If you’re going for a retro or vintage look in your designs, you need some vintage fonts to complement them. It’s safe to say that you can’t have a modern or futuristic font in a relatively retro design.
However, the trick is to determine the right vintage fonts for your design. Similarly, you can’t have an 80s cyberpunk retro font on a design that’s depicting the early 1900s.
In any case, vintage fonts do not limit you to the fonts of earlier times. There are a lot of modern takes on vintage fonts that can count as well.
In this article, we’ll go over some of those vintage fonts that can give your designs a retro look, along with where you can find them.
Let’s dive right in.
Table of Contents
What Exactly Are Vintage Fonts?
Vintage fonts include any typefaces and font designs that resemble old-timey characters, poster fonts, and blocky texts. There’s usually a 19th-century element to most vintage fonts. However, a truly vintage font is usually a mixture of medieval fonts and industrial age fonts.
That’s mostly because, in those times, letterpress printing was much harder. This was largely due to printing slabs that weren’t editable. Therefore, each person had ready-made blocks with template fonts, available for everyone.
And, because it was hard to develop new blocks, variations in fonts used to come from existing fonts. That’s why most vintage fonts look like different variations of one another.
However, font creators today usually utilize vintage elements but add some form of contemporary design element to make it appealing and unique.
Furthermore, it’s also important to differentiate a retro font from a vintage font. According to modern nomenclature, a retro font is usually one that has design elements from the 60s to the 80s.
When we talk about vintage fonts, we’re usually talking about fonts that were popular in the 1950s and the era before that.
The reason vintage fonts are still in the market is that they continue to have a lot of impact on certain groups of people. For example, if you were to market something to the older generation, you would want to use fonts that would grab their attention.
Similarly, if you’re marketing a vintage product, hosting a vintage-style party, or doing anything that has an old-timey theme, you would need a vintage font.
In any case, it’s also important to differentiate between various vintage fonts because not all of them work in the same setting.
28+ Awesome Vintage Fonts to Use in 2021
Regardless of what you want to use vintage fonts for, you have to pick the right variation. Ideally, you would want your font picking process to go something like this:
- Go through the list and choose the font that resonates with you.
- Check out different styles of the font, bold levels, and more.
- Choose one and try it out in Pixelied’s editor to get a better idea of how it would look.
The following are some of the best vintage fonts you can find online:
1. Parker
Parker is a custom typeface that is ideal for use in vintage posters, t-shirts, and other merchandise. It’s a recently developed, all-caps custom font that was inspired by the fonts used by national parks and location boards in the early 1900s.
You can download the font from here.
2. The Foregen
The Foregen is a grainy vintage-style font that is simple at first glance. However, upon further inspection, you’ll notice that each letter has an old look, that’s due to the rubbing-off effect.
It’s ideal for vintage-type products and to showcase any vintage display.
You can download the font here.
3. Berringer
Berringer is a vintage sans serif font that uses the same grainy effect as The Foregen. It’s a bold font that’s used on product stickers, banners, and logos.
There are six different font styles you can choose from according to your needs.
You can download the font from here.
4. Cassandra
Cassandra is a vintage typeface display font that utilizes calligraphy and an italic look. The ligatures are legible and the lettering is consistent enough to be easily readable.
It’s a great font for personal use in signage projects or as a wedding font for your invitation cards, and events.
You can download the font here.
5. Beautiful People
Beautiful People is another cursive typography-driven font and is the brainchild of Billy Argel. However, it focuses more on ligatures and less on its cursive nature.
The curves and ligatures give it a very art deco outlook.
You can download the font from here.
6. Hardsign
Hardsign is a display font that takes inspiration from Roman pillars. It comes with a 4-font option; you can find layered, regular, shadow, and inline versions of the font.
Hardsign can be used for titles, banners, large posters, and building paintings.
You can download the font here.
7. Remachine Script
Remachine Script is a vintage script font developed by the well-known type designer, Måns Grebäck. It takes inspiration from early Hollywood and cartoon title fonts.
It’s great for use in old-school movies, cartoons, and animations.
You can download the font from here.
8. Beardsons
Beardsons is an uppercase layered font that gives you a vintage feel using hooks and graphic edges for each character. You can use it for vintage posters, banners, and book cover ideas.
The font files can also be downloaded in OTF format if you want.
You can download the font here.
9. Palm Canyon Drive
Palm Canyon Drive is a vintage California mono-weight script font that brings the 40s and 50s back to the modern day.
It’s a great matchstick font, can be used in cafes, and the numerals can be used for numbering rooms, tables, and more.
You can download the font from here.
10. Transistor
Transistor is a condensed display font inspired by mid-century product packaging. It plays on the heights of each character and the glyphs.
You can download the font here.
11. Americus Script and Sans
Americus Script and Sans is a hand lettering-based script and sans serif font that’s developed using traditional sign painting and American typography styles.
It has a clean and aged version, depending on the kind of look you want to go for.
You can download the font from here.
12. Bourbon House
Bourbon House is a layered font that’s inspired by classic whiskey labels and paintings. The all-caps strong serif letters are ideal for packaging text, logos, and headlines.
