The right font style can make, or break, your entire Custom T-shirt Design, so picking the right font for your next order of Custom T-Shirts means a lot!
Some designs have little to no text in them, and some designs are made completely out of text. Regardless of where your design falls on the spectrum, it goes without saying that picking the right font for your design is an important step in the process.
Just as there are literally thousands of unique font styles, there are also dozens of font “categories” that those styles fall into. To talk about all of the categories would be beyond boring and useless, so we are just going to highlight some of the most common font categories and hottest individual styles we have seen this year and going into 2017. The two most common categories are Serif fonts and Sans Serif fonts. Serif fonts are identified by the characters having “flourishes” on the ends of them, and Sans Serif fonts are the exact opposite – no “flourishes” on the font characters… a more standard block type of font. There are also Script fonts, Brush fonts, Handwritten fonts, Decorative fonts and many other types that we won’t touch on this time around.
Five of the hottest and most commonly used fonts we have seen are listed below. One thing to note is that not all of the fonts are free to use, so if you would like to use a Premium Font and don’t have it already, you can check with us to see if we do!
One of the top free Sans Serif fonts out there, Bebas Neue has become really popular over the last few years. It is often used in posters and banners for headline-type of text. If your design only has a small amount of text, but you want the text to be prominent… Bebas Neue is right for you (I’m a poet and I didn’t even know it!)
Similar to Bebas Neue, Raleway is a sans-serif typeface family intended for headings and other large size usage. The nice feature about Raleway is that there are 9 weights in the font family; ranging from “Thin” to “Black” (which is even bolder than “Extra-Bold” – I guess they didn’t want to say Extra-Extra-Bold). This font is a free Google font type, so downloading and installing for use is very easy and safe. Check out Raleway for a broad range of sans-serif font options!
The Rockwell font family is a slab serif typeface that combines a bit of timeless class with a whole lot of practical. If you are wanting multiple lines of font in your design to read like a newspaper, Rockwell is the right one for you. Rockwell is a slab serif font, which means that the serifs on the letters are composed of thicker, block-like lines as opposed to a more standard serif font. There’s no “better” or “worse” option – just a matter of preference between the two!thicker, block-like lines as opposed to a more standard serif font. There’s no “better” or “worse” option – just a matter of preference between the two!
Brusher is a modern and smooth brush font that can be used many ways. It features clean, smooth lines for an easy-to-read experience with still achieving a lot of character. The uneven spacing of the letters gives the font a natural, hand-written feel. One thing that is really nice about this font style is that it comes with 100 glyphs (characters) including upper and lower case, all numbers, punctuation, etc. Not all fonts offer the full selection of all those characters, so make sure to look for that if it is needed in your design!
Montserrat is a popular sans-serif font that is available for free from Google fonts. A fairly standard sans-serif font, it is popularly used to reflect an urban theme – often in posters and advertisements in city settings. If you want your design to have an urban feel to it, consider using Montserrat for the font type as a reinforcement of that theme!
Too Many Fonts!
Obviously there are TONS of other font styles out there (literally tens of thousands) to consider for custom t-shirts beyond these. If you choose to use another style in your design, please just make sure to convert the fonts to outlines before sending the art to us… otherwise we might not be able to open your art if we don’t have that font style installed on our machines! Keep your eyes peeled for our next blog post discussing some of the best practices we see for the usage of these (and many other) font styles in designs… from font pairings, to layout, and more!
Please let us know if you have any questions with either a phone call (1-877-T-Shirt-1), a Contact Message, or Live Chat, because we’d love to help you pick the right font for your next custom t-shirt design.
Still wondering which t-shirt is right for your next big order? Get one of our Soft T-Shirt Sample Packs so you can see/feel the t-shirts before starting your order with us.