How to try tattoo fonts on your text
- Type the words exactly as you want them inked, with capitals where you want capitals. Names, dates and short phrases work best.
- Narrow the style with the chips: fine script, blackletter, old school, handwritten or classic. Every card shows your text in a different font.
- Set the skin tone and ink. Some fonts that look strong on white paper lose detail on darker skin, and gray or red ink changes the weight again.
- Pick a card to see it large, then download it: the transparent PNG for your artist, or the PNG on skin to share with friends before you decide.
Dates are a popular choice for lettering too. Tick Numbers as Roman numerals and a date like 12.05.2019 turns into XII.V.MMXIX in every font. Check the day and month order before you book: 12.05 is the 12th of May in the UK and December 5th in the US.
The five tattoo lettering styles
| Style | Fonts here | Feels | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fine script | Pinyon Script, Great Vibes, Alex Brush, Parisienne, Allura, Italianno, Monsieur La Doulaise, Mrs Saint Delafield, Herr Von Muellerhoff, Sacramento, Dancing Script | Elegant, personal, delicate | Names, short words, wrist, collarbone and ribs |
| Blackletter | UnifrakturMaguntia, UnifrakturCook, Pirata One, Grenze Gotisch | Bold, traditional, tough | Surnames, across the chest or stomach, Chicano and gothic pieces |
| Old school | New Rocker, Rye, Kaushan Script, Mr Dafoe | Classic American tattoo flash | Banners in traditional designs, short words with impact |
| Handwritten | La Belle Aurore, Caveat | Casual, like a note | Quotes, a word in someone's handwriting style |
| Classic | Courier Prime, Cinzel, Cormorant | Typewriter, Roman capitals, book type | Coordinates, dates, minimalist lines |
The same text can look completely different from one style to the next, so try the word in all of them before you settle on a category. The fonts in the Blackletter tab are the same ones the Old English font generator uses as its real-font preview.
Choosing lettering that still reads in ten years
Ink spreads slowly under the skin, so fine details soften with time. Tattoo artists plan for that, and the font you pick should too:
- Size matters more than the font. Very thin scripts with tight loops need room. If you want small lettering, choose a font with open counters (the holes in a, e and o) and ask your artist how small they would go for that style.
- Watch the hairlines. Fonts like Monsieur La Doulaise and Mrs Saint Delafield have strokes that are very thin at small sizes. They look beautiful in the preview and need a skilled artist and generous size on skin.
- Avoid all capitals in script and blackletter. Both styles have ornate capitals designed to start a word. A whole word in script or gothic capitals is hard to read.
- Check spacing and spelling. Read the downloaded PNG aloud, letter by letter, especially names and foreign words. Your artist inks what you bring.
- Think about placement. Long text on a curved area like a forearm or ankle wraps around; a single line on the ribs or collarbone stays readable.
Bring the PNG as a reference, not a stencil. A good tattoo artist redraws lettering by hand for your body, adjusting spacing, flow and line weight. That is part of what you are paying for.
Names, dates and numbers
Names are the classic lettering tattoo: a child's name, a parent's signature style, a partner's initials. Script fonts suit first names; blackletter suits surnames and family names. For initials, test the capital letter on its own, since script capitals can be hard to recognize out of context.
Numbers deserve their own check. In some script fonts the numbers look plainer than the letters, so compare them before you choose. Type the date the way you want it, with dots, slashes or spaces, and compare. Roman numerals avoid the problem altogether and suit nearly every font.
Fonts, licenses and your artist
All 24 fonts are published on Google Fonts under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, which lets anyone use them for any purpose, personal or commercial, including as a reference for a tattoo design. They are served from our own site, with no requests to third parties, and only download to your browser when a card scrolls into view. Full license texts are in the font licenses file.
| Font | Designer | Style | License |
|---|
Looking for copy and paste text instead, for a bio or a caption? That is Unicode text rather than a font: try the cursive font generator, the Instagram fonts page or the small text generator.
Methodology and limits
- Fonts
- 24 font files from Google Fonts (via the Fontsource packages, Latin subset, version 5.3.0), served from our own site and loaded only when a card is about to scroll into view. The Latin subset covers English and Western European accented letters.
- Preview
- Each card draws your text in the font with the browser, in the ink color, blended over a flat skin tone with a soft light gradient. The text is scaled down to fit the card, so very long phrases look smaller than they would on skin.
- Roman numerals
- Each run of digits from 1 to 3999 is converted with standard subtractive notation (4 is IV, 9 is IX, 40 is XL). Zero and numbers above 3999 have no standard Roman form and stay as typed, as do separators like dots and slashes.
- PNG export
- The text is drawn at 220 pixels high plus a margin, on a transparent background or the chosen skin tone, and capped at 6,000 pixels wide.
- Privacy
- Everything runs in your browser. Your text is not stored, and it is only shared with DEMARCA if you choose to include it in an enquiry and submit the form.
- What it does not do
- It does not simulate how ink ages, how lettering wraps around a curved body part or how a particular artist works, and it is not a stencil.
Sources
- Google Fonts, Google, where all 24 fonts are published with their designers
- SIL Open Font License, SIL International, the license of every font on this page
- Fontsource, the open source packages the font files come from