Using lettering as a subject for a tattoo is a popular choice, but one where we find ourselves faced with a multitude of tattoo fonts ( typefaces ) and possibilities, so making the write choice is not always easy.
Throughout the world there are several common trends, from simple letters of the alphabet, often used for the initials of a name, to more complex sentences and full of intrinsic meaning. Very common, for example, is the old style of lettering or calligraphy. Both options open up a huge range of customization opportunities and allow the tattoo artists to be creative and make the design look unique, rich and beautiful.
This article is designed to help you choose from the various styles of tattoo fonts so you have a solid understanding of what you want, before you take your ideas to your tattoo artists who maybe confused by the image you are trying to convey if you do not have a clear idea of the kind of lettering you want to use.
This article will help guide you a long the path of the different styles available to you and help you to create your own perfect tattoo lettering.
A recommendation! The tattoo is something personal. As a consequence, the style of writing you choose for your tattoo should also be personal. The thousands of characters we can introduce you to should just be your starting point. Our advice to you is to find the right characters, get to grips with your tattoo artist, follow their advice and together perfectly personalize your tattoo!
I brief, the first step is to understand the style of the font that most closely matches your personality. There are many different families of font, but one of the elements to identify is the degree of complexity that you wish you add to your tattoo.
One of the most widely used is the calligraphic styles. The are many reasons this style is chosen, but we think that their success is due to the fact that with this lettering tattoos you can get a highly customized design, just as each of us has a unique handwriting . Calligraphic styles can range from the classical which bring us back to the text styles of the past , to the modern, which bring to mind the present day.
For anyone who is a fan of the Gothic style there is little to say about this style. This type of writing has been utilized as the basis of the logos of many musical bands, as well as the font of choice for the writing of many video games. This style can be simple or complex, a factor that can also affect the ease or reading. A good starting point when choosing this font is how easily comprehensible you want it to be. We have various categories , including the Medieval , the Celtic and elaborate initials used precisely for individual letters.
It is a style where the typography and illustration blend. Inspiration can come directly from the street, the natural home of graffiti, or through photographs that hide in the backgrounds of small works of art. In the next part of the article we will tell you how to have hundreds of graffiti fonts to start from.
We have hundreds of fonts that take us back to the taste of the Old West. This style of font is a popular choice for some groups of Bikers who use them to create their lettering's and logos.
Sometimes you may want to write with a font that brings to mind a particular country or a civilization. It is not necessary to use the alphabet or the language of your chosen country, but only to use the flavor and with that you can create lettering that resembles the language very closely. This process is widely used for Asian fonts, but are also used effectively in Arabic and Russian culture among others.
An alternative would be to create a written tattoo just freehand. You will never know what what can come out of this method if you've never tried! There are plenty of tattoo handwriting's from which to take inspiration, collect details and mix them together to create a truly meaningful tattoo for yourself.
It is the lettering created by the use of the old fashioned typewriters. With many of these old machines font itself is designed with inaccuracies, the "dirtying of the letters" that makes each typewriter font unique. After analyzing the different major categories , we move to the concrete research of our tattoo font.
There is a site to browse thousands of fonts, with personalized text, that is really fantastic. We're talking about dafont.com.
As you can see from the picture, we have several categories at the top of the site, that also includes those we have just described. In the red circle, however, there is a space where you can enter the text you require to see how it looks in the font you have chosen.
The fonts can be downloaded so you can take them to your tattoo artist, or install it on your computer and with various software, including Photoshop, try different elaborations.
There is another site that allows a similar option. The Google Font.
Also this site offers several options, that can be found in the side menu on the left. You can filter for different categories of fonts by adjusting options such as thickness, width, etc... In our opinion this site, unlike dafont.com, is more devoted to a search for web fonts, but still remains a great source of inspiration. Although these fonts are downloadable.
Why not browse the galleries of font and lettering tattoos from our tattoo artists to find some inspiration:
