November 02, 2022
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Are you searching for the best font that will be a perfect fit for your tattoo design? In this post, we will take you through some fantastic premium options as well as some free tattoo fonts.
Tattoos convey messages with art and with words and having just the right font will make all the difference. If you are a graphic designer or tattoo artist looking for good quality tattoo-style fonts, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at our selection.Sponsored Message
Tattoo artists and designers are limited on time and need a quick resource to use for themselves and for clients. It’s always a time saver to be able to reference a quality list quickly and so, let’s get started.
UNLIMITED DOWNLOADS: 10+ Million Top Quality Fonts & Design Assets
Weeding through low-quality tattoo fonts can quickly become annoying. Thankfully there is a massive digital library from Envato Elements that professional designers and artists can quickly access anytime with royalty-free (for commercial and personal use) millions of design assets.
Want more good news? You can start downloading as many assets as you want – for less than $0.55 cents a day ($16.50/mo). If needed, you can cancel any time for free and still keep your downloaded items.
If you need some clarification on these types of fonts, you’ll find at the bottom of this post some answers to questions like what is a classic-style tattoo font and what is the best blackletter font for a tattoo design?
The Best Tattoo Fonts
Let’s take a dive into our list of the best tattoo fonts and see which one will suit your needs. These fonts are all hand-picked, and perfect for tattoos.
Tattoo Beast
A classic combination of vintage and display font, the Tattoo Beast typeface can be beneficial for tattoo artists in creating various new designs. Each of the letters is designed keeping in mind their application in the tattoo designs, which is why you will see creative glyphs, extenders, and bars among the characters. The download package includes three different variations of the font. Tattoo Beast also supports multilingual characters, making it all the more versatile.
The Lastring
The Lastring font style is a good combination of retro, vintage, and gothic styles. The designers have empowered the font with unique swashes and ligatures. The Lastring font supports both cases along with numerals, punctuations, and symbols.
Incognite
Blackletter fonts are best suited for tattoo designs, and this Incognite Tattoo font is an excellent example. You can easily use it for typical motorbike-themed tattoos or designs where you want the font to come out nicely. The top bars of the letters are designed in such a way that they show a continuum, and this helps in denoting speed or energy. It is best to use this font in bigger applications as small-sized designs may create readability issues.
Avestrava
Coming from the Avestrava font family, this font style has a more gothic feel, making it ideal for tattoo designs. In terms of design, the Avestrava Tattoo font is a fine combination of vintage black letter font style combined with a modern layout. Special extenders are provided for specific letters, making the font stand out in the design.
Astolfo
The good part of Astolfo script tattoo font is that the font design is itself self-sustaining to create amazing typographies. The letters have been given extenders and swashes, making the font look artistic. The font can be easily used for making artistic tattoos.
Wildstyle
The Wildstyle Chicano tattoo font is an excellent script-based font to add to your collection. The font letters have been provided extenders, making the font look very artistic without much effort. The font style supports both cases, numerals, symbols, and punctuations.
Gangsta Typeface
As the name suggests, Gangsta Typeface is designed to give the gangster vibe to any project you are working on. The designer of this font started with a blackletter style, added ornaments, and made an excellent tattoo font. The extended swashes fill the gaps left by the letters making the text look artistic. Interestingly, there are three versions of this font – regular, italic, and swash. This provides more options for you to apply your creativity.
Rebel Nation
For a long time, tattoos had been associated with rebellion—people who wanted to speak out used tattoos as a medium to express themselves. The Rebel Nation font captures that spirit. A simple san-serif font is a good break away from the typical blackletter and gothic tattoo font. Each letter of the font style bursts with rage and emotes powerfully. Uppercase letters have an inner gloss effect, while lowercase letters are plainer.
Bad Luck Display
The Bad Luck display is an old-school tattoo font that provides an excellent nostalgic effect to the design. Long before digital designs took over the tattoo industry, hand-drawing artists used such fonts to create an artistic impact on the design. The font comes with letters with double stems, extenders, and tiny swashes.
The Crookus
Moving away from nostalgic hand-lettered fonts, we have an imposing blackletter typeface – the Crookus. The font’s name seems to be wordplay with crooks as the font design tries to portray that. All the letters have extended widths, and the empty spaces are nicely covered with design elements as needed. The good part about Crookus font is that four versions are available – regular, italic, outline, and shadow. It also supports multilingual characters along with numerals and punctuation.
