Design your way

Vintage design is a smart choice for all sorts of things. Make retro posters, or include retro stylings on your website. And to do that you need a good selection of free retro fonts.

It’s not glossy or sharp look, yet there’s something about it that seems professional. It’s clever look with a lot of personality and can be easily tooled to look unique by blending it with more modern additions.

Retro fonts are a great basis for an overall retro design. They are often inspired by old posters or signs. Use a faded color scheme to make them look just right. Old-school borders, shapes, textures, and ornaments accent them perfectly.

One of the most interesting things about retro fonts is that they incorporate atmosphere and other information into their design overall. It’s amazing how the shape and style of a retro font can convey a lot about what its saying. Just think of how well retro band fonts let you know the personality of the music they play.

Use vintage fonts for headlines and other larger text. They make for great titles and any other short bit of text you want to catch viewers’ eyes. It’s not often suited for closer, smaller body text. Retro font adds a splash of personality to whatever you use it on.

There are a lot of options for free vintage fonts on the internet. Here are some of the best retro fonts out there.

Aemstel Free Font

This free retro font is available in 5 styles: regular, line outside, line inside, horizontal line, and shadow.

Traveler Typeface

This font has a western style. It was created by Gleb Guralnyk. The characters are wide and narrow with many ligatures. It has a trendy extruded effect, which is created in separate font file. This makes for easy editing and coloring.

Phenomena Font

This free vintage font has condensed proportions and round geometric shapes. It has rounded corners that help cement the retro look of this font.

Phalanx Typeface

This font is a hand-drawn typeface created by Mark Richardson. It was inspired by print catalogs common in the 1900s.

Paralines Font

Bartolomew Typeface

This retro font is a hand lettered typeface. It was created by Klapaucius Co. It has 2 styles: regular and rustic printed.

Black Mask Typeface

This font is one of many vintage fonts that only has capital letters. It comes to us from Giemons.
All letters in Black Mask have a press style texture.

Bukhari Free Font

This is one of several vintage script fonts. It has a bold, monoline cursive look. It works great for web or print use. Use it for posters, logotype, signage, badges, business cards, and t-shirt designs.

Palm Canyon Drive

This popular free vintage font is a monoline script. It was inspired by retro travel postcards, matchbook covers, Tikki bars, and Hollywood style. It is classy but not pretentious, a good choice if you want something comfortable that still seems high class. It comes in 3 weights.

Nexa Rust

Nexa Rust is a rougher bersion of the popular Nexa, Nexa Script, Nex Handmade, and Nexa Slab font families. It has a warm feel, with sans, slab, script, and handmade versions. There are 83 versions of Nexa Rust, all available for free. It works very well for logos.

Parker

This retro font was created by James Lafuente, a Seattle-based art director and designer. It is an all-caps font. It works very well for posters, t-shirts, and logos. It’s free for personal use and you can get it for commercial project for a fee of $12. It’s recommended that you use capslock when you test this retro font.

Stiff Staff

This is a very decorative free retro font. It was created by Borislav Petrov, a Bulagaria0based designer. It has clean lines and distinctive angles for a constructivist look.

Lovelo Inline

There are no closed endings in this free retro font. It was made by Hans Rezler, an art director in Vienna, Austria. It comes in 3 styles, and has a basic Latin alphabet with numerals, as well as an extended Latin alphabet.

Ailerons

This font was created by Brazil-based graphic designer Adilson Gonzales de Oliveira Junior. It was inspired by 1940s aircraft models. It has clean and stylish feel, mixing rounded and sharp edges. It was originally an experimental design project and is available for personal use.

Big John / Slim Joe

This is a geometric font that only comes in capital letters. It was made by Ion Lucin, a Madrid Based designer. It comes in both bold and ultra-light. They work together to create an eye-catching contrast that works great in almost any retro styled project. It is free for both commercial and personal use.

Moon

This retro font is a rounded sans serif font. It was created by Jack Harvatt. It comes in light and bold weights. It’s a very popular font. It is free for both personal and commercial use.

Aqua Grotesque

This retro futuristic font has a unique mysterious feel. It is only available in regular wright and has no glyphs. It’s great if you want scientific retro feel for your design.

