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.
Featured Font: Gloriana...
Gloriana was originally released in 1999 based on samples of hand lettering in an illustated childrens book from the early 1900s. It was one of several conceptually similar fonts we did during that period, including Gaiseric, Rosalin[...]
Classic Font: Engrossing...
Engrossing is one of our earliest fonts, originally released in the early 1990s. It is based on one of the very first examples of printed type in a script style. The historic source design was derived from common 17th century callig[...]
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[...]
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[...]
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 cha[...]
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[...]
Walter Crane Initials and Orname...
It has taken a lot of hours of development, but we finally have our promised Walter Crane Initials font. Or should I say FOUR fonts, because in the process of developing the font it turned out that we ended up with more [...]
Featured Font: Potsdam...
BUY NOW TRY DEMO Potsdam was one of our earliest font releases, first produced in 1992 based on samples of 19th century decorative German type. It was one of our first fonts designed for MacIntosh computer users and fol[...]
Featured Font: Schoolhand...
Schoolhand was originally commissioned by the Education Department at a major Christian university, which will remain nameless. It was developed to their specifications in order to teach cursive handwriting to children, sharing some charac[...]
New Font: Aerobrush...
I was playing around with some paint at our chicken coop and realized I had an opportunity to do some hands-on design work for a brush-style font, so I did a set of sample brush strokes on a piece of the recycled coroplast which cover[...]
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: Abdiel...
Abdiel originated in 2005 as a custom design for a company logo. All they wanted was a few of the letters done in a flourished Renaissance style, but we decided to expand the effort for our own purposes to create a complete font with[...]
New Font: Hadrianus Swash...
Hadrianus has been one of our most popular text fonts for a while and it was recently featured here on the site. There has been a lot of demand to expand the features available with Hadrianus beyond the usual bold and italic versions, so t[...]
New Font: Monstrous...
It's time for something new and strange, our new and original Monstrous font. Monstrous is a titling font which offers a striking look and special features which make it truly unique. The characters are stylized and super-bold, but[...]
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: 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: Leodegar...
Leodegar is based on samples of 7th century Frankish hand lettering. The characters draw on the minuscule calligraphic tradition, but are a bit more decorative and somewhat whimsical. They occupy an appealing position somewhere betwee[...]
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[...]
New Font: Romark...
It's the time of year when we do a lot of design for political posters and some of those projects need special fonts. On this kind of work we already get a lot of mileage out of fonts like Aventine and Atinson Egyptian, but we needed [...]
New Font: Big Show...
We've been working hard on developing a new package of fonts based on classic Letterpress designs and that package is almost complete. Rounding out the collection is our new Big Show font, which is a kind of a swanky 1960s take on the clas[...]
Featured Font: Froissart...
BUY NOW TRY DEMO Our Froissart font was first released in 2000 as part of our Medieval Fonts and Art package. It is an accurate recreation of the Littera Bastarda calligraphic style which was popular in the 14th and 15t[...]
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[...]
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 [...]
Renaissance Fonts and Art Collection

|
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 new and expanded edition of 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 1-512-656-8011, 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
October 23, 2011 | Filed Under Collections, Historic
comments
3 Responses to “Renaissance Fonts and Art Collection”
Leave a Reply
Viking Fonts and Art Collection...
For a PDF of art samples click HERE Click any font to see a larger sample. Vafthrudnir is a new, original font design which draws on the tradition of Germanic uncial and early gothic calligraphy. It is desi[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]
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]
Gothic Fonts Collection...
Our gothic font collection is a compilation of our most interesting 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 heigh[more]
Owen Jones "The Preacher" Packag...
One of Owen Jones most interesting illuminated books is his 1849 edition of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes published under the title The Preacher, consisting of 35 hand-colored, fully illuminated pages. It is on[more]
The Fonts of 2012...
In 2012 we released 18 new fonts. 14 of these were released as new, "featured" fonts and 4 were special releases as part of packages or promotions. The featured fonts also went out to our Font Club, while s[more]
2012 Font and Art Sampler...
At the end of every year we put together a special sampler package of releases from that year. This year our 2012 Font and Art Sampler has a large and outstanding collection selected from the many releases we've had during the year. It's th[more]
Featured Font: Bilitis...
BUY NOW TRY DEMO Custom Preview Bilitis is an original "brush script" style font we designed for a project back in 1998 and released then with some success. It has a strong visual appeal with rough hewn c[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]
In Development: Crane Initials F...
One of our upcoming fonts is the result of an interesting project, developing original initials based on designs by Walter Crane. We recently acquired an obscure edition of French tales of Reynard the Fox illustrated by Crane with a series [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]
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]
April Fools Highlights...
Every year we try to amuse with some sort of April Fools prank. This year visitors to the site were first greeted by what looked like a hacker takeover, a modest joke, but we've done some even bigger and sillier things in previous years. H[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]
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]
Carmilla on Pop-Up Books...
Traditionally certain of our fonts have gotten a lot more public exposure than others have. There was a time a few months ago when I thought I'd go nuts if I saw another book or game with Windlass on the cover. But the pattern is cyclic a[more]
Special Font: Demosthenes...
Back in the 1970s my IBM Selectric Typewriter had a great font specifically designed for high readability when typing scripts and speeches called Orator. It has gone the way of most typewriter fonts, but we recently had a client who wanted [more]
The Art of Eleanor Brickdale...
Eleanor Fortesque Brickdale was one of the great illustrators of the later Victorian era, even though she is not as well known as some of her male contemporaries. She was strongly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites like Waterhouse and Mi[more]
More Pulp Art at Pulpcovers.com...
Last year we featured an overview article on pulp novel cover design, and since then we've continued to look for other resources on mass market book and magazine cover design from the 30s, 40s and 50s. In a recent search I stumbled on pulpc[more]
Recent Comments
- Script Fonts Package
- weight loss supplements: Great post. I used to be checking continuously this blog and I'm impressed! Extremely useful information particularly the last part :) I take care…
- 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.
- 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













I think I’m in Love all over again!
Hello,
Do you have a collection of fonts that include Rudolpho Swash and other fonts that are like this?
If so, could you please send me this information?
Thank you!
Scott
Do you just specifically want fonts which are swashed? Most of them can be found in this package and the Colonial Fonts package.
Dave