Scriptorium – New font!

My third medieval script/blackletter inspired font, and this time we’re tackling a different country and different era. Scriptorium is based on uncial and half-uncial scripts, in particular the style of uncial/insular script used in Ireland around 400 AD-700 AD. Most people will probably recognize this style of script from famous Irish illuminated manuscript, the Book of Kells.

Like Owre Kynge, I tried to stay very authentic to my source material/inspiration, which was a fun challenge, considering how very round uncial letterforms are (and how very not-round pixels are).

Scriptorium was predominantly based on samples from the Lindisfarne Gospels:

Specifically, the uppercase letters are based on uncial, which was a majuscule or “all caps” script with all letters the same height (or very close to it). The lowercase is based on half-uncial, the “newer” style (8th century instead of 4th century) that introduced characters that both ascended and descended, making it easier to differentiate characters.

Historically speaking these two styles of uncial wouldn’t have really been used at the same time, but rather than two authentic all-caps and all-lowercase fonts, a single mixed-case font made more sense!

I’m very interested in creating more medieval-inspired fonts. I actually worked on two other attempts between the creation of Scriptorium and Owre Kynge that I abandoned because I wasn’t satisfied with how they were turning out–maybe I’ll revisit them sometime and see if I can salvage something nice.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.