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.
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 18[...]
Classic Font: Ulalume...
Ulalume was one of our earliest text fonts. It was originally designed in 1993 and then substantially modified in 1996, but since that time it was kind of allowed to languish in our back catalog with little attention, which was a sha[...]
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 u[...]
Classic Font: Gjallarhorn...
Gjallarhorn is based on uncial-style lettering by artist Willy Pogany from his titles for Padraig Colum's classic collection of Scandinavian myths, The Children of Odin. It is reminiscent of runic lettering carved in wood and is evocative o[...]
Featured Font: Bridgeport...
Bridgeport was first released in 2003 and is one of several fonts based on lettering by legendary artist and calligrapher Eric Sloane, including Queensland and Guilford. Bridgeport has the look of hand lettered capitals, with strong [...]
St. Patrick's Day Bonus Font: Co...
Some years ago, while traveling in Cornwall I saw some unique hand lettering on a signboard outside of a pub and later I reconstructed the fanciful Celtic lettering style from memory to produce what became the Coverack font. Coverack[...]
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 bas[...]
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 neede[...]
Featured Font: Malagua...
BUY NOW TRY DEMO Malagua was originally released in 1999 and has been revised several times since then, culminating in this new release with improved weighting and additional special characters. MAlagua is based on [...]
New Font: Escargot...
BUY NOW TRY DEMO Custom Preview Escargot is based on lettering from the cover of an early pulp novel I came across a couple of months ago. It's a strong example of a distinctive style of sign and poster lettering fro[...]
Featured Font: Mephisto...
Mephisto is one of our more popular classic fonts. It was designed in the mid-90s and has gone through a couple of updates, but it was past due for being revisited and thoroughly revised. This new version includes more unique arcane[...]
Special Font: Guilford Crude...
When we were developing the Guilford font there was a whole set of early versions of the characters which ended up being discarded as the font was developed towards a more regular and consistent design. These older and quirkier varian[...]
Featured Font: Vergennes...
Vergennes was originally released in 2001 and is a stylish font which combines a simple lower case character set with highly decorative calligraphic initials. It is based on samples of lettering collected in Germany in the early 1900[...]
Classic Font: Swithin...
Swithin was designed to be our featured holiday font for 2003. It is based on samples of advertising lettering from posters produced during the 1920s. The whimsical nature of the characters and the decorative elements make it an exc[...]
Featured Font: Orphiel...
BUY NOW TRY DEMO Custom Preview Script fonts can be a real challenge to design, especially when they are designed to have interconnecting characters which require exacting kerning and character positioning. Whe[...]
Classic Font: Dromon...
Dromon has been one of our most popular and most successful display fonts. It's a modern, super-bold headline style with some clear ancestry in German gothic type design, but a unique and contemporary look. This new release of Dromo[...]
Featured Font: Melcheburn...
Melcheburn is a really handsome calligraphic font which we first released in 2000 and which has been revised twice since then. It has character forms which are more decorative than classic black letter fonts, with embellished capitals[...]
New Font: Bosphoros...
We don't normally like to follow the same theme too much with our new font releases, but because we wanted to put together a special package of fonts by J. M. Bergling we're following the release of Beaumains with Bosphoros, another f[...]
Featured Font: Rosalinde...
Rosalinde was first released in 1999 and it was one of our first attempts at an informal handwriting-style font. It is a bit more than just a regular handwriting font. It has some stylized characteristics and unusual character forms[...]
New Font: Beaumains...
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 [...]
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 desig[...]
Featured Font: Circuit...
Circuit was designed for a project back in the late 1990s and has languished in our back catalog since then because of its very specialized look, though it is featured in our Futuristic Fonts collection. We were reminded about it rec[...]
New Font: Death Ray...
When we did a font (and a feature article) recently based on a design by Alexander Rodchenko, the result was a very cool font, but while it was based on Rodchenko lettering, it is not the style most associated with his work. The ta[...]
Jugendstil Collection Updated


In the late 19th century there was an artistic Renaissance in southern Germany, led by the artists and designers of the Jugendstil movement in the area around Munich. While Jugendstil artists like Arnold Bocklin are often thrown in with the French Art Nouveau artists of the same period, their art was stylistically original and focused on Germanic themes and mythology. While it overlapped with the French Art Nouveau period, its emphasis on design beyond just graphic arts made it more akin to the Art Nouveau or Arts and Crafts period in England.

