When I walk through places like Pike Place Market in Seattle, I can’t help but be distracted by all of the fantastic hand painted lettering on the signage. There’s a certain aesthetic to vintage sign art that I just can’t get enough of. Some may mourn the bygone days of this look, but there are lots of typography designers that have kept the legacy alive with truly beautiful fonts. Let’s take a look at twenty fonts that fit are perfect for recreating that vintage sign look.
Lakester
Lakester offers you four variations of this font for layering to create a graphically unified Western look on your signage. Three hundred glyphs are included as well to add decorative touches to your sign.
Reckless + Fabulous DropCaps
This font merges script, black-letter and tattoo typography into a distinctive Rockabilly retro feel for classic car motoring events.
Aesthetique
Gloriously rich with Victorian curlicues, Aesthetique might be the choice for gilded lettering on the mirror of a fancy bar in the 1890s.
Appleton Font + Poster
Inspired by the intricate art of early 20th-century fruit crate labels, Appleton Font comes loaded with extra swashes, swoops and glyphs to create a complete work of art.
American Brewery Clean & Rough
Do you love the labels on vintage bottles of beer? This artist took the aesthetic of early breweries and turned it into two versions: “Clean†and “Rough.â€
Morning Glory
Inspired by Victorian-style sensibilities, Morning Glory font is reminiscent of old-fashioned apothecary signage and labels. The font includes a bonus poster and border vector along with the standard upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
Holden
This font uses a rustic style to create a vintage mood especially suited for clothing labels, microbreweries or logos. Holden is designed in all caps but the uppercase letters are shadowed to give extra weight to titles or brand names.
Epique
A Victorian ornamental typeface with a bouncy modern flair, Epique would be a great choice for wedding invitations or one-of-a-kind T-shirts.
Eighty-One Typeface
Hand-lettered vintage style is brought forward by a “grainy and gritty†texture in Eighty-One. Six different fonts are included in this one package, along with plenty of hand-drawn glyphs and typographical charms.
Insurance Maps Font
Inspired by travel posters made at the turn of the 20th century? This unusual vintage font is based on Sanborn Map Company’s 1909 insurance maps and comes with poster templates to complete your design’s look.
3Font with Bonus Badge and Crack
Look closely at this font and you’ll see the outline of traditional Javanese weapons. The general feel is vintage, but the added Asian design details give this one an unusual twist. The font is packaged with three different weights of the typeface along with vectors of badges and cracked textures.
Hustlers Clean and Rough
When the circus was coming to town, posters would go up and bring glee to children and adults in a whole region. This font takes its inspiration from that carnival experience and is available in “clean†and “rough†versions.
Midnight Show
Midnight Show is an ornate and lightly weathered font suitable for Victorian or Western designs. This font is ideal for apparel design and fun logotypes.
Ophelos
Ophelos brings a modern feel to vintage lettering, along with some spectacularly beautiful glyphs. This uppercase font would make eye-catching signage in a restaurant, lounge or pub.
Dusty Circus 5 Layer Font System
Inspired by vintage circus signs, this ornate font is versatile and full of endless design possibilities. The layered system of this font allows almost unlimited morphing to create interesting 3D effects.
Jack Runner
What do you get when you combine retro baseball typography with Victorian flourish? Jack Runner, a versatile old-timey font that gives a vintage feel with many possible applications.
Knight Guardan Font + Bonus
Inspired by old wood cuts and engravings, this package includes a basic vintage font as well as a decorated versions. Perfect for beer labels worthy of King Arthur’s Round Table.
Samathor Typeface
When you want to play with over-the-top Victorian curlicues and barbed letter points, check out Samathor. It might be exactly perfect for a band poster or various playful retro applications.
Sunday Best Complete Family
This rustic font family features 27 layering font faces inspired by woodcuts. Sunday Best can be used in its basic form for simple elegance or all dressed up with embellishments and ornaments.
Shoutest Typeface
Taking vintage Art Deco design elements and bringing them into a modern font set, Shoutest offers regular and shadowed options.
Browse through this selection of artists’ responses to vintage lettering styles and imagine your design in one of these unique fonts. Whether you need a sign or an invitation, a logo or a label, old-fashioned lettering from Creative Market may exactly fit the bill.
What’s Your Favorite Vintage Sign Font?
Now that you’ve seen our collection of twenty vintage sign fonts, let us know which is your favorite in the comments below. Also be sure to toss in any that we missed!
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