Forget searching all over the internet for great fonts—it’s time again for a roundup of my favorite cool fonts. In this post, I’ve put together a collection of 45 mostly free script fonts and free handwriting fonts since they’re closely related in look and use. The fonts range from dark, grunge scripts to Victorian and various handwriting fonts. As always, make sure to check the usage rights before incorporating into any commercial works, as permissions vary depending on the author. The links below each font image take you to the download page for that specific font.
Handwriting Fonts
Handwriting fonts are really an oxymoron. These fonts are supposed to look like they’ve been handwritten but are generated by a computer. They tend to have uneven spacing to make the type look more like handwriting, and a lot of times you can find great wingdings in the glyphs palettes. Unfortunately, Photoshop doesn’t have a glyphs palette because it’s not meant to be a type editor, but both InDesign and Illustrator make it very easy to manipulate text, create effects, and insert special characters with their type tools.
Here are some of the fonts I’ve collected:
Amandine font by Philippe Blondel
P22 Cezanne Regular from P22 Type Foundry
Journal by Fontourist
Jellyka Saint Andrew’s Queen font by Jellyka Nerevan
ITC Bradley Hand Complete Family Pack
Rabiohead by Pizzadude
Dear Joe Four by Joe Bob Graphics
Philippe Font by Philippe Blondel
Byron Font by Studio Kmzero
Daniel Font by Daniel Midgley
Lassigue D’Mato by T-26
Lamar Pen from Three Islands Press
Satisfaction Font by E-phemera
Waterbrush ROB by TypeSETit
Grunge Script Fonts
Grunge has made a comeback, in the design world at least. It’s rather old hat by now, but you can see it in many different types of media. Lately, I’ve noticed grunge fonts being used for television. Off the top of my head, two examples come to mind: CNBC’s Marijuana, Inc. uses Bleeding Cowboys font for it’s title, and River Monsters uses grunge fonts as well.
But this post isn’t about grunge fonts in general; it’s about grunge script fonts. People like Eduardo Recife of Misprinted Type have contributed greatly to the design community in terms of grunge design. Several of his fonts are featured in this section.
Selfish by Misprinted Type
Chato Band Complete Family Pack from Typo5
Hurricane Font by fontvir.us
Gargle Nutz by fontvir.us
Porcelain by Misprinted Type
Fancy Script Fonts
I call these script fonts “fancy” because they’re clean and evenly spaced. They tend to have a lot of swooshes and curlicues to make the font look stylized and elegant.
Vivaldi from ITC
Swan Song from Canada Type
The Nautigal from TypeSETit
Sloop Font by Font Bureau
Scriptina by Apostrophic Labs
Shelley Andante Script from Adobe
French Script by Monotype Imaging
Same-Sex Marriage Font by Luke Owens
P22 Corinthia by TypeSETit
Freebooter Script by Apostrophic Labs
ITC Edwardian Script Pro by ITC
Pristina by ITC
Miama by fuex
Windsong by Bright Ideas
Marketing Script by Dieter Steffmann
Machia by Flat-it
Crayon, Plum, Leyes by C. Verchery
P22 Zaner Pro by IHOF
Yevida Complete Family Pack by insigne
MA Sexy by Margarete Antonio
Zapfino by Linotype
Brock Script by Dieter Steffmann
Passions Conflict ROB by TypeSETit
Bickham Script MM from Adobe
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Comments
10.16.09
… I also find myself torn between the coffee shop and my dual monitor setup
11.04.09
May I suggest ABR Viewer as an alternative to loading and trying each brush in Photoshop? It’s free, and I use it regularly. You may find this a great time-saving alternative!
http://abrviewer.sourceforge.net/
Hope it helps!
11.04.09
Thanks for the referral, Cyndi! I’ll have to spend some time tonight trying it out.
02.11.10
I love you to pieces man!!
10.14.10
I wished and wished for a Mac, then was given one at work.
So I moved all my files over.
I HATE it. I’m a designer. I have about 50 folders for 50 different projects. I name the banner psd “banner.psd” for all of them. Try and search for them all, yeah the Mac finds them but then you have to do “get info” for each one (or change some such setting and still click on each to see where the dang thing is located. On windows. I glanced at the path to the folder and voila. Yeah changing permissions on Vista is a headache but it’s far better than the constant problems I have on the Mac. Photoshop is twitchy at best, the thing crashes, although my Roku, PS3, Wii, personal laptop all do fine with my wirless, the mac drops it all the time. I use multiple monitors. Oh my god what idiot thought of leaving the application menu on one screen when the application is on another? You can only choose one little sprout because Steve Jobs knows better than you how you should work.
can’t wait to ditch it.
sorry tirade over.
ps tons of free windows applications out there.
11.26.10
Um… how about not naming all of your files the same name? Sounds more like an organizational issue than an operating system issue, either way.
I might recommend using an identifier and THEN _banner.psd? I assume it’d be difficult to find photos as well if every picture on a drive had its own folder and was named “photo.jpg”.
Examples:
Projectname_size_banner.psd
Clientname_size_banner.psd
etc…
04.17.11
Ok, so… I’m a total newbie to photoshop. I have CS5 and a brickton of brushes. I have tried renaming them, but they do NOT show up in the list like I want them to. I’ve played around with it for like a half hour. Can anyone please help?