Laika

Laika is clearly derived from vintage cartoons. It was created by Araya Salas, a Chilean type designer and illustrator. It was inspired by the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. It only has capital letters.

Hello Stockholm

This retro font is a fun and modern brush script font. It was inspired by Scandinavian minimalism and made by Mats-Peter Forss. It looks great just about everywhere it’s used. You can get it free for personal use. For commercial use, you need to license it for $14.

Obake Font

Obake was made by a Buenos Aires-based font designer. It is a textured sans serif font with a retro drop shadow and condensed design. It adds an aged feel to any design. It is free for personal use.

Retro Display Typeface

This is a hand-lettered typeface with a lot of personality it was created by London-based designer and illustrator Kisty Mea as a student project. It is free for personal use.

Helsinki

This is a geometric font derived from Finnish traffic signs. It is available in two extreme weights: hairline and heavy. It comes from German graphic designer Ludwig Übele.

Roseline

Roseline is lovely script font with elegant curves and a hand-drawn feel with a great textured feeling. It was created by Alexey Potapov. It’s a very friendly font that works well when you want a welcoming feel for your retro project.

Supria Sans

This retro font is much more quiet than most. It was inspired by utilitarian Swiss type design. It was created by Hannes von Döhren from HVD Fonts. You can get the regular and italic weight for free.

Ansley Display

This is a slab serif with a retro design and some modern twists. It works very well for any text you want to display prominently. It was created by Kady Jeska. It is free for both commercial and personal use. The designer would appreciate a donation if you choose to use it.

Cast Iron Font

Geometric and industrial, this font looks great as a high-impact headline or powerful logos. It is free for both commercial and personal use.

Hustler’s Roug

Hustler’s Rough was inspired by vintage signage. It is free for personal use. The commercial version requires a fee and comes with both clean and rough options as well as over 300 glyphs.

Noir

This elegant font is a geometric sans serif free retro font. It comes from Matthias Guggisberg, a Switzerland-based designer.

Duwhoers

This free retro font has a vintage handmade feel with its brushstroke styling. It is free for both commercial use. It was created by Indonesian designer Agga Swist-blnk. If you choose to use it, the designer would appreciate a donation.

Sabo

Sabo is a pixel-style font. It comes in two styles: inline and filled. It is a great option for arcade-style designs, especially games designed to look retro. It was created by Philippe Moesch, a Swiss designer.

Graphique Pro Next Comp

This retro font was created by Profonts studio. It was inspired by the work of Swiss designer Hermann Eidenbenz. It is available in 8 weights, but the Graphique Pro Next Comp is the only one available for free.

Gist Rough

This is a letterpress version of the font Gist. It has a warm and weathered look. It’s an all capital font and lends any text that uses it a retro edge. Gist Rough Light Three is available for free. Other versions cost a small fee.

Alt Retro

This a very charming free retro font. It has an eye-catching look with its multiple lines. You can find it in 5 weights. It was designed by Andreas Leonidou, a Cyprus-based designer. It is available for free for both personal and commercial use.

Fibre – Vintage Font

Fibre is a highly detailed and textured font. Every character has been uniquely designed.

Typnic

This font’s name is derived from the term “typographic picnic”. It is a retro calligraphic font family that has 18 styles. Typnic Titling is the free style. It is particularly elegant.

Lichtspiele

Lichtspiele was inspired by early 20^th century cinema. It was created by Stefan Huebsch. It has 5 stykles available. Lichtspiele Trailer is free.

Bobber

This retro font is a sans serif with only capital letters. It was inspired by vintage bobber motorcycles and has a modular, grid-based design. It looks hand drawn and ornate. It can be downloaded for free. There is also a pro version available for $5.

Mensch

This font operates on a pay-as-you-can personal use license. It has a condensed uppercase design. There are four weights: regular, thin, bold, and inline. The license for commercial use is $40.

Orwellian

This a very atmospheric font. It has a reversed-stress design. It was inspired by concepts found in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty Four. It has a pay-as-you can personal use license.

American Captain

American Captain is a free retro font that is inspired by the type style of the 1940s. It was created by Michael Adkins. It comes in two different weights for personal use. For commercial use, you can pay for the full five available weights.

Sho-Card-Caps

This font is an adaptation of the 1930s font Future. It works very well for headlines and drop-caps. It was created by Nick Curtis, who says that it was inspired by “hand-lettered posters from a bygone era”.

