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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Rating 3.00 out of 5

January 28, 2012 | Filed Under Calligraphy Fonts, Featured, Fonts, Gallery, Historic | Leave a Comment 

Historic Borders Collection

One of the latest additions to our phenomenal collection of images is a set of historic borders from the 15th through 19th centuries which exemplify the height of the art of decoration in printed books as it developed over that period.  These are all borders which were cut in wood or metal to be set with type and they demonstrate the complexity and diversity of designs during this period in which printing matured and became more sophisticated.

All of the borders and decorative emblems in this special collection were taken from printed books and they have been cleaned up and adapted for use in digital design.  They include designs from England and from continental Europe and from well known designers including Erhard Ratdolt, Will Ransom, Walter Teague, Walter Crane and William Morris.  If you need borders with historical character you need look no further.

The entire collection is just $49 and can be ordered from our ONLINE STORE and downloaded immediately.  You can click on any of the thumbnails below to see the corresponding border in larger size.  The borders in the collection are considerably larger and all in very high resolution, suitable for high quality printing.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

January 8, 2012 | Filed Under Art Collections, Collections, Historic | 1 Comment 

Gutenberg as Done by Histeria

A few years ago Stephen Spielberg briefly produced a very funny and often surprisingly educational cartooon called Histeria. It was a spinoff of Animaniacs and applied the same sort of farcical humor to various events of history. In this clip Histeria looks at Johannes Gutenberg and the development of movable type printing.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

November 13, 2011 | Filed Under Historic | Leave a Comment 

Renaissance Fonts and Art Collection

 

Click any font to see a larger sample.

The Renaissance saw the movement of literature into vernacular languages, the beginnings of printing and mass book production and the popularization of fiction and writing of all sorts aimed at a wider, commercial audience. In accord with the humanist philosophy of the Renaissance there was a demand for more practical, accessible forms of lettering and a trend away from the artificiality of gothic and medieval styles. As with so many things, Renaissance scribes and artists found inspiration by throwing out the past millenium of history and going farther back, looking to the lettering styles of Rome for inspiration.

Rediscovered Roman lettering styles were adapted to fit the practical needs of Italian businessmen and record keepers and ultimately improved on to meet the sophisticated needs of Renaissance writers like Dante, Machiavelli and Boccacio. This produced the lettering styles which we traditionally associate with the Renaissance. They needed writing which was easy to reproduce in larger volume than ever before, but readable to a broad audience. Letter forms had to be attractive, but simpler and less exacting, requiring fewer strokes, permitting a flowing hand, and abandonning elaborate decoration and dramatic variations in weight and thickness. The lettering styles of the Renaissance had a huge influence on early type designers and established design principles and basic letter forms which live on in modern type designs.

Our Renaissance font collection includes 10 unique fonts based on designs from the Renaissance. These include three variations of humanistic cursive (Palmieri, Castiglione and Hanes), plus two more unusual examples of quirky italian cursives (Fiorenza and the new Alleghieri), a unique Roman style hand-lettered font (Rudolfo and Rudolfo Swash), a fully-developed example of Trajan-style Roman lettering, the basis for most formal Renaissance lettering (Hadrianus), plus a classic flouished cursive (Trinculo) and a set of floral intials from the Quattrocento (Fraticelli). There’s a little bit of everything from the period, from early period cursive like Palmieri to more practical late Renaissance lettering like Fiorenza.

The package also includes a selection of frames, borders, initials and emblems designed by Evelyn Paul based on Renaissance period book decorations. These include illuminations and decorations in both color and black and white, as well as a few selected full-page decorative plates. In combination with the varied selection of fonts they provide just what you need to give any document a full-fledged Renaissance look.

The Renaissance Fonts & Art package is a great deal with all of the fonts and art for only $79. It comes for either Windows or MacOS computers and includes both Postscript and TrueType fonts. You can order by phone at 1-800-797-8973 (01-512-276-7352), or to order online just CLICK HERE


To get an idea of what our Renaissance fonts are like, try out the demo version of our latest one, Alleghieri. It doesn’t have all of the punctuation and variant characters, but should give you a good feel for the font.

Alleghieri was developed from several different examples of late Renaissance lettering. While it is based on a style which is clearly intended for quick, easy writing, we’ve preserved many of the unusual character forms and elaborations to give it a lot of personality. The result is stylish and unique, with a real feel of the Renaissance, but great readability as well. The full version includes a large selection of variant character forms and special characters.

Click here to download the working trial version of Alleghieri for either WINDOWS or MacOS Or you can purchase this font online and get it quickly by email, including all the alternate and additional characters – BUY IT NOW

Rating 3.00 out of 5

October 23, 2011 | Filed Under Collections, Historic | Leave a Comment 

William Morris Font and Art Collection


William Morris was one of the founders of the Arts and Crafts Movement and closely involved with the Pre-Raphaelite artists of the mid-19th century. His ideal of integrating art, literature and graphic design inspired a generation of artists like Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Millais and Waterhouse. Morris was an artist, poet, writer and designer himself. He is probably best remembered for his fabric designs and his book designs for Kelmscott Press, especially their edition of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer known as the Kelmscott Chaucer, for which Morris designed all the fonts, borders and decorations and commissioned illustrations by pre-raphaelite master Edward Burne-Jones. He pioneered modern renderings of antique styles of type as well as the production of high-quality home furnishings, including the famous reclining Morris Chair. Morris left behind an enduring legacy of quality and creativity which will continue to inspire artists for years to come.

Our Morris collection includes an excellent selection of Morris’ fabric designs and patterns, plus a collection of original fonts based on his type designs for books published by the Kelmscott Press. We have recently augmented the collection with new fonts, new patterns and the addition of a large selection of decorative borders, emblems and initials.

Morris floral and leaf fabric patterns are excellent for use in web page design. They can be made into contiguous tiles for use as backgrounds on web pages. They also make excellent backdrops for decorative pages in print and great endpapers for books with a classic look. Each of the patterns in our Morris collection is a high-resolution image and suitable for use online or in print. Above you can see the original patterns from the collection. The new patterns added in the latest update are shown to the left.

The fonts featured in this collection are shown to the right. The first three are the original set, and the two in lighter green are our most recent additions. Morris Initials is based on initials done for the Kelmscott Chaucer. The second font is Kelmscott, based on Morris’ Troy type which was used to set many of his books. The third is True Golden, based on Morris’ Golden type which was also widely used in books from the Kelmscott Press. The first of the new fonts is Morris Black Letter, based on hand lettering Morris did as a prototype for what eventually developed into the Troy style. The second is Chaucerian Initials, based on the illuminated capitals in the Kelmscott edition of Chaucer’s works. The relationship between the text faces and the initials is clear to see, and they work very well in combination.

To the left you can see some samples of the newly added borders, frames and emblems from Morris’ edition of Chaucer. These include a wide variety of large and small floral borders as well as unusual initials which include complete words embedded in the decorations of the initial.

Like many of our collections, the Morris collection has now grown to the point where it is only available on CD. The complete collection is only $59. Our Morris collection is also available in a retail package ideal for sale in museums and bookstores. Send email for information on wholesale terms and availability. You can order the Morris collection for delivery online or by mail from our online store.

If you want to try out one of our Morris fonts, give Chaucerian Initials a try. The demo version is slightly different from the final version which is in the Morris package. You can download the True Type version which will work with Windows or MacOS right here.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

August 3, 2011 | Filed Under Art Collections, Font Collections, Historic | 1 Comment 

Arts & Crafts Collection

 

Click any font to see a larger sample.













 The new second edition of our Arts & Crafts font collection features 15 fonts based on designs from the Arts & Crafts movements of the late Victorian period. They are derived from designs from several branches of the movement, and demonstrate the unique aestheitc vision of great designers like William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Elbert Hubbard. The Arts & Crafts movement was enormously influential on the works of designers, artists and architects of the 20th century, and inspired the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements.

The package includes early Arts & Crafts fonts like William Morris’ Kelmscott and True Golden, fonts from the Glasgow branch of the movement like Chelsea Studio, based on Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s lettering, fonts from the Roycrofters of New York like Semiramis and Ganelon, and even fonts from the California Arts & Crafts period of the early 1900s like Coloma. The newest additions to the package include Palmyra, Hyacinth Initials, Spoonbill and Advertising Gothic. They are shown in red on the left.

