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
New Font: Beaumains
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We’ve done a number of fonts based on lettering by vintage calligrapher and design historian J. M. Bergling, including several with an Art Nouveau flavor like Boetia and Belgravia. Our newest font is in that same tradition, but it is an unusual simplified alternative to traditional Art Nouveau lettering styles. It’s also set apart by having both a full upper and lowercase character set, while most Art Nouveau lettering only has an uppercase character set. The relative simplicity of the characters and the full set of characters makes it much more versatile and suitable for uses which more decorative fonts don’t adapt to well. It could even be used for text in select situations. The name of the font comes from Arthurian legend.
You can try the DEMO version of Beaumains for free by registering. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. |
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New Font: Rodrigo Initials
| Rodrigo is a new font based on a set of 16th century woodcut initials with floral, fruit and animal motifs for decoration. The designs are rather reminiscent of Italian silver work of that period, which brought to mind the lavish dinners held by the Borgias, and hence the name after the notorious Rodrigo Borgia who became Pope Alexander VI. The font includes a full set of uppercase characters, but because it is an initial font there are now lowercase characters or punctuation, but it should work well in combination with fonts from our Renaissance Collection. You can try the DEMO version of Rodrigo for free by registering. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $18 online and download it right away. |
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New Font: Suspicion
 I recently wrote a brief article on pulp novel book cover art and lettering as a source of inspiration. Inevitably this led me to actually work on developing some fonts based on the lettering styles featured on the covers of some of these genre classics from the 1950s and 1960s. The archive of covers I tracked down had lots of good source material, but I decided to make my first project the title lettering from a series of novels by John D. MacDonald published by Fawcett Books. They all featured titles in a fairly similar style, though with some subtle variations, and I decided to use as my primary sources the examples featured on three novels: The Girl the Gold Watch and Everything, Area of Suspicion and On the Run. |
PURCHASE
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One of the characteristics of the titles was that they used multiple variations of the same basic letter forms to create unusual variations in character placement and to allow nesting of certain characters in special relationships with other characters. Simulating this effect required the creation of three complete sets of characters, representing three possible positions and forms for each letter. A few letters even have a fourth variation. For the user this means that hitting the any letter key in combination with shift or option will produce different versions of the letter. As you can see by comparing the image of the original book cover to the sample graphic of the font, the end result is a pretty good match for the overall style, if not identical in every particular. The variations from the specific character forms on the cover of Area of Suspicion come because in some cases I opted to use better formed or more interesting versions of those characters from the cover lettering on one of the other novels in the series. The font ended up being named Suspicion and it captures the kind of paranoid out of control feel of the cover lettering pretty well.
You can try the DEMO version of Suspicion for free, but it includes only one version of each character. Or you can ORDER the full version online and download it right away.
New Font: Alcuin
| We’re working on a number of projects based on designs by legendary 19th century codicologist Owen Jones, who is most famous for his Grammar of Ornament. One of those projects is his book One Thousand and One Initial Letters from 1864. We have a lovely copy which was originally in the library of a Catholic monastery in England, which adds a touch of romance and history. The project involves preserving the color lettering and borders in high resolution digital format and also creating selected fonts based on those alphabets which have the necessary characteristics for adaptation as fonts.
The first of these is Alcuin, which is based on a set of 13th century illuminated initials. The letters in Alcuin are typical of early illuminated manuscripts with Irish-influenced uncial lettering, but with the addition of unusual abstract decorations which make each letter unique but are not overly complex, making them perfect for adaptation to font format. Alcuin includes a full upper case of decorated characters, a lower case of the plain characters and several extra variant versions of some of the characters. You can try the DEMO version of Alcuin for free, but it includes only one version of each character. Or you can ORDER the full version online and download it right away. |
 PURCHASE
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2010 Font and Art Sampler
At the end of every year we put together a special discounted package with samples of what we produced during that year, and now it’s time to release a sampler with some of our best items from 2010, including selected art and featured fonts. 2010 saw the release of some extraordinary fonts and art and this is a chance to try out a great selection of those releases at a unbeatably low price.
The art in this demo collection includes the full set of illustrations from Charles Folkard’s edition of Ring of the Nibelungs, all of the illustrations from Walter Crane’s The Hind in the Woods and our collection of Texas Sky backgrounds. It also includes selected images from some of our new art packages, including Walter Crane’s Queen Summer, our collection of Jugend Tarot card art and Eleanor Brickdale’s Carols.