You can download the font here.
13. Whisholder
Whisholder is a Victorian-era vintage style font that’s inspired by product labels, packaging, and signs of that time.
It’s ideal for commercial use, especially, if you have a whiskey or an old-fashioned product line.
You can download the font from here.
14. Hustlers Rough
Hustlers Rough is a signage-based font made by Decade Type Foundry. The commercial use version has clean and rough variations with more than 300 glyph slots.
You can download the font here.
15. Metalsmith
Metalsmith is a display font that was designed keeping futuristic fonts and vintage fonts in mind. That’s why you can get regular, paint, and vintage styles.
You can download the font from here.
16. Contender
Contender is a vintage display typeface that is supposed to give an aged look. There are different styles depending on what you want to use it for, including regular and slant versions.
You can download the font here.
17. Old Sport Athletic
Old Sport Athletic is a font that’s inspired by early athletic team fonts. Vintage sports fonts are rare as it is, but this one provides a decent option.
You can download the font from here.
18. Bigfat Script
Bigfat Script is a script font that utilizes 1950s diner fonts to develop a bolder font. It’s best to use it for graphic design projects and website headers.
You can download the font here.
19. Labor Union
Labor Union is a simple vintage font that’s inspired by the slogans and strike fonts used in the protests of the early 20th century.
You can download the font from here.
20. The Lastwinter
The Lastwinter is a vintage rough script letter font that was created using font duo fonts. It’s part of a free vintage fonts collection, but you can only utilize it for personal use.
You can download the font here.
21. Kramood
Kramood is a script font that’s inspired by 19th-century European fonts, especially Prussian fonts. If you’re making old-school posters on Illustrator, this font is ideal for you.
You can download the font from here.
22. Piantato
Piantato is a title font that’s inspired by early 20th-century automobile maker fonts. You can find several old-school car names being written in a similar font.
You can download the font here.
23. Franchise
Franchise is a classic company font that was used by most organizations until the 1950s. It was part of the limited font collection used for company names, logos, and packaging.
You can download the font from here.
24. Waster
Waster is a relatively less-known font from the mid-20th century. It utilizes 50s design elements in the font with curves in unnecessary places.
You can download the font here.
25. Demode
Demode is a retro-futuristic font that was used in old-school science conventions. The font comes in regular and negative variants, and is open to personal use.
You can download the font from here.
26. The Circus Show
The Circus Show is a classic circus font that has been used by circus owners since the 1800s. It’s a vintage font that has been designed according to modern fonts, giving it a unique post-modernistic look.
You can download the font here.
27. Carnivalee Freakshow
Carnivalee Freakshow is another old-school font that was used in carnivals and circuses back in the 1800s and the early 1900s. It’s easily recognizable, and you can find a lot of mockups of it online.
You can download the font from here.
28. Extra Ornamental No. 2
Extra Ornamental No. 2 is a vintage font that was used in old school books as titles, product names, and for numbering. It’s a great font to use for retro designs or products.
You can download the font here.
29. Park Lane NF
Park Lane NF is an early 1900s font that was mostly used by high-end restaurants and hotels. Out of all the free fonts available online, this one’s the best for luxury vintage products and services.
You can download the font from here.
30. Komrade
Komrade is a display font that was inspired by the Soviet-era fonts and propaganda posters. It’s ideal for use in alternate history books and covers.
You can download the font here.
Using Vintage Fonts in Pixelied
When you’re designing your next poster, banner, or flyer on Pixelied using a vintage font, choose a font from the list above, as they’re more likely to get the desired results.
You can add the text in headlines, sub-headlines, or in the body. Furthermore, since most vintage fonts provide different variations for titles, body text, and more, you can adjust it accordingly.
In any case, you don’t have to go with a single font. You can try out several different vintage fonts in Pixelied’s editor to get a better idea.
When you open a blank canvas or choose any template, you can choose from over 900+ fonts. Therefore, there’s a good chance you’ll find the fonts listed above.
Here are the typical options you have when you open the editor and choose a template:
On this screen, in the top bar, you’ll see the font option. Click on it to open a drop-down menu where you can then choose your font.
However, if you want to upload a custom font that’s not available in the editor, you can do that using the Upload Custom Font option in the left pane.
All you have to do is click the button, upload the font file, and you’re good to go.
Wrapping It Up
When you’re using a font in your design, you need to make sure that every pixel utilizes itself in the design. Any poster, banner, or design that doesn’t resonate with the font being used will not be well received.
That’s why it’s crucial to make sure that you use appropriate fonts. In this instance, you should only use vintage fonts if your theme allows you to do so, or if your product is known for using such fonts.
In any case, vintage fonts help you stand out. You can use Pixelied’s editor to see how each of them looks in your designs and make a decision.
Hi there,
I finf none of these fonts at all in pixelied?
What should i do to get them?
Best regards,
David
Hey David,
You can upload these custom fonts inside Pixelied.
Here’s a short tutorial: https://help.pixelied.com/article/19-how-to-upload-my-own-custom-fonts
Best,
Dawood