Also included in this new edition of the package are a selection of floral frames, borders and decorations developed from Roycroft publications from the early 1900s. All the fonts are historically accurate and they are not available from any other source. The package is available for Windows or the MacOS, and includes both TrueType and Postscript fonts. The price is only $69 for all the fonts and the borders and decorations. You can order the Arts & Crafts font and art package directly for delivery on CD by phone from 1-512-656-8011, or you can purchase the package online – just – CLICK HERE TO ORDER with an immediate download.

If you want to try out a font from this collection, try out the Palmyra demo. Palmyra is reminiscent of the lettering style found in many books and pamphlets from the Roycrofters – the arts and crafts design community founded by Elbert Hubbard. It has a constructed look with rounded ends on the letters characteristic of pen-lettering. It has multiple versions of many of the letters to allow variations in your designs. Click here to download the demo of Palmyra for either WINDOWS or MacOS. You can purchase the full font ONLINE.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

July 25, 2011 | Filed Under Collections, Historic | 5 Comments 

Ancient and Arcane Fonts

 

 

While developing more traditional fonts based on historical material, we have occasionally hit upon historical oddities or lettering styles of exceptional antiquity which have interesting qualities and in which there is enough interest to justify the effort needed to make them into fonts.

As a result, our collection has come to include a substantial number of fonts based on the earliest ancient languages as well as fonts based on a variety of magical, fantastical and arcance lettering styles.

 


Languages like Ugaritic, Chaldean and Phoenician may have become extinct long ago, but they are still of interest to scholars and have a suprising attraction for many graphic designers who want to use lettering in a decorative way to create an arcane appearance without using any comprehensible modern language. Ancient scripts are perfect for this, because they give the appearance of genuine writing, while not being recognizable to the lay viewer. Our selection of ancient scripts is large and growing, focused on the more obscure lettering styles, though we also offer fonts for more familiar languages like Greek, Coptic and Cyrillic.

 

Down the centuries, mystics and kabbalists have sought to understand the universe by learning the secret scripts which would unlock the door to arcane knowledge. We have a number of fonts based on the languages of demons, angels and mad alchemists of one kind or another.

In addition, we have several fonts which
feature regular characters, plus arcane symbols as special characters, and art fonts with mystical images, including fonts like our Marseille Tarot font where ever letter is a card from the Major Arcana of a classic Tarot deck.

The worlds of the ancient past and magical aracana are not that far from the worlds of pure fantasy, which explains why we have such a large selection of completely fantastical fonts.

Most of these are drawn from the intricately developed background of the Ysgarth roleplaying game, which has gone farther than most games in exploring the details of fantasy world language and society. You can find out more about Ysgarth at the
Ysgarth website.

 


Regardless of the use you put them to, there is a special fascination to these strange and arcane fonts. We’re planning on developing more of them in the future, including heiroglyphic, demotic and other lost languages. Plus, if you like this sort of font, check out our calligraphy page, because at there is a point at which calligraphy crosses over a line into the bizarre and magical when the artistry of the lettering overwhelms the pure representational aspect of the characters.

 

These fonts are all available collected together in our Arcane Fonts package which you can ORDER ONLINE and download immediately for only $59. You may also be interested in our Russian and Cyrillic fonts collection. All of the fonts are also available individually. Just do a search for them by name.

 

To get an idea of what our arcane fonts are like, try out the shareware version of our new Malachim font. It’s based on an alphabet which purports to be a version of the script used by angels. It should give you a good idea of what our fonts can look like on your computer: Download Malachim

 

Rating 3.00 out of 5

July 16, 2011 | Filed Under Collections, Historic | 1 Comment 

Olive Allen’s Tanglewood Tales Illustrated

Our ongoing acquisition of cool little illustrated books has included a lot of small chapbooks of illustrated stories from various sources. We’ve featured some by Katherine Cameron and other artists of the early 20th century before as mini-packages or as inclusions in samplers. We’ve just processed and are making available a new set based on Olive Allen’s illustrations for an abridged edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales which features four of the most popular of the original stories, selected primarily for girls, including the stories of Europa, Persephone and Pandora.

The illustrations are done in a very attractive watercolor style with vivid colors and a soft, idealized look. The set includes seven original illustrations (two each from Pandora and Persephone) and a uniquely decorated front cover design with lettering in a style very similar to our Reynard font.

