8 elegant script fonts

[Rss Bot 1]

Script fonts: high-end, elegant, a quick way to add a touch of class to a design, right? Except often they're not. Tainted by a number of questionable typefaces, a cloudy history of illegibility and wedding invitation abuse, the reputation of the stylish script font has taken a knock in recent years.

Yet amid the scrawl, a number of true gems exist that do exactly what a good script font should: add elegance and personality, while remaining legible. The following options are the best script fonts that we've found. Like many good things they do cost money, so if you're on a super-tight budget, check out our free brush fonts article, or the handwriting fonts section of our best free fonts for designers article.

01. Mila Script Pro

• Price: $89/£59 (for 6 fonts)
• Format: TTF, OTF

Mila Script Pro is a family of six script fonts: Pro, Basic, Sans Light, Sans Regular, Sans Bold, and Ornaments. That means you can choose between connected or unconnected letterforms, or mix the two to create the look you want. This font family comes with 'automatic swash control', which adjusts the swashy letters to best fit the available white space.

You can buy each font separately (Script Pro and Script Basic are $79/£52 and $39/£26 respectively) or snap up the whole lot for $89/£59. 

02. Acid

• Price: $16.77/£13
• Format: OTF

This decorative script font is the work of Bangkok-based type designer Typomancer. The neat, condensed typeface includes some quirky serifs, and would be ideal for print projects. You can buy it for desktops, as a web font, or buy the extended version, and it supports a huge range of languages.

03. Adelia

• Price: $16.77/£13
• Format: OTF

Adelia was designed by Indonesia-based foundry Artimasa. Inspired by traditional sign painting and brush lettering, the bold, playful font lends itself particularly well to logo and packaging projects, as well as headlines, posters and T-shirt graphics.

04. Baker Street

• Price: $28.38/£22 (for 4 fonts)
• Format: TTF

A single-width typeface, Baker Street is perfect for big text blocks or simple headlines thanks to its flowing curves. Designed by Thomas Ramey of Seattle-based studio Ramey Foundry, there are four weights in total – Regular, Light, Regular Title and Light Title – priced at $16.77/£13 each, or $28.38/£22 for all four.

05. Everglow Script

• Price: $29
• Format: OTF

This retro script font features over 560 glyphs and 322 alternate characters. If you're looking to add a vintage touch to anything from logos to letterheads, then Everglow (designed by another Indonesian outfit, Seniors Studio) is your font.

06. Festival Script Pro

• Price: $69/£49.99
• Format: OTF

From Argentinian type foundry Sudtipos, Festival Script Pro pushes the explorations of designers Angel Koziupa and Ale Paul further into the deco script territory. With pronounced bilinear contrast and a luxurious ornamental swashing treatment (layered swashing possibilities are included, ranging from minimal to utter exuberance), Festival Script Pro is a modern, appealing script font.

07. Graduate

• Price: $74/£48.99 (for two fonts)
• Format: OTF

For a contemporary calligraphic script, try Graduate, by Netherland-based foundry Fontforecast. With over 825 glyphs, it's a flexible font that you can dress up or down by adding curls to the beginning, middle or end of any lowercase letter.

08. HT Osteria

• Price: $14.19/£11
• Format: OTF

HT Osteria is a retro script font that comes as a single weight. The characters draw inspiration from 1950s painted shopfront advertisements in Italy. This font is part of a decorative family of fonts from Japanese foundry Flat-it.

Read more:

• 4 modern brands flying the flag for script fonts
• 5 typography trends for 2018
• Top typography tutorials

View the full article