The package also includes the full release versions of four of our popular fonts form 2010: Antrobus, Bergling, Vambrace and Vyones. In aaddition it includes demo versions of all 18 of the new fonts released in 2010.
Best of all, the whole package is only $9.95 and you can order it online and download it FROM OUR STORE.
New Font: Moncrief
In working on graphic design projects I’ve been repeatedly frustrated by the lack of interesting medium-weight script fonts which are simple enough to be readable, but not too plain to be interesting. So with the latest project which needed a font like that – a relatively simple t-shirt design – I decided it was time to fill that need once an for all. I started with some samples of early 20th century calligraphy by J. M. Bergling and developed a full character set and customized the weighting and some of the character forms to make it work as a font and the end result is really very satisfactory. The Moncrief font looks somewhat calligraphic, but it’s not too flourished and has a heavy enough weight to stand out among bold title fonts. There are some fun quirks like an extended “s” and a very neat swashed “Q” to give it unique character, but it’s as functional as it is stylish.
You can download and try the demo version of Moncrief, in TrueType format for Mac or PC. You can also order the full version of San Lorenzo online for immediate download: BUY IT NOW.
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 characteristic of colonial period Mexico. It is based on suggestions from budding design critic (and teenaged daughter of the designer) Caroline Nalle. It was also influenced by the desire to develop more fonts with a look characteristic of the Spanish Colonial era for a collection of fonts on that theme which is in development, a collection which will certainly include San Lorenzo.
The font features a full set of upper and lowercase characters, embellished with fanciful curled serifs and other decorative features which give it a truly striking antique appearance. It also includes a full set of characters for Spanish and other European languages. It’s the perfect font if you want to do a menu for a Mexican restaurant, but attractive enough to find many other uses as well. San Lorenzo is available in TrueType, OpenType and Postscript formats for Windows and MacOS.
You can download and try the demo version of Holly Initials, in TrueType format for Mac or PC. You can also order the full version of San Lorenzo online for immediate download: BUY IT NOW.
New Font: Holly Initials
It wouldn’t be the holidays without a special font designed to capture the mood of the season. As a source for something special I went to our library of rare books on type and calligraphy and found a rare book on calligraphy called Real PenWork published in the 1880s by Knowles and Maxim. We originally acquired it as a source for 19th century Spencerian script designs, but it also included some unique decorative lettering, including a set of hand-drawn initials perfect for the holidays with bold letters decorated with holly leaves and berries. That lettering became the basis of the new Holly Initials font which is ready just in time for Christmas. So now, if you want to deck the halls you can really do it in style with a great thematically appropriate font.
You can download and try the demo version of Holly Initials, in TrueType format for Mac or PC. You can also order the full version of Holly Initials online for immediate download: BUY IT NOW.
New Font: Vyones
On a recent journey to an obscure and near-forgotten French province, I found myself wandering in the storied Forest of Averoigne, just a few miles outside of walled and towered Vyones, near the banks of the sleepy River Isoile. In the dappled late-afternoon light lancing through the branches of ancient trees I spied a mouldering and mossy tomb of mortised caelian stone, carved with mysterious unclad figures of men and women and beasts and monstrous demi-humans cavorting in unnatural congress, performing unholy and unwholesome rituals, accompanied by this distrurbing inscription carved in a floriate style:
“O Vers! Noirs Compagnons
Sans Oreille et Sans Yeux,
Voyez Venir a Vous un
Mort Libre et Joyeux.”
Out came my sketchbook while light remained and I traced the worn, embellished letters. Months later, upon my return to more mundane realms I took out my sketches and set to work upon a font which preserved the character of the carven letters and their vine and flower decorations in an antique style suitable for printing morbid verses and whimsical epitaphs, and in memorial of that journey to that distant land I named the font Vyones.
Vyones includes a full upper and lower case character set plus many alternative character forms and international characters. The uppercase characters are all embellished with bits of vines and flowers and there are additional special characters on the various parentheses and brackets to add more extensive floral embellishements to words.
You can download and try a demo version of Vyones, in TrueType format for Mac or PC. You can also order the full version of Big Show online for immediate download: BUY IT NOW.
Fonts With Style
At the Scriptorium we’re celebrating our 20th year designing original fonts and unique revivals of antique typefaces with over 600 fonts in circulation and new releases appearing twice a month. For those who aren’t familiar with our products — which include not only fonts but also unique collections of vintage illustrations and graphic arts resources — this is a short overview of some of our interesting recent releases.
Two of our newest font releases are Vambrace and Letterpress Gothic.