Olive Allen (Biller) was a little known, but very talented English/Canadian artist whose work has been archived in the special exhibits section at the rare books collection of the <a href=”http://www.library.ubc.ca/spcoll/displays/OliveAllenBiller/home.htm”>University of British Columbia</a> as the result of a family bequest.  These illustrations are from her early career before she transitioned from illustration to mainly doing traditional watercolor paintings.

The mini-collection includes high resolution versions of all of the illustrations, plus a PDF ebook of the illustration set. You can buy it and download it for the nominal price of just $5 from our ONLINE STORE

Rating 3.00 out of 5

June 8, 2011 | Filed Under Art Collections, Historic | Leave a Comment 

In Development: Owen Jones’ Spanish Ballads

We’ve done several previous packages based on designs by Victorian design historian Owen Jones. They include our fantastic Grammar of Ornament package and the new Gray’s Elegy.

Our next addition to our selection of Jones design packages is a mammoth undertaking of all of the decorations, initials, emblems and borders in his early illustrated edition of J. G. Lockhart’s Ancient Spanish Ballads, a rare work which has an amazing selection of antique-style decorations with a Spanish or Moorish theme. Every section has its own unique border design and each chapter features unique decorative initials, section headers, fully illustrated pages and marginalia. It isn’t hand tinted or painted like some of Jones’ other books, but the sheer number of decorations is unbeatable.

Because of the characteristics of the printing and the higher acid content of the paper the images are requiring a lot of processing. Combine that with the large number of images and the preparation of the package is taking longer than is typical. We expect it to be ready sometime later in the summer, once we’ve had a chance to process and clean up all of the images. For now, here are a few samples to give you an idea of the content. You can click on any of them to see it in a somewhat larger size.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

May 31, 2011 | Filed Under Art Collections, Historic, Owen Jones | Leave a Comment 

Austin de Croze’s Calendrier Magique

In stumbling around art resources on the internet I sometimes run into amazing resources and collections of art which I never expected to see online or anywhere else for that matter. But there are some conscientious archivists and academics out there who react properly when they see something rare and strange. Too many of their colleagues react defensively and want to hoard their treasures, but some few noble souls realize that unique works need to be shared and that the internet is a fantastic way to do it.

One example of this is Cornell University’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections and their charming online museum of The Fantastic in Art and Fiction, an online collection of historical images on themes of the fantastic and magical, taken from printed works of the 18th and 19th century. There are lots of great images included from various rare books on magic and mysticism. Some of the images are fairly familiar, but what really stands out in the collection is one of the few books they have preserved all the images from, Austin de Croze’s amazing Art Nouveau Calaedrier Magique. It’s a remarkable work of French art nouveau graphic arts design, reminiscent of the best of the Jugendstil movement of the same period. It’s a unique work which was produced in an edition of only 777 copies in 1895 making it rare enough that you’ll likely never see a copy in person much less have a chance to buy and own one. So it’s great that Cornell has preserved the whole thing.

Obviously, it’s a calendar. Producing calendars was a common practice of the art book and magazine publishers of the art nouveau period. In fact, Munchner Jugend produced some very interesting calenders. But nothing I’ve seen is like this work. The integration of unique art, hand lettering, graphic decoration and fantastic themes is phenomenal. Each page is a revelation and at first look I found it hard to believe it was over 100 years old. Some of the designs are so clever and so modern looking that at first I thought it must be a hoax, but by all appearances it’s the real thing. Some of the images are disturbing, some are erotic and all of them are rich fodder for the imagination.

The only thing to do if you’re at all interested in art nouveau design or fantastic-themed art is to go look at it for yourself. You’ll enjoy the tour. Although I suspect the pages could be in better condition, my one real complaint it’s that the images aren’t in higher resolution. I’m guessing the original calendar was about 4 by 11, but wit the digital images at only 72dpi I found myself disappointed in the lack of zoomability. But the presentation is nice and you can get a great feel for this fascinating work. If you happen to see a copy in a rare book store, pick it up and send it to me. My birthday is just around the corner.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

May 9, 2011 | Filed Under Found Art, Historic | Leave a Comment 

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