games and are providing it here as a free sample in PDF format. It’s called “Wayland, Wayland, Shoe Me My Mare!” It is based on a classic story from Celtic mythology and designed for boys and girls to sing in a round. At one time games like this were commonplace in schools and perhaps when we release this book as an ebook we can revive that charming tradition. For now you can get a nice sample by downloading this PDF: WAYLAND.
New Font: Original Django
| In an article last week we explored the origins of the font used in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and a bit of the history of the Django genre of films. That was part of the process of the development of an original font based on the lettering used in the original Django, a process similar to what was presumably used to create the font featured in the Tarantino film. The goal of the project was not to create a duplicate of the title font in the new film, but to make an original font working from the same source material. Naturally the end result is quite similar to the font in Django Unchained, but at the same time a unique and original interpretation of the title lettering in the older film.
Our Original Django font includes a full set of uppercase characters and custom small caps, plus numbers, punctuation and some special characters like the extra-long “J” used in the original titles. Like all our fonts it is available in both TrueType and OpenType format for Windows or MacOS. You can view a full character set of Original Django by using our new type preview tool to view custom samples of text in this font. Or alternatively you can download the demo version with a limited character set for free. And if you like it, you can download the full version with both character sets from our OMLINE STORE for just $24. |
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New Font – Eisenstein
| Film director Sergei Eisenstein was a major influence on the Constructivist movement through his collaboration with Alexander Rodchenko and by inspiring other artists of the era. Thus it seems appropriate that the final font in our Constructivist Font Collection should be named after Eisenstein, especially as the font partakes of the kind of lettering and design which he particularly favored.Eisenstein features an English-language character set based on Russian Constructivist lettering from a party propaganda poster of the late 1920s. The font includes customized capital letters and small-caps with compatible weighting, which is similar to the original lettering. A full Cyrillic character set is not available yet, but may be added in the future if there is interest.
While we would never support or endorse an inhumane political system like Communism, especially given our founder’s experience living in Russia during the soviet era, there is an undeniable power to the design ideas which came out of the early days of communism and we hope that people will take those strong ideas and put them to better uses and thereby redeem the work of artists like Rodchenko and Eisenstein. You can view a full character set of Eisenstein by using our new type preview tool to view custom samples of text in this font. Or alternatively you can download the demo version with a limited character set for free. And if you like it, you can download the full version with both character sets from our OMLINE STORE for just $24. |
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Featured Font: Locksley
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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 famous movie, our Locksley font which comes from the titles of the Adventures of Robin Hood the black and white classic starring Errol Flynn.
It has an authentic medieval look, though the combination of elements of gothic and black letter styles is not strictly historical and certainly not right for the period in which the movie is set. However it does work on a title card and looks pretty good in other applications as well.
This is a new and revised version of Locksley, with the weight and propostions of the characters significantly adjusted and a number of new characters added.
You can try the DEMO version of Locksley for free. The demo has a limited character set. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 and download it right away.
New Font – St. Ives
| In honor of Cyber Monday, which some people are now expanding to be a whole Cyber Week, we’re releasing St. Ives, a new modernistic font with unique riser and descender characters which give it an unusual linear look. It will be featured in a new edition of our Futuristic Fonts which will be released later in the week.St. Ives has uniformly square base characters with unique ascenders and descenders which rise far above and sink far below the baseline of the font. It’s visually arresting, but still quite readable, and the futuristic character is impossible to ignore.
You can view St. Ives by using our new type preview tool to view custom samples of text in this font. Or alternatively you can download the demo version with a limited character set for free. And if you like it, you can download the full version with lots of variant characters from our OMLINE STORE for just $24. |
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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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Featured Font: Chaillot
| Chaillot is based on 12th century gothic calligraphy which has some characteristics of early black letter calligraphy and stylistic holdovers from late Carolingian lettering. It is a very bold and distinctive calligraphic style with unusual decorations and flourishes. Chaillot is one of our oldest fonts and was originally released in 1994. This updated version has additional characters and replaces the smallcaps in the original design with a customized true lowercase character set in the style of the capital letters of the original font. The demo version includes only the original uppercase and smallcaps. The new lowercase is only available in this new edition of the font.You can try the DEMO version of Chaillot for free. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. | 
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Top Eleven Fonts of 2011
At the end of the year it’s always popular to try to track trends. So a bit of number crunching with our sales record yields some interesting data, starting with a look at what individual fonts sold particularly well during the past year. There’s some value to looking at what other font users have found appealing. You might find their choices instructive.
Traditionally we’d do this as a top ten list, but because it’s 2011, here are our eleven top selling fonts of the past year. They’re mostly reliable classics, but a few popular new fonts snuck onto the list as well.
#2: ALBEMARLE
#3: ALLEGHENY
#4: CAPTAIN KIDD
#5: GUILFORD
#6: BRANDYWINE
#7: ST. NICHOLAS
#8: SUSPICION
#9: MONCRIEF
#10: BERGLING
#11: CHANGELING
Each of the links takes you direct to the font’s store listing. If you place an order for any of these fonts before the end of the year you can get a 20% discount on your total order with the coupon code ELEVEN on checkout.
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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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 character spaces include a set of alternate versions of all the characters to make your designs look more handmade. It looks great in graphics with a bevel around it and a scratchy blockprint pattern imposed on it so it looks hand printed. The name, of course, comes from everyone’s favorite high-energy breakfast food.
You can try the DEMO version of Scrapple for free, but it only has one of the character sets. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. |
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