Choosing cool fonts for tattoos depends on your tattoo's design. Once you have picked your idea and design, picking your lettering is the next step to completing your tattoo. The size, style and structure of a font will determine how well the font will fit your tattoo and how it will appear when scaled to the size of your design, so discuss your font selections with the artist who will be inking you before finalizing your tattoo design.
Cool Fonts For Tattoos: Calligraphy Style
These styles have a romantic, old-fashioned flair. They can be quite ornate, and translate best when used alone or as a part of a larger tattoo.
Medieval Fonts
The Old English font is an excellent choice for calligraphy work. It is both ornate and legible, which means that it can work well for a variety of tattoo sizes. Cloister Black is a similar font with more ornate detail; this font works well in larger sizes due to the flourishes on the letters. Both of these fonts are ornate and decorative enough to stand alone as a tattoo design, which is why they are a cool font for tattoos.
Celtic Fonts
Fonts with a Celtic style have rounded letters and mimic the stroke of a calligrapher's brush. Celtic itself is a font which translates well into a tattoo; this font is rounded but lacks hugh embellishments, making it excellent for both large and small tattoos. American Uncial is another font in a Celtic style; this font has more flourishes and would work better in a larger tattoo design.
Gothic Fonts
Fonts such as Deutsch Gothic and Lucida Blackletter both evoke a 15th century, almost medieval style. These letters have angular structure and straight lines with sharp details and embellishments. Schmale Anzeigenschrift is a heavier Gothic font featuring ornate capital letters which translate well in large tattoos. Gothic fonts with a lot of embellishment work best in medium to large tattoos; plainer Gothic style fonts such as work well in small tattoos.
More Cool Fonts: Script Fonts
Script fonts use connected cursive style writing and can be either simple or ornate. They can be elegantly printed or contain imperfections in order to mimic handwritten writing. These fonts are defined by their connected letters, which makes them best for tattoos containing whole words, sayings or quotes.
Edwardian Script
This elegant script font has elaborate capital letters combined with simple, forward slanting lowercase writing. Like some of the Gothic fonts, this is a cool font for tattoos since it is decorative enough to stand alone as a tattoo and needs no embellishments. Edwardian script works best in medium or large tattoos due to the style of the capital letters, which are quite ornate.
Adorable
Adorable is a simpler font than Edwardian script, sporting a slight forward slant and rounder letters. The clean lines are clear and well defined with a moderate amount of space between the letters. This allows the font to stay legible at smaller sizes, making it ideal for smaller, more discreet tattoos.
Simple Yet Effective: Print Fonts
Fonts which are printed do not use connected letters. They are simple, easy to find characters perfect for lettering on tattoos in both small and large sizes. Since the letters are not connected, print fonts work well for small areas of lettering and are great for small, discreet tattoos or for adding to an existing design. Print fonts can be formal, typeset styles or mimic the informal style of handwriting.
Aenigma Scrawl
This font is a printed letter font which is styled to look like handwriting. The clear lines of this font and lack of embellishment means that it will translate well to both small and large size tattoos. Aenigma scrawl is a cool font for a tattoo, whether you are adding words into an existing piece or creating a new design which needs informal lettering.
Skia
Skia is a clean, simple printed font. The letters are evenly spaced and allow for a variety of positioning options on a tattoo. It is decorative enough to stand out when incorporated into a larger tattoo and simple enough to translate well into a smaller size, which makes it ideal for small spaces.
Points To Consider
Your font choice should be discussed with the artist who will be executing your design. The choices available can be limited by the size and placement of your artwork, and the artist's limitations may dictate which fonts you will be able to choose.
