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
Fonts in Arthur Christmas
Took the kiddies to see Arthur Christmas today. The film was pretty good as animated Christmas fare goes. Light and full of action with some very good animation from Aardman, which has branched out from their long history of doing excellent stop motion work into 3D digital animation.
But for me a surprise bonus at the end of the film was a brief epilogue telling about the future experiences of the main characters, done in the form of Christmas chards, all of them done with our fonts, including Ganelon, Rossetti, Gaiseric and of course St. Nicholas. It looks like they just grabbed our Holiday Fonts and Art package and put it straight to work.
St. Nicholas Font on The Daily Show
Our St. Nicholas font has become so closely associated with the Christmas holiday that it seems to be showing up everywhere with the season approaching. Last year it showed up on Saturday Night Live and last night it was used on a title card for a comedy piece on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with John Stewart, accompanied by a font which looks a lot like our Valentin font, but has some differences. Clearly there’s something about St. Nicholas which appeals to the graphic designers on comedy shows.
Rosemont Font in Upcoming Borrowers Movie
Hayao Miyazaki who brought us great animated fantasy films like Ponyo, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away the the head of Studio Ghibli in Japan and they are carrying on his tradition with films directly by his proteges. They have a deal with Disney to distribute their new films here in the United States and their latest new release is The Secret World of Arrietty, a new animated film of Mary Norton’s classic novel The Borrowers, which looks like a much more creative presentation of the novel than the live action film produced in 2003.
In the Japanese and British releases of the film they use different title fonts, but when I took the kids to the mew Muppet Movie on Thanksgiving I was pleased to discover that in the trailer for the United States release the font chosen for the main titles seems to be our Rosemont font, a good choice for a fantasy movie. The movie isn’t due out until February 17th. I hope that Rosemont will appear in the titles in the theatrical release, but regardless it’s nice to see it in use in the trailer.
Rosemont is available for purchase for just $18 in our ONLINE STORE.
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.
Valdemar Font on Harry Potter Wands
With the dramatic opening of the last film in the Harry Potter series opening this weekend it seemed appropriate to mention a little bit of the history of the relationship between the movies and Scriptorum Fonts. Way back when the first movie came out we were cotacted by the merchandising team and a deal was struck where a set of six of our fonts would be the official merchandising fonts for all consumer products associated with the films. The title would remain the standard hand-drawn logo derived from the book title, but the titles and captions on all packaging for action figures, toys, games and novelties would be done with our fonts, with a special emphasis on the Valdemar font.
A memo was circulated to all of the associated manufacturers and promoters about the special font set and the idea was that they would purchase those fonts and by using them they would produce a consistent look and feel for the packaging on all the merchandise associated with the movie. It was a great pan, but it was largely a failure. With no real effort at enforcement most of the vendors decided to replace most of the fonts with whatever they had already purchased which was similar and so instead of using Buccaneer for the text they used whatever text font they had around and instead of using Guilford for captions they just dragged out whatever brush script they had on hand. The one font they really couldn’t replace was Valdemar because its look is so peculiar and so unique that there’s really no other font which can come close to passing for it.
So the deal ended up being a lot less exciting than it appeared at the time, and though it was a good idea, execution kind of fell through and in the early years of the films the merchandised product came out with a very inconsistent and haphazard look to them, rushed into production without serious attention to details like using the right fonts. We were disappointed, but the whole thing had basically just dropped in our laps and there had never been any real guarantees, so we shrugged and moved on.
Now, as we’re reaching the end of the movies and really the height of Harry Potter frenzy among the fans, high-end merchandising items are being released and they are being produced with much more of an eye to quality packaging design, including the return of extensive use of the various versions of the Valdemar font for titles and headers on the packaging. I spotted one great example of this in my local Barnes and Noble last week when I found several items in a series of high end souvenir wands manufactured for fans of the movies.
This series of collectible items from the Noble Collection features the wands of all the major wizard characters in the movie with tips which light up in response to motion. They sell for $35 each. Interestingly, although Valdemar is used prominently on the box cover and the interior for the main titles on the package as you find it in the store, all of the advertising materials for this product line not only omit any of that text but also show different art on the boxes, so if you order one of these off of Amazon.com don’t expect it to look like what you saw on their site when it arrives.
Though I wish the merchandising guidelines on Harry Potter products had actually been followed more consistently and we’d seen a lot more of our fonts in use, these wands are a high-end product with very nice production values and an excellent showcase for Valdemar so I can’t complain too much.
