In his famous essay "Decoration and Crime" of 1908, the then fashionable architect Adolf Loos wrote: "The development of culture entails the displacement of ornamentality from the design of everyday things." With this statement, he excluded many of the frilly decorative typefaces developed over the past centuries from being used in high-end design. Now, fast-forward to the present day: Web 3.0 is full of near-flat sans-serifs and classic roman typefaces, which is why designers so lack the frills of the typists of yesteryear.
Take advantage of the powerful expressiveness of antique typefaces and give your graphics an old-fashioned charm that's all the rage right now in print and online projects. From cowboy and Victorian styles to avant-garde and calligraphy, the choice is wide. Fonts are grouped arbitrarily, modern interpretations can coexist with (almost) authentic prototypes. All of them are available free of charge for use in private projects, but please do not forget to read the license agreements carefully.
Imitations of prints from wooden boards and poster fonts
This typeface, reminiscent of cheap prints from wooden boards, is not without its charm: it smells like faded posters of a seedy theatrical theater. The look is equally grim and provocative, suitable for graphics on subjects ranging from informal to scary.
Dieter Steffmann's Circus Ornate captures the same mood as classic circus graphics, but retains its flair as an ornamental, catchy poster typeface.
- (similar to Rosewood font)
Designed to emulate typefaces such as Rosewood and Ponderosa, which in turn are reminiscent of late 18th century poster typefaces, Coffee Tin brings vintage advertising graphics to life with crisp lines.
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Another beautiful pseudo-antique font based on 19th century poster letters. Typeology foundry borrowed both the font itself and the name from a typeface designed in 1884 by D.T. Ames.
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Another pseudo-antique masterpiece by Dieter Steffmann, Egyptienne Zierinitialen, transforms two-dimensional letters into luxurious three-dimensional carvings.
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A lovely vintage masterpiece from Jester Font Studio.
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Nasty is an aged "remix" created by Eduardo Recife from House of Lime's Extra Ornamental typeface. Released in two versions, which Recife also advises to use in combination with each other.
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Free licensed software developer David Rakowski created this font in 1991. After 17 years, the harmony of monumentality and grace in its outlines looks like a sensation from the past, which today makes an indelible impression.
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Rick Mueller's Tuscan is one of his many vintage typefaces, but stands out for its intricate outlines combined with weighty simplicity. This typeface is reminiscent of antique poster letters without the extra flourishes.
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A clear resemblance to Sideshow, developed by Harold's Fonts, Fusty Saddle is a hand-drawn and then digitized cowboy-style font. Bittbox offers you not only a typeface for its font, but also an explanation for it: "fusty", as the author's site says, means "old-fashioned both in essence and in appearance."
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A digital woodboard print with a distinct Wild West stylistic flavor, designed by Matthew Austin Petty of Disturbed Type. As if overgrown with cowboy bristles, rough hewn edges and sloppy surfaces of block elements give this typeface a special vintage touch of masculinity.
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The product of independent digital printing studio Fountain, Azteak combines echoes of the past with dreams of the future. The mechanistic basis of this typeface is overlaid with various decorations, which evokes associations with sci-fi films about an alternate future in the era of steam engines.
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The name of this font is derived from the phrase "guardian angel" in French, and its capital letters are indeed crowned with figures of winged guards. AngeGardien's combination of finesse and solid outlines that it shares with other quality vintage typefaces is perhaps the one worth keeping.
Antique and Renaissance fonts
An authentic 18th-century Caslon type would now look like Caslon Antique, slightly worn around the edges, but not hardened. This interpretation of the classic serif Caslon adds maturity and authority to the text without losing legibility.
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Dominican is another artificially aged antique typeface, and a very peculiar one, the outlines of which are inspired by the special charm of old books.
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Unusual, consisting of all capitals, the font Old Dog New Tricks is of interest because the lower elements of its, in principle, classical serif letters are lowered under the line line. The combination of Art Deco style with antique echoes does not allow to accurately trace its origin, but, as the theory of "recycling culture" (remix culture) teaches, unexpected combinations of components bear fruit in the form of truly unique phenomena.
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Designed by David J. Perry in 2003, Cardo was intended to be a textbook for classical languages and medieval writing. The pointed letters of this font resemble both the handwriting of the chroniclers and the inscriptions carved on the stones.
Old printed and calligraphic fonts
The broken line and faded letters might give it a unkempt look, but this typeface is stable enough to fit into any unaligned markup to match.
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Similar to the title of P.T. Anderson's 2007 film, this example clearly demonstrates the admixture of a cowboy style with a traditional gothic style.
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Olde English is an interesting example of a typeface that, despite belonging to one time and place, was easily linked to another. Although its style is reminiscent of medieval German Gothic scripts, Olde English is actually the term for Old English written in insular minuscule.
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The Schwabacher font got its name from the German village of Schwabach, and the style from the calligraphic handwriting of the chroniclers. Although used only occasionally in Germany since the 17th century, it has had a huge impact on the history of printing.
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Fraktur was widely used in printing in Germany even throughout the 20th century, and is found in many variations. Fette Fraktur is a sedate, sparse version, legible for a reader accustomed to the "antiqua" font, without losing its distinct outlines.
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A typeface designed to evoke nostalgia for the origins of baseball, when stadiums were still named after neighboring communities and people. It's like vintage baseball jerseys, flashy and tough in equal measure.
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Wrexham Script is a thicker and more angular typeface inspired by sports equipment lettering with a touch of vintage.