Back in March we held a poll to see which of five fonts we should put at the top of our development list and we ended up with three close contenders. Coming in third in that race was the design which we used as the basis for our new Vambrace font. Vambrace is basically a display and titling font which features a heavy outline style design. It’s very regular, but the characters are in a style which you might create with a Speedball style pen with a rounded nib for a poster or display card. The look is unusual and appealing and works well as a font. You can download and try the demo version of Vambrace in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.
With all the coverage we did of the Hatch Show Print exhibit it seemed only appropriate to develop a font which embodied that design look. The result is our new Letterpress Gothic font which embodies one of the quirks of letterpress printing, the occasional combination of characters which are very similar, but don’t quite match. To do this we took characters from a number of different letterpress gothic style fonts, distressed them to give them the look of being printed from old blocks, and combined them together to form two complete alphabets, along with some special characters, particularly filled-in Em and En spaces for crude line balancing. The end result is surprisingly effectrive, with a lot of character and a good representation of the feel of primitive printed posters. It’s actually aimed somewhat below the sophistication of a lot of the fancy letterpress work Hatch produces, but it’s an excellent example of what you might have found on an early 20th century playbill or show poster from a smaller press. You can download and try the demo version of Letterpress Gothic in TrueType format for Mac or PC. It includes a mix of characters from the different variants of the font. You can also order the full version online for immediate download: BUY IT NOW.
One of our most popular new collections is our Steampunk font package. It’s a new set of 10 fonts, many of which are new or in no previous collection, plus more than 20 original high-resolution metallic textures. It’s everything you need to create unique graphics with a grungy, retrograde, victorian low-tech look characteristic of the Steampunk movement. The font set includes a combination of art, decorative initial and display fonts with an edgy art nouveau and victorian looks and specialized features. One of the key new fonts is the Gears font which is a brand new font created specially for this package which features more than 60 different gear silhouettes based on clockwork and old machinery ready to be combined with textures to create a great retro-mechanical look. Another new font is the Jules Verne title font, a heavy-weight title font which combines the look of wrought iron with elements of gears and clockwork. The package also includes our classic Goodfellow font is included because it fits so well and was featured on the cover of the James Blaylock’s recent steampunk short story collection The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives. If you want to download a sample font from the package, try our our Jules Verne font. In addition to the fonts the collection includes a great selection of new and original textures which include samples of pure and oxidized and extremely deteriorated metals, including silver, gold, copper, bronze and iron in various states and with different sorts of finishes. Combine them with the fonts as we’ve done in the title graphic here (which uses Verne and Gears) and you get an amazing look. If you want to try a sample texture, try downloading the Heavy Rust texture. For more information on this package just Click Here.
Also worth a mentionm among our recent releases is the unusual Posada font based on the lettering designs of José Guadalupe Posada, Posada is best known for his Calavera cartoons and illustrations which satirized his fellow Mexicans as skeletons in the tradition of Dia de los Muertos. Many of Posada’s cartoons were published as single-sheet handbills and included original hand-lettered captions and titles in a style reminiscent of period newspaper headlines. We’ve previously collected many of Posada’s Calavera lithographs in our Macabre Fonts and Art Collection and now we’re releasing our first font based on Posada’s lettering, somewhat unimaginatively tagged with his name. It’s a rough and bold all-caps character set with alternative caps on the lower case keys, with an offset positioning which Posada used in a number of his cartoons, as demonstrated in the sample to the right. You can try out the free demo version of Posada for either MacOS or Windows. It features just the characters of the standard set. The full combined version of Posada is available on our Ordering Site.
We also recently released a new edition of our very popular Valdemar font, which is a big hit at Halloween. Valdemar started as a set of embellished uppercase characters with bits of clockwork and odd design motifs worked into the character forms to give them a unique, archaic look. Eventually we developed two companion fonts, one a version with a lowercase character set and the other a set of alternative uppercase characters. The set also includes small-caps and foreign language characters. Valdemar has been very popular for book designs, movies and merchandising. It was selected as the official title font for merchandised products for the Harry Potter movies, but the similarity between the name Valdemar and the character Lord Voldemort is coincidental. The name Valdemar actually comes from a story by Edgar Allan Poe and the font was released before the movies came out. You can download and try the demo version of Valdemar. The full Valdemar family set is available from our ordering site.
There’s a lot more to see on the site. Try some of the links from the pull-down menu at the top of this page and you’ll be amazed at what you can discover.
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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.