Strong West
The Strong West font is a retro font worthy of being noticed as a display font. As you would have noticed, the characters are filled with colors that you can control. The half-full, half-empty style makes this font stand out wherever used. They give an awesome retro vibe to the design. They can also be used on a standalone basis to create good typography. Strong West typeface includes uppercase and lowercase characters, numbers, and punctuation.
Pinders
A classic tattoo font, Pinders takes you back in time with its vintage-lettered design. It combines outline, shadow, and filled font designs to deliver an impactful half-full and half-empty effect. The letters are extra wide and provided with small swashes, extenders, and other design elements to generate a nostalgic effect. Pinders offers two variations – regular and ornament, and you can use a combination of both in your tattoo design.
Axentav HSC
The Axentav HSC uses a flat pen to draw the letters in a modern calligraphy font style. The designers have added a creative shadow effect to each of the letters. This shadow gives it a depth effect; hence, you can use this font to give your tattoo design a 3D feel. The Axentav font is best suited for modern-style tattoo designs that are less ornamental and text-based.
Norwolk
While strong black-lettered fonts are the most used for tattoos, artists also look out for creative and artistic fonts that are simpler and cleaner. Norwalk typeface can fall in the category of being a simple font as it is a thin-line decorative font. Each letter is provided with well-placed ornaments with a northern and native theme. This font can be a valuable addition to your collection as it comes with two variations and symbols in PNG format.
LockDown
A modern display font, LockDown font retains the blackletter font design but does not come with additional ornaments. This styling helps it stay away from the gothic and vintage category but still carve its own identity as a tattoo font. The letters are well designed with equal width and tiny extenders. The extra width and shadow effect provide a 3D effect to the font, which will help accentuate the logo design. In addition, LockDown font comes with a bonus set of flourish elements that match well with the base design.
Hero Beam
If you are looking for a classic victorian style font design that is expansive to fill up your tattoo design, then you will be happy to work with the Hero Bean typeface. Inspired by the long-gone European empire, the font style boasts of highly intricate ornamental design, which will make your tattoo design stand out. Hero Beam typeface comes in two variations, and both are equally creative.
Wildcats
Wildcats Vintage font is one of the safe options for tattoo designers. They have artistic swirls, extenders, and depth due to their borders. You will get 453 glyphs, many alternative characters, and an EPS pack of ornamental designs when you download the font.
Black Pytter
Sometimes simple can be beautiful, even for tattoo designs. However, not all clients would want to get their bodies covered with overflowing text and design. Some may prefer clean and elegant designs. Coming in two versions – regular and outline, this font is a fine combination of a script and blackletter font style. It is well supported by alternative options, including swash, extensions, and ligature.
Huntly
The Huntly font is the classic safe option typeface in the tattoo design industry. A combination of gothic, display, and black-lettered font styles, the Huntly font is ideally suited for applications related to rock or metal music. Any aspiring rockstar looking for a tattoo will fall in love with this font style making the job of tattoo artists easy.
Ghosthey
Typography plays a vital role in tattoo designs; hence, a font like Ghosthey can make designing easy for you with its inherent typography. This font retains its blackletter effect while adding a vintage, calligraphy, and even old-style roman impact to the design. It is well supported by alternative options such s swash, ligatures, and many alternative characters. It also supports several languages.
Morgan Tattoo Font
The Morgan Tattoo font is highly versatile, combining blackletter and vintage and display fonts. Each of the letters is gifted with either a swash or a delicate extender making them unique. The fonts are bold, and the extra border makes them prominent.
Parlour
If you are looking for a non-blackletter tattoo font, then Parlour can be quite handy. The font design is based on a strong display type with an added grunge effect at the bottom of the letters. The Parlour font is suitable for use in tattoo designs that need to have large bold text.
Cassandra
The good part about many fonts for tattoos is that they are self-sufficient in design. Cassandra font is one such example wherein the inherent font design ensures that your text looks more like typography, and you don’t need to put in extra design efforts. The font supports numbers, punctuation, and special symbols as well.