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In the abundance of imitations of handwriting presented on the web, the connection is easily lost between the usual unnamed typeface and its ancestors from past centuries, through the use of which, and often their professional improvement, it was formed. ALS Script, proportionate and graceful, is a worthy continuation of its dynasty: its outlines resemble the handwriting of official scribes in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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Contrary to Mr. Loos' distaste for ornamentality, Adine Kirnberg's frilly decorativeness does not interfere with either its legibility or its applicability. This well-crafted cursive with a hint of antique is not just for wedding invitations.
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Straight italic, geometrically regular and ornamental in equal measure. The contours of Ecolier show echoes of the Art Deco style, but they seem to be based on the subtle curves of calligraphy along with the soaring forms of modern engineering creations.
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According to designer Billy Argel, the idea for Olho de Boi was inspired by the first postage stamp issued in Brazil on August 1, 1843. Characteristic strokes and curls give the characters of this font the look of letters copied directly from old letters.
- ("Doodle skeleton on the treasure hunter's map")
There may be only one International Pirate Slang Day, but why not write in pirate at least four times a week? This font is aptly named: the squiggles in the style of pirate stories are reminiscent of water-smeared handwritten notes from a map of a lost treasure island.
Art Nouveau and Art Deco Fonts
Fletcher Gothic by Casady & Greene is a Art Nouveau typeface with crisp contours and a striking subtlety of finish: bring a special feel of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries into your new century graphics.
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The curves of the outlines of this typeface are reminiscent of the vegetal motifs of Art Nouveau contours. Hadley brings the text to life, giving it a touch of antiquity without losing its modern relevance.
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If Alphonse Mucha had designed fonts, he would have come up with Secesja. Intricately curved serifs and a vegetal pattern give the letters a mood of joie de vivre.
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At the beginning of the 20th century, Charles Dana Gibson became famous for his pen sketches of women in corsets and high hairstyles, known since then as the "Gibson Girls". Trinigan, with its wavy cross-pieces and hourglass silhouettes, brings those classic looks to life in the form of printed characters.
As soon as I began to seriously engage in design, I immediately began to pay more attention to fonts: from modern typography to ligature, from expressive calligraphy to the Swiss school. It was then that I got acquainted with Soviet lettering, and immediately I wanted to create a public page with a unique theme and content. So born "Soviet lettering". Samples of the Soviet type school on the Internet could only be collected bit by bit: rummaging through collections of movie titles, looking through old photographs, or studying filmstrips. And this community was created to collect the entire layer of culture in one place.
For myself, I identified 3 main reasons for the emergence of Soviet type culture.
Revolution and avant-garde artists
The spirit of the new time demanded new graphics. Shadows, highlights, ruffles and ornate fonts were thrown into the wastebasket, and they were replaced by clear shapes and a minimum of colors.
Iron curtain
Soviet designers had very limited access to outside information and could not be fully inspired by the work of foreign colleagues. They boiled in their own juice. It would seem that all conditions have been created for the fading and degradation of type culture. But here we were very lucky with the graphic designers, who, in this state of affairs, did not stand still, but, on the contrary, developed a new type culture at the pace of the Soviet industry.
Standard 1337 "Heart Fonts"
In 1930, an important event for the entire printing industry took place in the USSR. In February, the All-Union Committee for Standardization adopted the obligatory All-Union Standard 1337 "Garnet Fonts". This small two-page document limited Soviet designers to a certain set of fonts (20 typefaces and 31 weights in total). This includes the "Ordinary", "Educational", "Latin" typefaces, etc. All fonts not included in the list had to be sent for meltdown. Soviet graphic designers did not want to limit themselves in expressive means and make up all books according to one standard. Therefore, many took up pencils, brushes, pens and began to make up for the lack of fonts, creating their own unique author's compositions. Each of those experiments with calligraphy is, in fact, unique, but they began to be recorded and systematized only by the 1960s, when the first font catalogs began to appear.
Font as an integral part of culture
It is impossible to imagine a Soviet street without a neon sign "Department Store", a Soviet cinema without dynamic, sweeping titles, a Soviet book without a beautiful minimalistic cover, or a Soviet poster without branded recognizable graphics. The font was inextricably linked with culture and history.
There are already several thousand people in the public, and many of them offer their photos to the news. Someone liked the old sign in the village with their grandmother, someone took an old book from the library and admired the cover, and someone photographs the old refrigerator at their parents' house. All this turns the page into a library of unique content. It is very gratifying that people are not indifferent to this disappearing culture.
Recently, one of the subscribers shared with the community a selection of beautiful posters that she found in the archives of the Sverdlovsk theater. And they might never see the light again.
The history of the department store sign in Perm is noteworthy. Chic sweeping letters "Perm" flaunted on the roof of the store from the day it opened on December 29, 1965. But according to the current owners of the building, the sign no longer fit into the surrounding landscape and looked like a relic of the past, especially next to the McDonald's logo. It was replaced with a simple and rather featureless LED inscription "TSUM", typed in Magistral font.
And although many of the old signs are now in a deplorable state, many owners understand their beauty and value. For example, walking around St. Petersburg, you can see a lot of well-kept old neon signs that have been hanging there for 50 years, but look like new ones. This means that the culture is still alive, and this cannot but rejoice.
I hope that there will be more connoisseurs of Soviet type culture and people will pay more attention to old signs and books. And now I advise you to pick up a camera and walk around your city in search of hidden font treasures.
