Palomino is a calligraphy font with a difference: instead of being based on inky lettering, it was created using Palomino Blackwing pencils (something of a cult offering in the pencil world). This versatile font family comes with alternates and swashes to help you create your own impressive designs. Online shopping from a great selection at Software Store. Calligraphy is an ancient writing technique using flat edged pens to create artistic lettering using thick and thin lines depending on the direction of the stroke. The height of calligraphy was reached in the middle age, where monks developed the narrow writing style called gothic, allowing more words to fit on a single line, as paper was expensive at the time.
Lettering artists have been transforming letters into beautiful nib and ink calligraphy for centuries. Creatives showcase this writing style that has flourished over thousands of years to add charm, elegance and a handcrafted feel to their work.
Calligraphy fonts can be used to enhance personal and commercial projects, from print to digital, and come in many forms that will elevate your presentation to something special. Whether you want casual free script fonts, formal fonts, something modern or more antique, the perfect calligraphy font is out there for you.
Here are 14 of the most beautiful calligraphy fonts around today.
A lot of the fonts on this list include optional ligatures and alternates you can swap in to create an organic-looking, unique script. For more advice on using these, take a look at our guide to how to create a handwriting font that isn't boring.
01. Risthi Script
- Price: $16
Risthi is a stylish, elegant script with a dancing baseline and a classic touch that includes alternates, ligatures and multiple language support. This bright style is the creation of Olexstudio, which has a range of ten vintage-inspired calligraphy fonts to choose from, all of which have real impact.
02. Biloxi Calligraphy
- Price: £15
Biloxi Calligraphy is a heavy weight version of Biloxi Script, a casual handwritten style with a calligraphy feel that contains Western and Eastern European characters. The script is written with heavy calligraphic strokes that make this an ideal choice for an eye-catching project.
03. Meat Buckets
- Price: Free/$39
On sale from StereoType, Meat Buckets is described as 'a nervous script font with a taste of old-school style'. It's free to download for personal use, or you can buy a standard licence for use in commercial projects for $39. If you opt for the full commercial version, you get access to 86 alternates, contextual ligatures and underlinings, so you can pimp this calligraphy font to create something unique.
If you like the old-school stylings of Meat Buckets, check out our round up of the best retro fonts.
04. Palomino
- Price: From £9.99
Palomino is a calligraphy font with a difference: instead of being based on inky lettering, it was created using Palomino Blackwing pencils (something of a cult offering in the pencil world). This versatile font family comes with alternates and swashes that range in price from £9.99 to £26.99 per style, with great value packages available to help you create your own impressive designs. It also comes with extensive language support and is fully unicode mapped.
05. Olivia Script
- Price: Free
Featuring 351 elegant glyphs, Olivia Script is a sophisticated and graceful modern calligraphic typeface suited to use on everything from wedding invitations to greeting cards, posters and more. It's available as a free font from the Font Bundles Store, and comes with a premium licence that allows for both personal and commercial use.
06. Work in Progress
- Price: Free/$39
Created by Clement Nicolle, also known as StereoType, Work in Progress is a script font with a very specific style of connecting curves. It comes in a simple free version that's good for personal use, but if you pay for the commercial version you get an additional clean version, as well as a set of alternate glyphs and ligatures, including a bunch of little words in multiple languages. A standard license costs $39.
07. Envelove
Online Calligraphy Drawing
- Price: Free
Designed by Yani Arabena, Guille Vizzari and Ale Paul for Sudtipos, Envelove is a free-and-easy typeface consisting of three fonts: Envelove Script and Envelove Caps, which enables you to build variations into your lettering with alternates, ligatures and a small caps set. There are also Envelove Icons, which are perfect for adding a bit of decoration to your lettering. Lively and expressive, it reminds us of Quentin Blake's wonderfully energetic illustrations.
Calligraphy Maker online, free
08. Organika
- Price: 6 fonts for £66.99
This hand-drawn calligraphy font family includes six complementary fonts, including upright and italic brush script, sans and serif fonts. Uneven edges and loose letterforms help give Organika an organic, friendly vibe.
You can enable the Discretionary Ligatures OpenType feature to replace automatically lower case letters with an alternate when the letter is repeated. So there are never two letters next to each other that are just the same.
09. Noelan Script
- Price: Free
Free both for personal and commercial use, Noelan Script is a modern calligraphic typeface from ndro. It features automatically connecting swashes as well as plenty of alternates to give your text a more human feel, plus international characters.
10. Quickpen
- Price: £25.99
Type designer Laura Condouris is behind beautiful calligraphy font Quickpen. Casual and carefree, Quickpen was designed to recreate the look of confident script, quickly jotted with a felt tip pen or brush. Available over on MyFonts with two fonts for £25.99, it is described as 'the perfect script for any design that doesn’t take itself too seriously'.
11. Dragonflight
- Price: 4 fonts for £32.99
Beautiful calligraphy font Dragonflight was created by type designer Hanneke Classen, who hand-drew each glyph with a brass folded pen dipped in ink. The font got its name from the tip of this folded pen, which resembles the shape of a dragonfly’s wing.
12. Allura
- Price: Free
Stylised yet legible, Rob Leuschke's calligraphy font Allura is great for all manner of print and digital projects, including branding, posters and much more. And best of all, it's free.
13. Freeland
- Price: Both fonts for £22.99
With a rich, inky texture, Freeland calligraphy font was created by type designer Laura Condouris. Featuring plenty of ligatures and stylistic alternates for a realistic, hand-lettered look, Freeland will give your designs an edgy vibe.
14. Dom Loves Mary
- Price: 8 fonts for £74.99
Dom Loves Mary is named in memory of Dominic and Mary Sementelli, a couple who were totally opposite but 'made for each other'. The font was created by Debi Sementelli as a way of honouring the pair. Two sets of 72 flourishes are available if you really want to 'fancy things up', as well as sets of add on words. A beautiful calligraphy font, Dom Loves Mary is great for stationery, posters and much more.
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