The driving force of the Jugendstil movement was the magazine Munchner Jugend which made extensive use of the illustrations and designs of German Art Nouveau artists, including black and white and tinted illustrations, hand lettering and even architectural and furniture design in many ways similar to the traditions of the Arts and Crafts movement. Among the notable figures involved with the magazine were architect and designer Peter Behrens who is often associated with the later Bauhaus movement, and the painters Otto Eckman, Gustav Klimt and Arnold Boecklin.

The style of art featured in the magazine was a radical departure from traditional German decorative arts and graphic design which had remained much stodgier and formulaic than had been common in France or England for several generations. But once freed of the constraints of tradition, the Jugendstil artists became particularly wild and creative in their style and the themes they addressed in their work.

One of the things which characterized Munchner Jugend was the extensive use of original hand lettering and unique type design in their covers, titles and advertising content. Each issue is full of good ideas for font designs, and though the issues are hard to come by, we’ve developed a number of Jugendstil fonts from designs in the magazine. These include the Jugend and Campobello sets of decorative initials as well as the Phaeton and Munich title fonts.

Munchner Jugend was also extensively and lavishly illustrated for the most part in black and white with some full-page two or three color prints as well. Artists includes some of those already mentioned, but art nouveau artists from all over Europe including a number of those associated with the English Art Nouveau movement and The Studio magazine. The magazine was famous for its decorative borders and humorous vignettes.

Our Jugendstil collection was recently updated, with the addition of both new fonts and art. The original package was released quite a while ago and since that time we have released other fonts based on Jugendstil designs, but the package was never updated with the new fonts. Now the package has been brought up to date with the addition of the Wolfram, Kunsthand and Zauberer fonts, which represent very different aspects of the design movement. Wolfram is a heavy-weight display font, Kunsthand is a classic example of artist’s lettering and Zauberer is an Art Nouveau twist on classic German gothic lettering. These are in addition to a great selection of art and decorative elements from the magazine, plus the four fonts which were originally in the package, Jugend, Munich, Phaeton and Campobello.