Fire Needle
A quirky name, the Fire Needle tattoo font is a typeface you can bank on when designing tattoos. The text is easily legible, while the fonts have an extra creative element on each letter’s edges. You can use the Fire Needle font for tattoo design whenever you are unsure of which font will look best in the design.
Libertad
The Libertad font is similar to the Cassandra font we listed earlier. The differentiating factor is the elongated swashes at both ends of the letters. This font only offers uppercase letters, but that should not be an issue if you use this font for tattoos with only one or two words.
Wave Nautical Font
You should try out this Wave Nautical font if your design project has anything related to the sea or oceans. Each letter is hand drawn and represents the elements of the water. An amalgamation of vintage and display font, the Wave Nautical font supports both cases and numbers, punctuations and symbols. This font would be a hit when used to design tattoos with sailor themes.
Salliery Blackletter
Sailliery tattoo font is an ideal example of a strong blackletter display font. You should use a font like this when you want your text to stand out even from far away. The Salliery typeface comes in three variations which are Standard, Outline, and Italic. You can mix and match this family and create amazing tattoo designs out of it.
Radtrad Vintage
As a tattoo designer, you would still come across the demands of old-school tattoo styles. Then this Radtrad Vintage Tattoo font is worth having in your collection. It has a vintage Latin American feel, making the tattoo design stand out.
Strates Vintage
If the text of your tattoo is not easy to read, then it is better to use strong display fonts which ensure good readability. This Strates Vintage Tattoo font is a good example of such a font. The design of each letter is kept simple by dividing it into two parts and adding a delicate extender on each side. This makes the font versatile, and you can use it for many other design projects apart from tattoo designs.
La Pirata
Looking for a refreshing font for a tattoo design? Then this La Parita typeface is a good bet. The letters are based on a handwritten font style inspired by the life of pirates. It supports both cases, but the lowercase is just a smaller version of the uppercase.
inuTattoo Script
When the font’s name is hard to pronounce, you can be sure it will be extra creative. InuTattoo script lives up to this belief. Inspired by tattoo lettering and swirl designs, the typeface will add extra creativity to your tattoo design with its sharp extenders and edgy letter designs. However, you should use this font wisely as it may have legibility issues in very small applications.
Black Brody
Black Brody is a font that will ensure that your tattoo design will not have a legibility issue. A standard blackletter font, it has been provided extra swirls at the edges, which extends a good creative appeal to the font. It comes with two font styles – regular and italic and you can easily use them for tattoo designs.
Dead Marine
A vintage old-school tattoo font, the Dead Marine draws inspiration from the life of a marine. Each letter is handcrafted with extra width on the stem and small geometrical designs, which makes the font unique.
Poison Freak
The Poison Freak is an excellent display font, giving the gothic font style a modern touch. Do not be apprehensive about the name of this font, but rather make the most of the strong display it gives to the text. The letters seemed to be made out of dashes in various orientations.
Sailor Girl
With the rising demand for delicate tattoos, especially among ladies, tattoo designers always look for a simpler font with a good creative appeal. The Sailor Girl font fills this gap as it provides a highly aspirational font that is perfect for travel, adventure, and free spirit designs. There are two variations – regular and filled, available for this font style.
Ariesa
You would not believe it if we said that sheep’s horns inspire the Ariesa fonts. It is only when you use this font that you will realize that this is correct. It is impressive how the swirls of the horns are used to design each letter uniquely. Together these letters ensure that you do not need too much design effort.
Loyaltos
A Latin blackletter font, the Lotaltos is a good font for tattoo designers as it offers a good variation to the standard display style fonts. Another vertical line gives the stem of each letter support. Small extenders are also placed with a few letters giving the font a good creative appeal.
Forges
Continuing the design style of the previous font, the Forges font adds an extra element of modernity to it. The sharp edges and the extenders make it ideal for applications in designs related to luxury products.
VASH
Taking a big step forward in modernizing blackletter fonts, the VASH typeface makes the letters compressed but, at the same time, does not forget to add short extenders on each side of the letters. The good part is that it supports both cases.
Yellost
Another decent attempt at modernizing blackletter fonts is the Yellost typeface. The unique part about this font style is the erratic use of extenders. For some letters, it is small, while for some letters, it is replaced with elongated swashes. Using this font for designing tattoos, you can quickly produce typography.