Matchbook

This font has extended forms and rounded serifs. It has a textured version that resembles letterpress type. It was create by the lettering artist Simon Walker and was his first evert typeface. It has a pay-as-you-can license for personal use. The commercial use license for $30.

Mekon

This free retro font family has a bold heavyweight design that works great for web, print, t-shirts, and anywhere else you want big, eye-catching lettering. It was created by Jonathan Hill. Additional weights are available for a fee.

Yesteryear

This retro font is based on the title screen from the 1942 film The Palm Beach Story. It is a “flat nib connecting script font” according to its creator, Brian Bonislawsky. This font has a sharper feel than its source design and resembles chrome scripts from vintage automobilia. It is free for both commercial and personal use.

Arvil

This font has strong lines and softly rounded terminals. The letters are strong and friendly, great to create a more welcoming atmosphere. It has a pay-what-you-can personal use license.

Silverfake

Silverflake uses modern curved with an old-fashioned vibe to create a modern font with a bit of retro flair. It uses all capital letters and comes has several alternate characters. It is free for personal and commercial use.

Nautilus Pompilius

This is a modern script font with some vintage touches. It works well for posters, headings, and logos. There are many ligatures, stylistic swashes, and alternates. It is free for personal use.

Curley

Curley is handmade font with a bit of retro twist. It comes from the Jakarta-based Konstantine studio. It was designed to cause a “cuteness overload”. It can also work as a lighter party font.

Sonder

Sonder is a curvy retro font that has both serif and sans serif options, as well as distressed and non-distressed options. All versions come in regular, bold, and black weights. This retro font works great for vintage logos, packaging, or branding. You can get a sample version for free and for personal use. You can also purchase the full typeface for commercial use.

West Side

This free retro font draws from the designs of 1980s handmade posters and illustrations. It is block-styled with bold sharp edges and works great as a display font. It was created by Artimasa Studio. It is free for both commercial and personal use.

Billionaire Medium Grunge

This font has a slightly roughened-up art deco look and gives your work a faded sophistication. It is one of the 6 fonts in the Billionaire font family. The whole typeface was created by JumboDesign. You can use it for free.

Frontage Condensed (Outline)

This is a family of retro fonts that works great for any vintage design. It was created by the Swiss art director Juri Zaech. Frontage Condensed in a number of weights, but the only free one is Outline.

Hamster

This retro font is a script typeface inspired by traditional sign painting and brush lettering. It has a very dynamic flow and is more legible than most cursive-style fonts. It is free for both commercial and personal use.

Lazer 84

Lazer 84 is 1980s brush-style retro font. It was designed by art director Juan Hodgson. It has everything you need in a font, including numbers, symbols, and accents, making it a great option for a retro arcade game feel.

Glasoor

This experimental retro font has a highly playful design. It works great for logos and posters. It was made by type designer Sergiy Tkachenko.

Zebrazil

This font has thin letters with bold serifs. It was designed by Zarni, a Burmese graphic designer. He offers this retro font as a free download.

Unique

This retro font is flashy and has a slight contemporary edge. It was made by designer Anna Pocius also known as Artmaker. It was created to be used for logotypes and headings.

Canter

This is a condensed all-caps retro font available in 6 weights. It is great for headlines, posters, and titles. Use it for any retro style. This font was created by New York-based designer Christopher J. Lee.

Rispa

Konrad Bednarski was inspired to create this retro font by his new hometown. You can download a free test version. A more refined version with more weights will be available soon. Society6 offers Rispa Regular T-shirts, prints, tote bags, pillows and more.

White Rabbit

This font is free for personal use. It was created by Alice Creative. If you use this retro font, please donate to their author.

Andes

You can find the Andes retro font in two styles. The lettering has a basic curved design, perfect for any vintage project. This font is free for personal use.

Sesame

Seasame looks great on retro-styled posters and website headlines. It was created by Dieter Steffmann. It has a complete selection of uppercase letters and numbers as well as numerous special characters.

Arwen

This is one of the most beautiful and elegant retro fonts around. It was designed by Keystrokes. It is an all capital font. You can get it for free.