Captain Kidd at the Book Fair
Last week was the Scholastic Book Fair at my youngest daughter’s school, and while browsing the book selections I was pleased to discover several of our fonts on the covers of several recently released childrens and young adult books whcih I hadn’t seen before.
Most notable among the featured fonts was our popular Captain Kidd font which was on the covers of There’s No Such Thing as Dragons by Philip Reeve, Shadow by Jenny Moss and most appropraitely on Pirates by Daniel Harrison. It was nice to see Captain Kidd in use on these sorts of books, especially a pirate book when it has been neglected in favor of our Windlass font for so many pirate-related projects. Now we just need to get them on board with some of our other piratical fonts like Queensland, Hesperides and Malagua.
The books look pretty interesting. Pirates is lavishly illustrated and is basically just straightforward history aimed at kids. There’s No Such Thing as Dragons is fairly formulaic juvenile fantasy, but it gets an extra point or two for also using Windlass for the interior titles. Shadow is a juvenile fantasy novel aimed more at girls, and uses Captain Kidd extensively in the interior as well as on the cover, with good results.
Flatstock 29: A Plethora of Posters in Austin
For the second year in a row I braved the crowds and the chaos which is the South by Southwest festival in Austin to check out the Flatstock poster show at the Austin Convention Center. It was a great experience last year, and I was not disappointed to find much more of the same this year. As a graphic designer with a particular interest in posters it’s right up my alley, and it falls on my birthday, so that makes it a special part of the birthday celebration.
I consider myself pretty lucky that Austin is one of the five cities hosting a yearly Flatstock show. I’m not quite so happy about the fact that it’s held during SXSW, which is becoming more and more of an inconvenience for anyone who wants to travel anywhere downtown in Austin while it is going on. SXSW gets larger every year and even on the last day the crowds were unbelievable. No parking, even at inflated rates, lines of hipsters a mile long to get in to see bands, and this year the convention center had new events jammed into every nook and cranny.
Despite what appeared to be a smaller exhibit hall there were actually more exhibitors at Flatstock than there were last year. Not a huge number more, but some new ones as well as many who were returning. The layout of booths was more economical and the booths were jammed closer together, but there was certainly a lot to look at. The downside was that the crowds were larger by an even greater proportion. There was less room to move around, fewer opportunities to talk to the artists and people were selling out of posters and running out of business cards. The upside was that with more of a crowd and more of an assurance of sales the prices for posters were considerably lower overall – a pleasant surprise at a time when the price of so many things seems to be going up.
There’s no way I can go over everything I saw at the show in detail. There were a lot of great designers there, including many who were not there last year and a few I covered in my previous article. I’ll skip those I hit last year and hit the highlights of what I saw this year, some of which was very good and some of which was somewhat mystifying. There were fewer of the stock efforts to reproduce the design styles of the sixties and the Art Nouveau era, which was probably a plus, but the level of creativity of those trying to define a more contemporary style was not always impressive. Too many designers seemed willing to substitute complexity for creativity or to neglect text and design and let illustration carry work which seemed incomplete. Flatstock should be about posters as coherent works of design, not about great illustrations with a few words in a boring font hidden in a corner.
Two other interesting trends also stood out. A lot more of the designers were local to the Austin area, though there were still some from places as far away as England and Germany. There were also more exhibitors whose main business was something other than posters, but who produce posters as part of that business, including record labels, illustrative artists, publishers and clothing companies. One example which combined both of these trends was Austin-based Rural Rooster which was selling posters, but also selling the graphic fashion t-shirts which are their main stock and trade.
Also notable this year was a strong presence for art and posters with a psychedelic theme. The art prints and poster designs of Charlie Hardwick certainly fell into that category with their day-glo colors and floral motifs. Pop-art psychedelia with a somewhat sterilized commercial look. Like posters you’d have found at Sears a few years after psychedelia went mainstream. More visceral were a few posters which strayed into the domain of early 1970s blacklight poster design style, a style which seems dated, but was a nice change from the usual attempts to copy the classic Fillmore and Armadillo show posters. The example to the right really stood out. I haven’t been able to figure out who the artist was from the zillion business cards I collected, but I like the effect and it uses my Butterfield font, so it deserves a mention.
I also have to throw a nod to Vrooooom Press, a letterpress printing company showing off some creative applications of a venerable printing technology. You know I love letterpress and last year there was very little of it to be seen at Flatstock, so their work was nice to see. Unfortunately their website doesn’t show much of their poster work, but they had some great examples on display at the show. Also showing some good retro letterpress style work at Flatstock was Spoke Art. They represent a number of artists whose work ranges from the traditional 60s style show posters to letterpress to much more modern designs. I particularly liked their pieces by Chuck Sperry and Emory Douglas. Unlike most of the posters at the show, theirs were quite expensive, so I didn’t end up taking any home.
I overlooked him last time, so I have to mention the comic-book inspired art of Flynn Prejean of Bad Moon Studios. He’s known most for his posters for The Misfits, but he does a great job combining vivid art with creative use of type and lettering. He uses a lot of my font designs (Semiramis, Ligeia, Ironwork, Spoonbill) or variations derived from them, which predisposes me to like his work, but what really impresses me is his composition and the way he brings art and type together to produce an integrated whole without being too derivative of traditional styles, though obviously drawing on 70s era horror comics for inspiration. He’s also one of the few artists who is clearly working in a digital format to recreate a slicker version of a classic look, which I find appealing.
I can’t wrap up without a couple of more vague mentions. One goes to an artist who had run out of cards and who I can only identify as SBPW. His stripped down style for posters for shows at the Beachland Ballroom in Ohio was really eye catching, and I liked the fact that he kept things simple and clean and had the audacity to silkscreen his posters on unusual paper stock, including butcher paper and construction paper. I actually paid (not very much) to pick up a couple of his posters, and if I had any idea how to track him down I might buy more. I don’t know who he is, but I like what he does.
And finally a nod to Clint Wilson, another Austin local who had the kindness to pose for a photo with his poster for a Ministry show which features my Captain Kidd font, and who also does some very nice poster work, including a set of super cute dinosaur cards for kids. A lot of his work has a cool, distressed-punk look and a childlike quality which I find engaging.
I’ve just touched on a handful of the many great artists and designers who were at Flatstock 29 in Austin this year. But viewing the show in snippets like this is kind of like the experience of actually attending, where the crowds were too large and posters were selling out and it was hard to get to what you wanted to see. To really get an idea of the diversity Flatstock has to offer, find the show which is nearest where you live and take a few hours to walk through the hall and really experience it.
Bridgeport in Bridgeport
It’s so appropriate that we had to make a note of it. At the Harborview Market in Bridgeport, Connecticut, owner Rick Torres has prominently featured our Bridgeport font in his signage for the popular local coffee shop. We stumbled on the image of the sign when Torres ran for Congress last year. He didn’t win, but he’s a big star with us for making sure that Bridgeport has a presence in the town from which it takes its name.
Cochin Archaic in True Grit
After enjoying a couple of hours watching the recent remake of the classic western True Grit, I was pleasantly surprised to see what was unmistakably our Cochin Archaic font appear in the ending titles accompanied by a couple of other fonts which may have been ours as well, but were more difficult to identify. Cochin Archaic was unmistakable because it has some unusual character forms drawn from alternate characters in Nicholas Cochin’s original drawings for his text font which don’t appear in any other version of his fonts. Look at the Cochin text font on your computer (it now ships with most MacBooks) and compare it to our font and you’ll see how radical the differences are. We’ve kept the original look without homogenizing it for a modern audience – the overall effect is much more calligraphic.
Cochin Archaic is the main font used for the names of the actors and major crew members in the end credits, accompanied by a font which is very close to our Interlude font, used as initials. The job titles of the various people is done in a heavier weight text font in all caps which I can’t identify right off. Cochin Archaic is the main star, and it’s a great choice since it’s a typeface which would have been available at the time depicted in the film, as the first fonts based on Cochin’s design were made about 100 years before the time of the film.
Don’t just go see the film to see the font, but do go see the film. It’s full of excellent performances. Jeff Bridges finally manages to shed “The Dude” character from The Big Lebowski which has kind of intruded on his performances in his last few films, but the best performance is Hallee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross, the young girl whose desire for vengeance drives the action of the film.
St. Nicholas Font on SNL
Sometimes our fonts show up in pretty cool locations. Last night, as a child of the 70s who has watched Saturday Night Live for about 35 years, I was excited to see the St. Nicholas font show up as the title font on a spoof commercial for the latest in a series of parodies of overhyped mass events where the featured performers and activities being promoted take a turn for the bizarre. In this case the commercial was for a hip-hop Christmas themed event called the “Crunkmas Karnival.” After seeing the commercial I’m positive I don’t want to attend the event, but maybe some folks will see it and be inspired to go looking for St. Nicholas
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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.