Bvas Estadas
A nice combination of Victorian and Serif styles, the Bvas Estadas font style can be used for making classic tattoo designs. The designer has given the word’s first letter a special design, be it through extending the stem or providing larger curvature.
Deja Vu
Searching for a simple yet creative font for a feminine tattoo design? Then you should check out the Deja Vu font style. The design is based on a handwritten font style, but it is well supported by unique ink splashes making the font very decorative. The font supports both cases and offers a clean version and an ink variation.
Aihet Script
Returning to blackletter style fonts, next on the list we have Aihet Scriptrsio, which includes an elegant set of uppercase, lowercase, numerals, symbols, and punctuations. In addition, you will get many extra vector ornaments, ligatures, and alternative characters when you download the font.
Avenacuastra
Not all blackletter fonts need curves and extended swashes. There are fonts like Avenacuastra that retain the strengths of blackletter fonts and provide it with a touch of a modern and gothic feel. The letters are bold enough to be readable and have an extra grunge effect.
Aortascarta
An old-style blackletter font with a decorative touch, the Aortascarta typeface presents a good font option for tattoo designers who want to have a depth effect in their text. The font gives a visual feel of being made with overlapping layers. This shadow style makes the font stand out.
Free Tattoo Fonts
Here are some great selections that are free. However, be sure to check first before downloading since free fonts don’t usually include a license for commercial use.
Tattoo 2 Font
You can try out this font if you are looking for an artistic free tattoo font style. The letters are divided into two parts through a slash. The upper part has a dotted grunge effect, and the lower part has a simple depth effect. Together the letters provide a refreshing creative appeal.
Inked Skin Font
A standard free tattoo font, the Inked Skin typeface is one worth adding to your collection. It is highly versatile, and you can use it for almost any type of tattoo design. It supports both cases but not numbers or symbols and is for personal use only.
Calling Angels
Calling Angels font comes with extended swashes propping out from the words’ first and last letters. Each of the letters has been designed keeping calligraphy and handwritten font style as a base. Both cases are supported by this font allowing good combinations of the fonts.
Porcelain
Here’s a unique free font that displays a grunge style combined with calligraphy, cursive or script type. The blending of grunge with an elegant typeface can make this a unique font for tattoos.
New Rocker
New Rocker is a free blackletter font that fits well for tattoos that need to be loud and harsh. It goes well with tattoos that have a theme of heavy metal rock music, medieval designs, and others.
Effortless Tattoo
Living up to its name, the Effortless Tattoo font style can be effortlessly used to create good tattoo designs. This font style has no extra swashes or ornamental vectors, but it is strong and bold enough to make the text stand out. The font only supports lowercase letters and numbers.
Tattoo Ink
Typography plays a vital role in tattoo designs; hence, a font like Ghosthey can make designing easy for you with its inherent typography. This font retains its blackletter effect while adding a vintage, calligraphy, and even old-style roman impact to the design. It is well supported by alternative options such s swash, ligatures, and many alternative characters.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Tattoo font?
A tattoo font is a particular font that will go well in designing tattoos. Generally, these fonts come from a typeface that is blackletter, script, calligraphy, or a display style. The good part about such fonts is that they come with inherent designs that can be very helpful in quickly designing really artistic tattoos.
What is a classic-style tattoo font?
The classic tattoo font is the old retro and vintage style that many sailors and soldiers had during World War Two, which is still in demand today. They tend to be very simple in design with bold typeface. Those in our list that fit this profile would be Dead Marine, Tattoo Ink, Sailor Girl Font Duo, and Wave Nautical.
What is the best blackletter font for a tattoo design?
The best blackletter tattoo font overall on our list would be Loyaltos, Cassandra, Salliery, and even Black Brody font. Blackletter fonts are most used for tattoos as they give good visual appeal to the design.
What is the latest trend in fonts for tattoos?
The latest trend in tattoo fonts is of using strong blackletter or script-style fonts. Designers are increasingly looking for various fonts as their clients want exclusive tattoo designs. The good news is our list includes many of these trendy designs.
Summary
Now that you’ve had a chance to get through all 50+ tattoo fonts, it’s time to choose a perfect match for your design. Remember to look carefully at the design details, licensing, and if the font comes with variations you may need like numerals or special characters.
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