Tattoo fonts for names, dates and words

Choosing a tattoo font

Most lettering tattoos take one of five looks. Script or cursive, joined like handwriting, for names and short quotes; Old English, the heavy blackletter of chest pieces and knuckles; fine line, a thin single-needle script for small, quiet words; Chicano lettering, the shaded script of East Los Angeles; and traditional, the bold capitals of old sailor flash.

Above, your words are set in all of them but Chicano, which only an artist’s hand can draw. Try the same word in each before you choose, and look at it both small and large.

Names and dates

A name reads best in script with room between its letters: in 𝓢𝓸𝓹𝓱𝓲𝓪 the capital carries the word, and joined small letters hold together at any size. Look closely at every letter of it, since the capitals of script and blackletter are easy to misread.

Dates are often inked in Roman numerals: 24.06.2023 turns into XXIV.VI.MMXXIII. Type the date with its dots and the fonts for dates turn each number into its numeral, in script, blackletter or double letters; more of them are among our number fonts.

How big a word tattoo should be

Ink spreads a little under the skin as the years go by, so letters set too small fill in and blur, the thin lines of fine script first. Many artists will not go much under a quarter of an inch, about 6 mm, for a letter, and ask for more room for script. Find out the smallest size yours would do your words at, then choose the font.

From the screen to the skin

The letters here are characters of Unicode, the same on every phone, so you can paste them into a message to your artist or send a screenshot. For the stencil the artist draws the lettering again, its spacing and its curves included: you bring the look, the final line is theirs.

If they would rather work from a font file, Grenze Gotisch, Pirata One, Darumadrop One and Caprasimo, the typefaces of those four styles, can be downloaded free from Google Fonts. For more blackletter, see our Old English fonts; for more script, our cursive font generator.

Tattoo fonts that move

The four squares under the field are styles of ours, made for captions and drawn live: Fallen Angel with its halo and wings, Skull Pile engraved on a heap of skulls, Vampire Valentine’s dark valentine and Lavender Post’s love letters. No other site has them; open one to wear it on a video of yours.

Questions