Art fonts (sometimes called "dingbats") have their origins in early printers ornaments used to fill space on a printed page. Traditionally these ornaments took the form of floral or geometric designs, and were inserted when the page was set, just like type.

Modern art fonts are able to reproduce more complex images so they can also draw on the tradition of artists marginalia and other simple illustrations designed to accompany text. Marginalia perform a similar function to printers ornaments, but are usually more specialized and more characteristic of the work of a particular illustrator or the theme of the book in which they originate.

Traditionally most art fonts are fairly primitive, drawing on mostly functional themes, such as international sign symbols or recreating antique printers ornaments. But the medium of digital type is capable of much more, and we try to explore some of those possibilities with our art fonts. They go beyond the primitive concept of the "dingbat" and provide a more sophisticated range of small, versatile illustrations which will enhance documents very effectively.

In exploring the potential of art fonts we owe a great debt to Arthur Rackham and some of the other artists who liberally decorated their books with marginal figures and scenes which are visually striking, yet simple enough to work well as characters in a typeface. Rackham was involved in every aspect of the production of many of the books on which he worked, and his role went well beyond the normal scope of the illustrator. He did so much decorative work on his books that we have 6 different fonts based on his marginalia.

We also have many of historically based art fonts, drawn from ancient images and decorative arts, including Roman tiles, Native American pottery painting and medeival heraldry, plus a selection of humorous and whimsical silhouettes.

All of our art fonts are available in both True Type and Postscript format for Macintosh and PC computers. They can be purchased individually for prices ranging from $9 to $12, or in a special CD collection with more than 25 of our art fonts for $69.00.

Our single fonts and art font packages can be ordered online, by mail or by phone for delivery online or by mail. The special collection of all of the initials on CD can only be ordered online, by mail or by phone and is delivered by mail.

To order single art fonts online go to our ONLINE STORE

To order the art fonts CD online go to our ONLINE STORE

To order by phone call 1-800-797-8973.

We've got a free sample art font for you to try out. It features selected characters from some of our most popular art fonts and you can download it for free..

This font includes characters from Sigil (A-D), Decoration (E-H), Sangrael (I-K), Zapatec (L-N), Spirals (O-P), Florissant (Q-R), Mesoglyphs (S-T) Emblem (U-V), Hexstar (W-X) and Celtic Borders (Y-Z) - all upper case letter positions. Click here to download it for either WINDOWS or MacOS