The Scriptorium’s Jugendstil Collection represents a range of material from Munchner Jugend including both unique original fonts and a nice selection of the best art from its heyday in the late 1890s. It is available from our ONLINE STORE for just $59.
January 16, 2009 | Filed Under Collections, Featured Fonts
comments
Leave a Reply
Labor Day Special - Owen Jones C...
In honor of Labor Day we're offering a special for all the hard working designers and art fans out there. We're offering a special bonus of $20 off of any purchase from our collection of Owen Jones packages. It can be applied to any one i[more]
Folkard Font featured in Bard's ...
Bard's Tale is a venerable computer game which has gone through many versions and updates. In its latest incarnation as a multiplayer roleplaying game App for tablets and smartphones it has gone through a look and feel upgrade, and part of [more]
Featured Font: Rudolfo...
Rudolfo brings some of the quirkiest character of the Renaissance to visual live and now it does it in an even more dramatic way with a new version that includes three complete separate variants of the font for maximum variety and imp[more]
Optical Illusion Skull Images...
Sometimes we stumble on strange backwaters of graphic arts history. One of those is the artistic tradition of creating images which appear normal, but also create a secondary image of a skull, an artistic optical illusion which was very po[more]
May Day Sale...
May Day comes but once a year to fill our hearts with joy and cheer... In honor of May Day and the coming of summer, through the end of May 1st you can get 25% off of any order with NO minimum by using the coupon code MAYDAY on checkout.[more]
Retro Design in Django Unchained...
We've started seeing previews for Quentin Tarrantino's new film Django Unchained in the theatres. The film looks like a high-octane take on the western genre done with a Tarrantino twist, and as has been the case with other recent films fro[more]
English Fairy Tale Illustrations...
In the late 19th and early 20th century there was a boom in the popularity of English folklore, particularly in the form of meticulously researched books collecting old stories and preserving them for a modern audience. This included stori[more]
Cicely Mary Barker Fairies Mini-...
Along with Arthur Rackham and Kate Greenaway, Cicely Mary Barker was one of the three great fairy illustrators of the early 20th century. Her Flower Fairies books were enormously popular and influential on illustrators of the period. willy [more]
Children of the Damned...
With Halloween looming, thoughts naturally turn to issues of horror and to classic horror films, particularly the creative title design and unique lettering which some of these classics feature in their titles, but even more especially in t[more]
Try Our New Font Preview Tool...
After a long search we've managed to find a new tool called Typeshow which will allow visitors to the site to create custom samples of any of our fonts. It is similar in design to the Texter tool which we experimented with in the past, but [more]
Join Us on Facebook - Get a Grea...
A few months ago we launched a push to get as many followers on Facebook and Twitter as we could. It was pretty successful and we increased our social media reach substantially, but we can't stop there. It's an ongoing effort because social[more]
Medieval Fonts and Art...
Click any font to see a larger sample. // he Middle Ages saw calligraphy and book decoration emerge as significant art forms. The[more]
Folkard Spotted in Bar Harbor...
I'm on vacation in Maine with the family and happened to be visiting Bar Harbor, Maine's legendary tourist town. Among the many chic restaurants, my eye was caught by the sign on a brand restaurant called the Lazy Lobster, a little bistro [more]
Who Killed Cock Robin?...
Silhouettes by Charles Folkard from Land of Nursery Rnyme Who killed Cock Robin? I, said the Sparrow, With my bow and arrow I killed Cock Robin. Chorus: All the birds in the air Fell a'sighing and a'sobbin[more]
Walter Crane Christmas Bonus...
As a special treat for customers working on holiday card designs, we're making available a special mini-package of Christmas-themed images designed by Walter Crane at a tiny, almost minuscule price. The images are based on Walter Crane's[more]
Making Maps with the MapMaker Pa...
This is a step by step guide to designing a small map using the elements and fonts of the MapMaker package. This tutorial was done using Adobe Photoshop, but the same tools and commands are available in every good graphics program, includin[more]
E. J. Detmold Arabian Nights Ill...
E. J. Detmold was an early 20th century illustrator most known for his nature illustrations, particularly of insects, in books like Fabre's Book of Insects and The Life of the Bee. He also illustrated some fairy tale books, the most notabl[more]
Katherine Cameron King Arthur's ...
We've released several mini-packages of art by early 20th century illustrator Katherine Cameron, including her illustrated Ballads and Tanglewood Tales. Cameron is not terribly well known, but her illustrations have a romantic quality whic[more]
Holiday Bonus: Present Labels...
As a special holiday gift to our customers we've put together a special selection of Christmas present labels using traditional art from our collection. There are 13 labels in PDF format, perfect for printing out and using to label your pre[more]
Byam Shaw Illustrations for Lege...
Byam Shaw was one of the outstanding artist illustrators of the Victorian period in England. Stylistically he inherited many of the characteristics of the Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts artists of the earlier 19th century, putting him [more]
Winning Votes with the Right Vis...
It's election season again and as some of you may remember, I'm a student of political signage. I wrote an article two years ago on political sign design which got a lot of attention and got me interviewed by the New York Times. One of m[more]
Recent Comments
- Script Fonts Package
- Jurata noclegi: Ciekawy blog! Trudno w tych czasach trafić na taką stronę w internecie. Pozdrawiam.
- tanie noclegi w Juracie: Ciekawa strona, interesujący wygląd i wciągające wpisy. Pozdrawiam.
- www.obiektyspawkarpaczu.pl: I truly wanted to write a quick message to appreciate you for all the unique guidelines you are giving out at this site. My…
- Futuristic Fonts - Updated and Expanded
- Cicely Mary Barker Fairies Mini-Package
- Nancy West Johnson: What are the names of the fairies included?
- A Special Offer on Our Font Club
- Script Fonts Package
Java Rotator