Highlands

The designer of this retro font, web and UI designer Tyler Galpin, describes this font as “a charming slab-serif that draws inspiration from National Park posters of old”. You can use this font for free. The author appreciates any donations.

Quid Pro Quo

This is a handwritten script retro font. It was made by designer David Kerkhoff. It has both upper and lowercase letters, as well as numbers and a selection of special characters. It is free for personal use and the author would appreciate donations if you choose to use this font.

Pricedown

Pricedown is a bold font inspired by game shows. It was designed by Ray Larabie of Typodermic Fonts. He describes his work as being “based on a late-Sixties font called Pinto Flare; famous for its use in the titles for the TV program The Price is Right.” This font is free for personal use and donations would be gratefully appreciated.

Pompadour Numerals

This is a stylish free retro set of numerals and punctuation. It was created by designer Andy Mangold. Offered online by Lost Type Co-Op. It was inspired by the 1950s Rockabilly Hairdo. Evert number fits perfectly inside of a square. It looks best in large font sizes. You can use this retro font for free and donations are appreciated.

Riesling

This retro font harkens back to the 1920s. It is a very elegant typeface. It comes with upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. This font was designed by Bright Ideas.

Sakra Font Duo

This retro font mixes both old and new to create a curvy script type font with some beautiful swash details. It has a complete set of letters, numbers, and symbols.

Top Speed

Top Speed is highly reminiscent of 1950s Chevrolet. It was created by Jason Vanderhill. It comes in three variations. If you want to link the letters together, just use the underscore key. It is free for personal use.

Echo Deco

Created by GreyWolf Webworks, this font was inspired by old music posters. It only has capital letters. It also comes complete with numbers and special characters. It is free for personal use.

Deftone Stylus

This is a retro script font. It comes from Ray Larabie of Typodermic Fonts. He states that “Deftone Stylus is a structured, industrial script from the late 20th century. It was rebuilt in 2011 and now features custom letter pairs to make words flow.”

Bellerose

Bellerose is an elegant retro font. It is a highly popular font, with more than 1.5 million downloads since it was released. It was designed by James M. Harris. It has a full set of lowercase and uppercase letters, as well as numbers. It is free for personal use.

Parisish

Designed to bring to mind old Paris, this an elegant retro font. It was created by George Williams, who has designed 57 fonts. This is one of his most popular creations and it has been downloaded over 200,000 times. It is free for both commercial and personal use.

Budmo

This is a very flashy marquee font. It looks like it belongs a posters at the Moulin Rouge. It was made by Ray Larabie of Typodermic Fonts. It consists of four variations all contained in a separate font file. It is free for personal use.

Bauru

This free retro font is immediately reminiscent of bygone eras. It is considered by many to be one of the best free retro fonts. It is instantly nostalgic and has a sense of timelessness. Use it for posters, branding, advertising, and logo design. It was made by Pier Paolo, a Brazilian art director and illustrator.

Hamurz

This font has rough edges and rounded shapes, giving it a hipster retro vibe. It is a very versatile retro font, working well with T-shirts, logos, headings, and badges. It was designed by Bagus Budiyanto.

Leafy

This is an all-caps brush font with 95 hand-crafted chacrters. It was drawn by Ieva Mezule. Krisjanis Mezulis, of the Latvian agency Wild Ones Design, assembled it. It adds a handmade touch to any design. It is free for both personal and commercial use.

Playlist

Playlist is a hand-drawn retro font. It has 3 styles: Caps, Script, and Ornament. It works very well for illustrated designs featured on T-shirts, posters, and any other kind of merchandise. It was created by the Indonesian studio Artimasa.

Sophia

This font has a light, friendly, slightly off-kilter, fun style. It was created by Mats-Peter Forss (of Finland) and Emily Spadoni (of the USA), who describe this font as “a hand-lettered brush script with a sweet decorative bonus”. It has multlingual glyphs and both left and right stylistic letter combos.

Reckless

This font is a handwritten brush font. It has uppercase and extended Latin characters. It works very well with watercolor types design both in print and on screen. This don’t was made by Nadi Spasibenko, as Russian designer.

Kust

This is a slightly distorted, corrupted-looking font. It is based on letters drawn on paper with a thick brush and black ink. It was created by the artist and fashion designer Leva Mezule. Wildtype Design out of Latvia released this retro font for free.