30 Fonts Perfect for Vintage and Retro Style Design
A Vintage or retro style design is meant to transport it’s audience decades into the past. Designers try to do this by using various design elements such as textures and patterns from a certain time period. But it’s also important to use accurate typography from the time period you are trying to represent.
In this post, we’ve rounded up 30 excellent vintage and retro fonts that you can use in your designs. You’ll notice that these font’s range from a 1920’s look all the way up to the retro typography style of the 50’s.
Matchbook
Bazar, Medium
Embossed Black
Ugly Qua
Hill House
Shrewsbury-Condensed Bold
Caslon
Seaside Resort
Fontleroy Brown
Fusty Saddle
Dirty Ames
Bolton
Dymaxion
Just Old Fashion
Riesling
Goudy Bookletter 1911
Opera-Lyrics-Smooth
Carnivalee Freakshow
Circus Ornate
Upper East Side
Brandon Grotesque Regular (free until April 15)
Ballpark
East Market
BP Script
Rocket Script
Arwen
Anagram
Louisianne
Lemon Chicken
Anastasia
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11 New High-Quality Free Fonts
10 New High-Quality Free Fonts for Your Designs
10 New High-Quality Fonts for Your Designs
20 New High-Quality Fonts for Your Designs
20 Elegant Fonts for Clean Design
Mar 26, 2010
really digging Bazar, Medium. Thanks for this list!
Mar 26, 2010
Thanks Henry, matchbook and bazar are my favorites
Mar 26, 2010
really awesome list of freebies. as a type lover, i always get into this stuff. keep in mind you have gotta check out http://www.pilo.me the typography forum with about every font imagineable (free or exclusive). im pretty sure eames century modern was just released there last week. anyhow, check it out and thanks again for the wonderful post!
Mar 26, 2010
I often see font collections, but THIS one wonderful! Thanks
Mar 26, 2010
Anastasia is a copy of ITC Anna, ripped off by WSI and licensed to Canon as an OEM font.
http://www.sanskritweb.net/forgers/wsi.pdf
Mar 26, 2010
Yeah, I’m a little confused here. How can some of these fonts be free when they’ve been ripped and “licensed”?
Hill House is a copy of ITC Rennie Mackintosh and Louisianne is a copy of ITC Einhorn.
Mar 26, 2010
This is a great list of fonts.
Mar 26, 2010
Loving this!!
Mar 26, 2010
Thank you very much for some of these! I think im actually in love with Riesling, perfect font for hotel/restaurant style websites. Been on the look out for something like that for a while now actually. (Never can be bothered sifting through font websites)
Always good to have someone pick out some really nice (and free) fonts for you.
I’m finding at the moment that rather than my layout its my font choices that are making some of my designs really stand out. Was pretty rubbish at typography when I first started designing but I’m starting to get the hang of it.
Mar 26, 2010
Fantastic collection! Nice to see retro fonts making a comeback
Mar 26, 2010
Brilliant collection! This will be really really handy… thanks for sharing
Mar 26, 2010
Thanks for this Long list
Louisianne is amazing…
Mar 26, 2010
great fonts with retro and vintage look. thanks for share
Mar 26, 2010
Head says Caslon, but that’s really Caslon Antique.
Mar 26, 2010
What about Mailart Rubberstamp? http://www.dafont.com/mailart-rubberstamp.font
Great font
Mar 26, 2010
Thanks for this wonderful sets of fonts
Mar 27, 2010
Great list! Will definitely help on those vintage projects.
Mar 27, 2010
Thanks a lot.. Great post
Mar 27, 2010
Thanks. Very useful indeed.
Mar 27, 2010
Thanks a lot.. Great post
Mar 28, 2010
I have a Vintage style site coming up and this resource will be perfect.
[...] = 'webdesignledger'; tweetmeme_service = 'bit.ly'; Last week, Henry posted an article with 30 Fonts Perfect for Vintage and Retro Style Design and I simply loved the first font of the list, the matchbook typefaces. By the time I saw it I [...]
Mar 30, 2010
that’s a nice and handy resource collection, thanks!
Apr 6, 2010
Great list thanks for posting!
Apr 12, 2010
great font collection
Apr 13, 2010
Fantastic collection. I already have one of these fonts in mind for an ad I’m putting together.
I featured this page as one of my three links for today’s Design Thought blog:
http://designthoughtfortheday.blogspot.com/2010/04/04-13-better-blog-vintage-fonts.html
All the best, Ted
Apr 17, 2010
O! I am so excited! I definitely did not have some of these in my library…
Aug 27, 2010
Thanks, for a collection of good fonts!