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
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
Folkard: The World of Warcraft Font
For several years World of Warcraft has been the dominant multiplayer online computer game on the market. It is moving into a new era this week with the release of Wrath of the Lich King an expansion which opens up more realms and new opportunities to players, adding to the depth and variety of the world to keep players involved and enrich the playing experience for the large and still growing community of players.
One of the things which has made World of Warcraft so remarkably successful is the graphically rich environment and excellent artwork which bring the game world to life. This rich look and feel carries over to the software interface, the packaging and their online resources and website. One important element of that graphic presentation is their choice of fonts, and I’m very pleased to note that our popular Folkard. font is central to their designs. In fact, Folkard has become so closely identified with World of Warcraft that we are now actually getting customers coming to us looking for it specifically as “the World of Warcraft font” rather than by name.
If you visit the World of Warcraft website you’ll encounter Folkard almost immediately, in use for all of the decorative section headers and titles as shown in some of the screen samples accompanying this article. It’s also used for the names on the different character class emblems in the Talent Index, for sections in the FAQ and for sections in other areas of the website. When you launch the game you’ll also find it on launch screens and options screens and just about everywhere else. It’s inescapable.
Folkard is a great font choice for a fantasy game because it is the essence of classical fantasy. It is based on hand lettering done by Charles Folkard in the early 1900s for a collection of fairy stories from Scandinavia. It was developed into a font by Dave Nalle in 1993, some years before it was discovered and used in World of Warcraft. Charles Folkard is best known today for his classic illustrations for Pinnochio, but most of his work was in illustrating classic myths and legends from different cultures, with each book including unique hand lettering for the titles and picture captions. This particular style of lettering was also popular with other fantasy artists, but Folkard’s variation with the combination of celtic-style lowercase letters and swashed capital letters is particularly striking, which is why we made a font of it and why Blizzard chose it to use in World of Warcraft.
Folkard is available for purchase as a single font from our online store or you can get it as part of our Fantasy Fonts and Art package, which also includes other fonts and selected fantasy-theme art by Folkard and other artists.
The St. Nicholas Font Put to Good Use
Recently, one of our customers who goes by the nom de net of Ghostfire, contacted us about some minor improvements she had in mind for our St. Nicholas font. In the process, she brought to our attention an example of some work she had done with the font, and I thought that her work was worth sharing as a clever bit of art and an excellent use of this font, which is based on Victorian period lettering, in a very appropriate context.
It also doesn’t hurt to give St. Nicholas a little plug at this time of the year, as it’s an excellent font for Christmas card design and that season is now upon us. It’s also included in our Holiday Fonts and Art package.
Scurlock on the Game Shelf
Scurlock has always been one of our most popular fonts for designers working in the board and roleplaying game industries and it has recently shown up in a couple of new games in your local game specialty store.
A couple of years ago Scurlock was used for the box cover and interior titles of a lavishly produced Arthurian-themed game called Shadows Over Camelot, published by Days of Wonder, which has also made good use of our fonts in some of their other games like Pirates Cove. Apparently it was popular enough – despite rather static game play – that it deserved an expansion, and so it was recently joined by Shadows Over Camelot: Merlin’s Company which adds more players, more characters (including Merlin himself) and new dimensions to the play of the game. The expansion has the same graphically appealing look as the original game, with great art and high quality components and continues the use of Scurlock all over the place.
Scurlock has also shown up recently on a new game from leading German game publisher Kosmos. It’s used for the main titles and cover of Blue Moon City which is available here in the US from Fantasy Flight Games. Blue Moon City is designed by the legendary Reiner Knizia who created Amun Ra, Medici and Tigris and Euphrates. The game is set in a fantasy city where you are trying to rebuild and restore order after a chaotic period. The components and design are impressive and the overall look is rich, but the game play is dismayingly abstract and seems almost abstract, a problem with Knizia’s games which often seem more formulaic than creative. It does showcase Scurlock nicely, though.
Russian Folkard Sees Print
We originally designed the Russian and Eastern European versions of our Folkard font for a special project which I’m still not cleared to talk about, but we did get to release them some months ago for general sale, and much to my surprise I was in my local Russian deli, and there on one of their shelves of Russian knicknacks was a childrens book with the Cyrillic version of Folkard on the cover.
I couldn’t track down an English language version of Vasny so I have no idea what the book is about, but it does seem to feature a monkey, and that’s always a plus. Yet it’s a sure thing that if good taste in fonts reflects good taste in literature it must be one truly excellent read. Plus if it introduces international youth to some of our fonts, that has to be a good thing.
Valdemar Font Featured in Dragon Age
While browsing the shelves at my local bookstore I came across a series of novels based in the world of a game I had never heard of called Dragon Age. They caught my eye because the titles were done in our popular Valdemar font. On further investigation I discovered a lot more about the game and related products, all of which feature Valdemar as the logo font and for some of the titles.
Interestingly, their use of the Valdemar Font is somewhat creative. They used the basic character set and then took elements off of the alternate characters and applied them to different characters than they originated on to create their own alternate versions of the D and G characters. The look is still very much that of the standard Valdemar, but with a bit of a twist.
Percy Jackson: The Lighning ThiefFeaturing the Windlass Font
A few months ago we noted that our Windlass font was being used for the titles on the long-running series of Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan. Now the first movie based on the book series is premiering (February 12th) and the main title is very nicely done with Windlass and featuring some nice customization including a flaming trident in place of the Y. The title graphic appears in both of the currently available previews and I hope that it is also being used in the movie itself.
The movie itself looks like a lot of fun, with very impressive special effects and an excellent cast including Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Sean Bean and Kevin McKidd. The concept of the books is that the ancient Greeg gods were real and survive undercover in the modern world and that their modern offspring have inherited some of their powers. Jackson and his demigod friends have to fight various mythological foes to figure out who stole the power of Zeus’ lightning bolt. The books were written for teens, but the movie looks so good that it should appeal to a broader audience. The film is directed by Chris Columbus who has had hits and misses, but usually does a decent job with this sort of material as he did with the first two Harry Potter films.
So check out the film when it opens next month, and don’t forget to check out the recently updated and expanded Windlass font as well. It now has an expanded character set, more variant characters and a full lowercase character set.
On the Shelves: New Boardgames
First to catch my eye was the massive box of the fantasy boardgame Descent: Journeys in the Dark from Fantasy Flight Games. It’s another in the great tradition of quest-style games which combine elements of fantasy roleplaying with boards and cards and in this case some pretty fancy miniature figures. The production values are outstanding and part of that is their use of our Valdemar font. Interestingly, even though Valdemar comes with a wide variety of alternate characters, they stuck to the most basic letter forms, though it’s still a good choice for the main and interior titles. Descent has several supplements available, all of which also use Valdemar.
Windlass or Buccaneer fonts, passing over what is really our most piractical font, Captain Kidd. Days of Wonder’s game Pirate’s Cove breaks that trend by making excellent use of the Captain Kidd font. The game is relatively simple and suitable for younger players, but still involves some complex strategy. Days of Wonder also publishes Shadows Over Camelot which uses our fonts extensively, particularly Scurlock.
So head down to your local game store and check out these new games. If the game play lives up to the quality of the graphic design, you can’t go wrong.
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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.
